Balancing Career and Family - A Q&A with Joe Quinn

Joe Quinn joined Curriculum Associates (CA) as an events manager in 2022 and was promoted to senior events manager?in 2023. He describes his work as “the profession of bringing people together,” and 30 percent of his time is spent facilitating this on the ground at event sites across the world. Quinn calls New Hampshire home, but shortly after he joined the company, his daughter Olivia was born in Mexico City.

Read more about how Joe balances his growing family and career:

Q: How would you describe your role, and what does a typical day look like for you?

A: I manage a team of six, overseeing Events Marketing. Our team supports more than 100 live events throughout the year—from educator summits and national conferences to internal events and trainings. We also manage and support hundreds of virtual events throughout the year.

A typical day never looks typical, which is part of why I love what I do. There are travel days, work-from-home days, days with a lot of meetings, office days, set-up and tear-down days, and everything in between. Whether I am on-site, on a plane, or in my basement home office, I just cross my fingers for a good WiFi connection!

Q: How do you balance your travel schedule and spending time with your family?

A: A perk of having travel as part of my job is getting to see places I normally wouldn't and seeing friends and family around the country who I don't get to see often. My first trip for CA took me to Oregon, where I have family I hadn’t seen in a while. It was great to get a meal with them and catch up. My husband has family in Texas, and CA has events in Dallas a few times a year, so we've been able to tack on a weekend before and after events to take our daughter to visit with my husband's family.

Our daughter Olivia is 18 months old now, and as much as we travel, we had to make sure she travels well too! I enjoy traveling outside of work as well, so we’ve been able to take her on a few vacations already, but a lot of the balance happens across the smaller day-to-day surprises. She’s in daycare now, so when she ends up sick, I never have a problem stepping out to pick her up or taking a few hours for a doctor’s appointment. My team has always been very supportive.

Q: Did you have any concerns around having your daughter so soon after starting in your role at CA?

A: Definitely. Olivia was born via a surrogate mother in Mexico, so my husband and I needed to travel out of the United States for her birth. It was also very important to me that I got to spend those first months with my daughter, so I was prepared to burn through any vacation time I had and take unpaid leave if I needed to. There’s no time like those first couple of months, and I wouldn’t have missed them for the world.

However, CA’s flexible paid time off (PTO) policy allowed me to take the time I needed for her birth without the need to accrue PTO, and I was also able to take 10 weeks of parental leave as a non-birthing parent. I ended up taking eight of those right away to spend the crucial first weeks with her so our family could bond, and then I extended our holiday vacation later in the year with the two remaining weeks.

The best part was that I could spend all that time focusing on my family. I went on parental leave thinking I would need to check my email once a week to keep up and take care of a few things, but my team was so supportive, stepping in to cover anything emergent so it never even hit my inbox. I was able to fully disconnect and bond with my family without interruption or worry. More than just the benefits, the support of my team has made the experience here incredible.

Learn more about CA’s benefits and perks here.