The Most Important Project: Kathleen on Motherhood, Leadership, and a Life of Purpose
- Noel Nicholas Jr.
- May 15
- 4 min read
For Kathleen G. Co, motherhood and leadership are not competing identities. They are part of one deeply integrated life. A technology leader, founder of Citrus Tech in Singapore, and mother of three, she has spent nearly three decades leading large-scale transformation programs across Fortune 500 organizations while raising a family through seasons of change, movement, and growth. Over time, she has come to understand that some of her strongest leadership instincts were not formed despite motherhood, but through it.
One Life, Fully Lived
Kathleen speaks about this season of life with the clarity of someone who no longer tries to separate who she is at work from who she is at home. She is a mother to a 19-year-old son, a 14-year-old daughter, and a 12-year-old son, while also leading a consulting practice and contributing to the PMI Philippines Chapter as a Digital Strategy Advisor and newsletter AI writer. For her, these are not parallel tracks but one whole life, with motherhood woven into how she leads, listens, and sets priorities.
That perspective has reshaped the way she works with people. Motherhood strengthened her sense of responsibility to model integrity, diligence, and hard work—not only for her children, but also for colleagues and teams who rely on her leadership. It also made her more willing to step beyond formal responsibilities, whether that means helping a struggling teammate, stabilizing a project at risk, or speaking up on issues of ethics, inclusion, equal pay, and upskilling.
The Human Side of Delivery
One of the most meaningful moments in Kathleen’s career came during her first week at Corteva Agriscience, when she traveled from Mumbai to maize farmlands in Pune and met farmers whose lives had improved through better harvests and healthier land. They shared how those changes helped them pay off debts, repair their homes, and send their children to university, and she would later hear similar stories in Jakarta, Khorat, and Quezon.
“Standing in those fields, I thought about my own children and the kind of world I want to help build—one where work genuinely improves lives.”
Strength, Support, and Sponsorship
Like many working mothers, Kathleen is candid about the reality that balance is not always neat. When life becomes overwhelming, she leans on a principle project managers know well: take the next manageable step, then the next. She has also learned to let go of the impossible standard of doing everything perfectly, choosing instead to define what “enough” looks like for today.
A defining example came after the birth of her third child, when a respected female manager at Procter & Gamble called and asked her to step into a highly complex global program that needed urgent intervention. Kathleen answered honestly: she wanted to do the work, but did not know how she could if it meant leaving her children in Singapore.
"Within days, she found a way for me to travel where I needed to be —with my infant child and a yaya in tow.”
That assignment became one of the most globally complex projects of her career, with implications for hundreds of jobs. She delivered it successfully, but the deeper lesson stayed with her: meaningful sponsorship creates the conditions for women to lead without being forced to divide themselves.
Motherhood, Intentionally Integrated
Today, Kathleen defines motherhood not as the pursuit of perfect balance, but as a practice of intentional integration.
"Being a mother today means living with intentional integration instead of chasing perfect balance.”
For her, that means recognizing that the qualities she brings to leadership are not separate from the qualities she brings to family life. The same patience, strategic thinking, resilience, and ability to unite people around a shared goal that serve her in the boardroom are the very same strengths she nurtures at home. Rather than dividing herself between two worlds, she has learned to see both roles as expressions of the same values: presence, responsibility, and purpose.
That perspective has also changed the way she sees ambition. Kathleen no longer feels she must apologize for her professional drive or shrink herself to make space for her children’s growth. Instead, she is intentionally building a life in which her children can witness a mother who loves her work, stands for her values, and refuses to choose between being present and being purposeful.
At the heart of this view is the kind of success she hopes to model for her children. She wants them to understand that achievement matters, but that integrity, service, and showing up for others matter just as deeply. In her words, the love she gives her family and the work she does in the world are not competing forces, but come from the same desire: to leave things better than she found them.
“Career and motherhood are not in competition. The skills travel in both directions.”