VBSR Announces Newest Champion Member Mamava

Mamava joins leading Vermont businesses for People, Planet and Prosperity

Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility (VBSR) announces this week that Mamava will join the organization’s Champion Members. VBSR is a business association with over 730 members who work to foster a business ethic that sets a high standard within the Vermont professional community for protecting the natural, human, and economic environments of the state. The support of Champion Members like Mamava is essential to advancing their year-round state-wide work bringing businesses together as a power for good.

Mamava’s freestanding lactation pods are an innovative design solution—driven by empathy and understanding—that solve a unique problem facing breastfeeding parents: finding a clean, private space to express milk when you’re away from home. Their mission is to celebrate and support all breastfeeding parents by ensuring they have access to lactation spaces; they also have a free mobile app that helps moms find pods and other dedicated spaces nearby and educational resources they need to meet their breastfeeding goals.

Mamava is a Vermont based business with a firm belief in supporting the local economy with quality jobs. Their business model is driven by a collaborative framework that empowers employees to be co-creators of the company’s culture, mission, and success (all employees are shareholders). Mamava’s headquarters is based in Burlington and their revolutionary pods are manufactured in Springfield, Vermont.

As of early 2020 there are a total of 23 Mamava pods in Vermont, including in other VBSR member businesses UVM and the Echo Center. Mamava has a commitment to their mission to make breastfeeding an authentic choice for all mothers, regardless of their circumstances, and has donated pods to high-need sites that are under-resourced, including Burlington High School, Pine Forest Children’s Center, and Springfield Health Care Center.

Mamava cultivates a workplace culture that works for all of their employees, by actively supporting flexible schedules and remote work to reduce carbon emissions from daily commuting, intentionally limits air travel, and hosts an open kitchen to encourage employees to bring or make lunch and uses in-office composting to reduce food waste.

“Since joining VBSR as a start-up Mamava has rapidly become a leading voice in the Vermont socially responsible business community,” said Toby Aronson, Membership Manager for VBSR, “their company is genuinely helping businesses in Vermont and across the country raise the bar on what it means to support workers and communities – which is at the heart of what we do as an organization.”

Co-founder and CEO Sascha Mayer’s recently lent her voice in support of a paid family leave bill for all Vermonters, “We all recognize the need to grow our population and our workforce. As business owners we recognize that paid parental leave is particularly important for the recruitment and retention of young families in Vermont. Since instituting paid parental leave programs at our businesses, we have both seen firsthand the positive results from this investment. Since 2016 Mamava employees have welcomed five new babies, with at least two more on the way in 2020.”

VBSR produces education and networking events; including an intensive workshop series Measure What Matters entering the second year of programing around the state. VBSR also advocates for Vermont businesses at the State House on issues of sustainable economic development and social equity, having championed the fight for a universal paid family leave program, for livable jobs, and for urgent climate action during the 2020 legislative session.