We were lucky to catch up with Maya Karelina recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Maya thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

We have created WorkCastle that is opening in Austin, TX in July 2023 and it is an absolute game changer for women! WorkCastle will be a drop-off childcare with a co-working space under one roof, without enrollment and membership fees, just hourly rates and pay-as-you-need. Moreover, the children area in WorkCastle is organised in a way that children have space to develop their natural curiosity, explore roles play, work together as a group. We strive to provide a safe and nurturing space where every child will thrive, so that women do not feel guilty anymore that they have to keep up with their careers or look after themselves.

Me and my husband came to this idea as parents of two little kids as we wanted to spend a lot time with them, explaining how things work in this world, why people behave a certain way or why they might experience certain emotions, and also explore possible solutions to any challenges. Before my first son was born, I had built a successful career working for large companies, ensuring their profitability had been strategically planned and achieved. When I became pregnant, I initially believed I would quickly return to work and continue pursuing my ambitious career. However, everything changed in a moment when I held my precious little son in my arms. I understood that he means a world to me and I want to spend every minute with him, and every smile, every word matters. Unfortunately, nowadays for most women its not affordable to spend a lot of time with their kids. We have to seek for childcare options to continue our careers. So did I. The ones that appeared decent were very expensive, and there was no reimbursement if my son was sick for couple of weeks. So none of the daycares seemed to fit my expectations. And I also hesitated that I wanted to send my precious treasure there full time. And I know so many women who have decided to stay home because organising childcare can be so challenging.

At certain point I started looking at numbers, and they were shocking as it was actually reported that American businesses lose at least 12.7 billion annually because of the childcare challenges faced by employees. It turned out that half of the people in the US live in a region that’s classified as a “childcare desert.” So I decided that is something I’d love to change.

Being in the role of mom and knowing that women feel a huge responsibility for their child’s education and development. And, at the same time, we feel the pressure to keep up with our careers, look good, maintain the house, and on and on. So, I decided that mission of WorkCastle will be to allow women to get back to their careers early while providing a safe and nurturing environment for their kiddos.

Maya, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I have a financial and operations management background – I joined one of my previous employers when it was a small representative office which eventually grew into large trading company of more than 400 employees within 2 years. I had an extensive experience in implementing company’s processes and improving operations. After our first son was born me and my husband faced the struggles of being career-oriented parents and wanting to be present with our families as well. We found that there wasn’t a space that adequately served to the working parent wanting to balance their career and time for their children. Parenthood is hard and WorkCastle is now making it easier to balance it all and feel empowered through the journey. I truly believe that my experience would contribute a lot to the successful development of WorkCastle.

We will operate as a drop-off childcare service while also providing an onsite co-working space! Having childcare and co-working under one roof is a dream come true for parents. To make things even better, we have developed the simplest check-in process ever, allowing parents to save time and avoid lengthy waits at the reception desk. In fact, you can even complete everything online. Within our beautifully designed play area, children will enjoy engaging in structured activities led by our professional staff. Additionally, we offer a variety of classes including Lego and Robotics Lab, Music Lab, and Art Lab. All that said, we don’t burden your wallet with monthly fees.

So, in the future, WorkCastle will not only assist parents, we’ll also help women get themselves back into the workforce, which will only serve to lift up the nation as a whole. We’re also paying special attention to the needs of parents and the kinds of challenges children face in this early part of life. We want to do our part to help kids grow and mature, whether that means helping them understand how to deal with emotions, express themselves appropriately, learn self-regulation — these soft skills are so important to work toward.

We have plans to expand throughout Texas in the near future, and we’re also already planning expansion into other states. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of providing women with an opportunity to reenter the workforce without feeling guilty. It’s crucial to keep in mind that lack of childcare options for working parents, reportedly, costs American businesses more than 12 billion dollars annually. Additionally, we’ve discovered that approximately half of the population in the U.S. resides in areas classified as “childcare deserts,” which is something we often overlook. Therefore, our goal is to address this issue and introduce WorkCastle to other areas once we establish a successful presence in Austin

Have you ever had to pivot?

I am a very ambitious and goal-oriented person. I had built a successful career working for large companies, ensuring their profitability had been strategically planned and achieved. I decided to change the large company for an IT startup project when I realised that I do not see any next step in my careers in that company. I never liked going to work just for the sake of going to work and getting salary. I always wanted to take challenging projects where I had to improve something and could see a result. I always wanted to have my long-term and short-term plan, I always needed to know where I need to go next and reach the aim no matter how difficult it is.

Therefore, leaving a large company for a startup in a completely different industry was risky, but extremely interesting, I was offered a CEO position and had to build all the processes in the company from scratch. I believe that my recent experience of building one of finance functions from scratch in a big German pharmaceutical company helped a lot.

By the time my first son was born and I realised that drop-off childcare and co-working would be a great idea to support women in the US, I had an experience of starting up a company in a completely new industry for me, so I decided to take this challenge, I found a partner who is a great educator, and she will be responsible for curriculum, while I’ll be ensuring the processes in WorkCastle is structured efficiently and financial results are achieved. This should help to drive WorkCastle’s growth into a nationwide business.

By the way, I am new to Austin :) And that was another challenge me and my husband decided to take as the economy in our country was in recession for a long period of time. So, starting up a new business in a new country while still settling down with two little kids and figuring out how the educations, insurance and many other systems work, is quite an adventure, but I believe very useful one, I can definitely say I gained a much broader view on things now :)

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

My husband, Eugene, who has always been my partner and supporter in all endeavors, suggested that we should start our own daycare. I hesitated because we were very good at strategic thinking, management, setting up operations, and finance, but we were not educators. One day, we met Anastasiia – you’ll be surprised – we met her online on Facebook. We liked her daycare pictures and decided to arrange a conference call, where we realized we were a perfect match. She is an excellent teacher! Not only do we share the same vision on education, but we also have similar ambitions for growth and development. For example, we were discussion different education philosophies and it turned out we both believe that actually the combination of all of them work the best. We love the free child-led Waldorf play, which fosters creativity, imagination, and encourages children to explore different roles. We also love the structured and goal-oriented approach of Montessori, while the Reggio approach nurtures children’s natural curiosity. The key is to observe and adapt to each child’s needs at every stage, creating a personalized recipe for their development.

We then decided to meet Anastasiia in person and started elaborating on how we see our future drop-off daycare. Anastasiia has been working in the childcare industry since she was 18 years old. Over the past 8 years, she has successfully managed her own childcare business.       

Contact Info:

• Website: workcastle.us
• Instagram: @workcastle.us
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/maya.karelina/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maya-karelina-4a12177/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/workcastle-austin?osq=work+castle

Image Credits
Kylee Kirby Photography Liya Geldman