Hartford Business Journal

22 HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | APRIL 1, 2024 FOCUS | DEI Runa Knapp is the co-founder of FoundHer, a Westport-based recruitment agency that specializes in placing professional women back into the workforce. PHOTO | CONTRIBUTED 'Untapped Talent' Westport recruitment agency that places professional women back into workforce eyes Hartford market expansion "We were able to pitch, hey, flexi- bility does work!" she said. "And our business in 2021 and 2022 — I don't think there was a dull moment in my day. It was a very busy time for us, which was great." Growth spurt From January to August of 2022, compared to the same period in 2021, FoundHer experienced a 100% increase in placements. During that time, 85% of placements were return-to-work mothers. Indeed, women's labor force partic- ipation in Connecticut stands above the national average. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2022, slightly more than 60% of women worked, compared to a national average of below 57%. "I'm the product of a mom who did not call herself a working mom. She was a professional," said Gregory Papajohn, founder of Archie Group, a Darien-based public relations firm. "Since our founding, 60% of our business has been delivered to women executives," he said. "In my field, the demographic leans toward women, but we lose this talent too early. So, instead of just covering for their maternity leave, why aren't we just creating a work environment where it makes sense?" Papajohn said he first met Knapp when she came to present about FoundHer at a Darien coworking space, and the connections were obvious. "I was like, wow, how serendipitous is this?" he said. Since then, each year, his busi- ness has added at least some team members through referrals from FoundHer. "FoundHer knows their customer very well," he said. "Let's say they refer two candidates for an open role. I don't usually need to see a third." When it comes to the new ways working parents and many others want to participate in the workforce, Papajohn believes the old classifi- cations of employees into either W2 or 1099 roles is outdated. He'd like to see tax regulations catch up with the new labor environment, so that workers who want more flexibility can still be rewarded with benefits. "A lot of employers have started to be led by literally letters and numbers of a regulatory document. They're led not by a business interest of the best possible talent, they're led by these forms, by a downstream rule," he said. "On Capitol Hill, I think there's work to be done to embrace the fact that there are multiple ways of work." Logistical barriers In this new environment, Knapp wants to reassure women that a gap in their resume, while they raised By Harriet Jones Hartford Business Journal Contributor B ack in 2019, Westport resident Runa Knapp, formerly a successful CPA, was ready to return to work after several years at home with her young children. She found she wasn't alone. "There's so many friends, even just amongst our group, that had the same story," she said. "Very successful corporate careers, very well-educated and very ambitious, and there was this kind of untapped talent sitting here." Knapp and her friend, attorney Jasmine Silver decided there was a market for a recruitment agency specializing in placing professional women back into the workforce. The company they formed eventually became FoundHer. The key difference with their pre-kid careers: most of their clients wanted to retain at least some flexibility on hours or remote working so they could balance their family responsibilities. But back then, pre-pandemic, the employers Knapp approached frequently shut down that discussion. "It was like the dreaded f-word, where you can't bring that up because it just doesn't work," she remembers. "It was very much like, 'no, if we have to bend the rules for one, we have to do it for everybody in the company.'" All that changed in March of 2020. Remote and flexible work became the norm — not just for women returners but for employees of all kinds during the COVID lockdowns. In tandem, women's participation in the labor force took a huge hit as mothers of young children found them- selves having to care for, and often teach, their children full time at home. "Unfortunately, that led to a lot of women leaving the workforce," said Megan Carannante, a labor law specialist with law firm Pullman Comley. "They found it very difficult to balance the competing needs that they were trying to navigate with being caretakers." In fact, women's participation in the labor force dropped by 2.5% from March to April of 2020. Carannante said this dynamic was concerning for employers. "Women are vital contributors to the workplace," she said. "Most employers have worked hard to try to attract, retain and promote their female workforce." Coupled with the more general COVID phenomenon of the Great Resignation, as employees began to rethink work-life balance, a dearth of qualified candidates post-lockdown led employers to search for new talent pools. Knapp's recruitment business took off. Megan Carannante Gregory Papajohn Jasmine Silver

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