Norrinda Brown Hayat is a civil rights attorney and co-owner of Brown Betty Dessert Boutique in Philadelphia. She lives in Washington, DC, with attorney husband Fareed Hayat and their son, Kingston, 20 months.

Describe your job and a typical day for you.

On days when I practice law and run the bakery, I get up around 6 a.m., get ready, and take Kingston to his program before heading to work. I respond to Brown Betty emails and calls during my commute, then do legal work for about eight hours and return calls and emails for the bakery over lunch. The three of us have dinner before heading to the park or doing another activity with Kingston. I will give Kingston his bath and do his bedtime routine. He goes to sleep between 8 and 8:30. We are lucky: Once he's asleep, he doesn’t wake up! Fareed and I both start working again for a few hours, before watching a movie or discussing the news. We're in bed around 11.

On the days I work exclusively for the bakery I pack in as many meetings in as possible. I grab an 8 a.m. train into Philadelphia, get breakfast at the train station and head straight to my first meeting. Some days are nonstop media meetings, while others are filled with business development meetings or a mix of both. I chat with the bakery's manager and the staff to get a sense of what's on their minds, if they've been facing any challenges and what customers have been saying. At the end of the day I debrief my Mom and partner, Linda. She’s the mastermind in the kitchen and let's me and my sister, Norrina, handle the business end, so we report back to her what we've planned. Then I go back to 30th Street station to head home. Those days are the most challenging, but at the end of them, I feel like I really advanced the ball.  

Tell us a cool fact about your job.

Taste testing at the bakery! Even the "mistakes" are delicious.

What was your inspiration to start a bakery while working a corporate job?

I was reading a lot of O, the Oprah Magazine and kept asking myself, "Am I living my best life?" The answer was no. At the time, practicing law was sucking the creativity out of me. In retrospect, I could’ve taken up a hobby instead of a business to address my yearnings. I don’t regret starting the bakery, but I do wish I wasn’t so naive about how much work would be involved.

What is your working mom mantra?

Try to do better every day than you did the day before.

How do you handle child care?

We started out with full-time child care in the home, which was great until Kingston got more active. Now he goes to a learning program during the day and we have part-time help nights and weekends. When we have the second baby in September we will go back to full-time help.

What is your favorite thing your husband does to help lighten the load?

Getting Kingston ready in the morning! I move slower in the morning, and Fareed agreed to take that responsibility on, which has made a world of difference. 

When have you been most daring in your work life?

Professionally, it would have to be opening the bakery. I didn’t have to do it. I had a good job, yet I kept dreaming of owning my own business and doing something creative. One day I decided to throw caution to the wind and do exactly that.

Could you share a workmom meltdown and how you coped?

After Kingston turned 15 months, he started waking up in the middle of the night and wanting to be held. I was trying to be strong and not hold him, but that meant he cried for hours and I cried for hours because I felt both guilty about Kingston crying and guilty for wishing he would just quit it and go to sleep. Fareed would eventually go into Kingston's room and hold him so that we could all sleep, which I considered a failure on both of our parts as parents, so I would cry some more. In the mornings, I was so sleep deprived and exhausted that I cried when I got to work. This went on for about two weeks until Kingston just stopped waking up crying, but it was so rough going through it.

What have you learned from watching your mom work?

I aspire to be like my mom was—dedicated to her career and her family. She taught in the Philadelphia public school system for 35 years and loved it. She also got her master's and then doctoral equivalent degrees while we were young. And she cooked every weeknight and on Sundays and helped with science fair boards and school election campaigns. Oh, and planned awesome themed birthday parties well before you had blogs for ideas! She did it all with such ease none of it seemed like it was that big of a deal. I thought all moms did that. I didn’t appreciate all that my mother did for us until I had Kingston. Now I sit in awe of her.

If you could describe your life in one word, what would it be?

Dream.

Photo credit: Courtney de Jauregui of ErinheartsCourt

If you'd like to see more pictures of Norrinda in action at work and with her family, click here for an extended photo gallery.