I was 8.5 months pregnant when our team was preparing for the final presentation in a major global pitch.
The final presentation was happening in New York. I was in Chicago.
As the executive creative lead, I believed the client needed to experience the people who would potentially lead the work—and I wanted to contribute as more than a tiny square on a screen. I wanted to be in the room where it happens and good old Zoom, with all due respect, would simply NOT do.
There needed to be some presentation theatre. Some energy. A viiiiiiiiiiiiiiiibe.
After a little research—thank you, The Kardashians, Season 4, Episode 7—I had an idea and persuaded the team to try something slightly ridiculous: turn me into an extremely pregnant, live 3D hologram and beam me into the final meeting.
Our industry spends a lot of time telling clients we have our fingers on the pulse of emerging technology. I wanted to prove it. If we say technology can solve big billion-dollar business problems, surely it can solve the small matter of being too filled with baby to fly.
The setup was anything but simple. It took an elaborate technical backend, multiple rehearsals, painstaking choreography and a tightly scripted performance. My creative director and I Mutt and Jeffed it—him in the room, me appearing as a life-sized hologram from roughly 800 miles away.
The room’s response was unforgettable. The technology became part of the storytelling—surprising, theatrical and, at moments, genuinely hilarious. The client was blown away—not just by the work, the amazing strategy and the agency’s impressive business acumen, but by the way we'd chosen to tell the story as a team.
Looking back, it became something more than a pitch. It was proof that technology can actually make leadership more inclusive, allowing women to show up at the highest levels of business during pregnancy without having to choose between their health and their careers. My agency invested in finding a way for me to be in that room, and that support meant the world to me.
And, as it happened, our team went on to win that pitch.
A few weeks after the presentation I had my daughter, Rosie, and got back from maternity just in time to be onboarded in person in New York. And perhaps my favourite part? One day I'll get to tell her that she was a badass in the boardroom before she was born.
Before the presentation, I asked our hologram technology partners at PROTO three separate times if anyone had ever beamed an unborn baby into a boardroom before. Every time, the answer was a definitive “NOPE!”.
So, while I can’t independently verify a world record, Rosie may just have been the WORLD'S FIRST EVER BABY TO BEAM INTO A BOARDROOM.
Pics or it didn’t happen. Baby pics for the heart flutters.
*Images used with permission and altered to protect confidential information. No client work or pitch materials are shown.
*This post reflects my personal experience and views. It does not represent or speak on behalf of any former employer or client.
