She was fired while pregnant – now she’s helping others protect their careers

This article is republished from The Honest Talk, written by Lisa Thibodeau.

After a 15-year climb through Canada’s tech sector, Beth Wanner reached the executive level – but found herself confronting a challenge many women face: balancing career growth with family planning.

“It’s a male-dominated industry that moves very quickly, so I was always nervous about what maternity leave would look like or how it would affect my career,” she said. “Eventually, I realized there is no ‘right time,’ so we decided to start trying to grow our family.”

During that period, Wanner kept that journey to herself. She didn’t openly talk about her family plans or that she was undergoing IVF. 

“You hear about women getting overlooked for new opportunities for those sorts of things. It just makes you too vulnerable to share that,” she explained. “But at the same time, you’re going through something really heavy. So I was trying to overperform, make sure that nobody saw any cracks or knew what I was going through.”

Then, just two days after a successful embryo transfer, and unrelated to her pregnancy, Wanner was laid off.

“It was devastating,” she said. “I spent all of this energy trying to hide this part of my life only for this to happen anyway.”

Determined to stay afloat, she began job hunting – again keeping her pregnancy to herself.

“You’re faced with this impossible decision of ‘Do I, or do I not disclose?'” she said. “It felt horrible to start a new relationship based on omission, but I knew the reality: people can find any reason not to move forward.”

She eventually landed a new executive role, and after signing the offer, she disclosed her pregnancy. The reaction, Wanner says, was awful. 

“No, congratulations. Just: ‘When did you find out?’ and ‘Why would you choose us?'”

Still, she showed up and did the work. But around her eighth month of pregnancy, after informing the company of a planned early C-section, she was terminated before her probation period ended.

“I was in complete shock,” she said. “That was not what I was expecting. And just a few weeks before my daughter was set to arrive.” 

Turning experience into action

With a newborn at home and now unemployed, Wanner decided to speak out about her experience. She took to LinkedIn to share her story.

The response was overwhelming.

“I heard from so many women. It was infuriating to know that this was such a problem, but empowering that I wasn’t alone in this,” she said. “Why were we all experiencing this, and yet no one was talking about it?”

Knowing firsthand the tension between companies struggling with long-term leaves, and women terrified that motherhood would derail their careers, Wanner started to think about how to bridge that gap.

“I was convinced there was already a solution out there, and I just didn’t know about it,” she said. “But there was nothing.”

That’s when the idea for Mother Cover was born. 

The agency connects companies with experienced professionals who can temporarily step into roles during parental leave. Whether full-time or fractional, Mother Cover specializes in filling manager-level and senior roles in marketing, operations, HR, product, finance, and strategy, giving peace of mind to both the company and the parent stepping away. 

The Mother Cover model also ensures proper onboarding, continuity, and re-entry – areas where many companies fumble. This results in parents taking the time they need while teams aren’t stretched thin. 

“This alleviates that pressure to take shorter leaves and come back because you don’t want to miss a whole bunch and feel like you’re burdening your team,” she said. “It also gives peace of mind that your place will be there when you return. In reality, our laws protect our jobs, but not our careers.”

And it’s already resonating. In just six months, Mother Cover has built a roster of 50+ elite partners – skilled professionals ready to step into interim roles – and is working with companies across Canada and the U.S.

Beyond parental leave, the company’s model also aims to accommodate other types of absences, such as caregiving and medical leaves, reflecting a broader need for workplaces to adapt to the diverse needs of employees.

“This is a different way of workforce planning,” said Wanner. “We now know there’s a business case to be proactive about it versus reactive.” 

Mother Cover also benefits those providing the coverage. Many elite partners are mothers or caregivers themselves, utilizing freelance and fractional work to achieve flexibility without sacrificing meaningful career opportunities.

A path forward

For Wanner, her entrepreneurial journey was not without hesitation. 

“I fought against the idea of entrepreneurship,” she admits. “There’s a lot of self-doubt, especially when you’re used to the stability of corporate work.” 

However, she recognized the potential to turn her experience into a solution that would benefit both companies and working parents.

Now, as Mother Cover grows, Wanner hopes to reach more companies and work with employers who want to proactively design flexible, human-first systems while continuing to make it easier for women to take leave without jeopardizing the roles they worked so hard to earn.

And she’s doing it all with her daughter by her side.

“She has no idea the impact her little life has made,” she said. “Not just on my life, but hopefully on so many other women and parents.”