Impact Highlights: Jessica Chang and Upwards (formerly WeeCare)

From providing childcare benefits to nearly 300,000 US employees in 2022 alone to rolling out their first government-sponsored childcare subsidy program, Upwards (formerly known as WeeCare) is the only childcare company that uses technology to bring together all stakeholders -parents, employers, providers, and governments — to solve the childcare crisis.

In this interview, Grant Richardson of Promise Venture Studio sits down with Jessica Chang, CEO and Co-Founder of Upwards.

Note: Since recording this interview in November 2022, WeeCare has changed their name to Upwards! Learn more about their rebrand.

In 2022, WeeCare became the first tech company in California to receive state funding to administer childcare subsidies through the WeeSubsidy program. The program helps make childcare subsidies more efficient and helps families get financial assistance quicker.

The program is awarding over $1 million in childcare subsidies to in-need families. WeeCare started enrolling children in January and continues accepting applications on a rolling basis through their website: https://weecare.co/childcare-assistance. More details are available in the press release here. And here’s an article about WeeSubsidy by Early Learning Nation.

If you have been following recent mentions of child care in the White House, you may have heard of the CHIPS Program. The childcare benefits team of WeeCare is working hard to help semiconductor companies understand and navigate the CHIPS Program childcare requirements, to provide affordable, reliable, and high-quality childcare for their employees.

Thanks for your time sharing with us, Jessica! We hope you enjoy the interview.

The interview transcript below has been edited for readability. Find questions in italics below followed by responses and timestamps.

Grant Richardson, Program Manager at Promise Venture Studio: Hello, I am really excited about our interview today. Would you go ahead and share your name, your role, and your organization?

Jessica Chang 0:16

Hi, I’m Jessica Chang. I am the CEO and co-founder of WeeCare.

Tell us a little bit about WeeCare and a description of what you all do.

Jessica Chang 0:28

The general gist is WeeCare is a childcare marketplace. One focus of it is that we help small childcare providers with their back-end operations. We let them do the caring, and we take care of everything else. From how to market them, through CRM, to being able to run their business out of their pocket. On the other side of it, we are actually on the B2B side of the ecosystem, meaning we help employers create a childcare benefit program on behalf of their employees. And specifically, we can help their employees with their childcare needs from finding childcare to managing that childcare experience, to even helping them utilize a childcare stipend from their employer.

I’m curious to learn a little bit more about the origins of WeeCare, you mentioned that you’re a co-founder. So tell us a little bit about why you all began this venture and a little bit more about why y’all do what you do.

Jessica Chang 1:35

There are two parts to it. We’re coming to this from both an understanding of the demand side, which in this case is a lot of families, and then also on the supply side as well.

So the first part on the demand side is I am a parent of two young kids and went through the struggles of finding childcare. And really, I think a lot of people don’t understand the impact when you can’t find childcare, or you can’t afford childcare. At that time, I almost left my job. And, many women do. When they’re at that pinnacle of their career, just decide to start a family, and now realize they have to make a choice, because they can’t find childcare, or they can’t afford childcare. And that pinnacle happens when many women are prime for increasing their role of becoming a manager. And suddenly, they don’t have a choice, they have to stay at home because they can’t afford childcare. That does have a detrimental effect not just on women, but also the families. You lose one income or you lose maybe the only income that you have in your family. At the same time, you lose the opportunity for your child to have early childcare, which has a one-to-one effect on how they even go through elementary school because they don’t have a leg up while other kids do.

The other part of the story is that I was also a preschool owner and operator. And from my own firsthand experience, I saw how hard it was for preschool owners to keep their operations running. And many people don’t know that preschools run on really slim margins. And when they can’t operate, they end up closing, which makes the supply issue even worse. But on top of that, an average preschool teacher only makes $20,000 a year doing one of the most important jobs out there. And that also becomes hard because if you only make $20,000, you’re not even able to support yourself, let alone your family, let alone continue to do a job that usually is 10 hours a day, and taking care of many, many kids.

That’s really how we got started from the premise of understanding how hard it is to start a family and how hard it is to even be able to find childcare or even afford childcare. Then also to understand that when it comes to providers, they’re having a hard time even staying in the industry because they don’t get paid enough or make enough money to do what they love.

It’s really interesting to hear how well WeeCare is positioned to improve outcomes for so many folks, both parents and providers and caregivers, and ultimately allow more folks to access economic mobility, again in multiple ways. Talk to me a bit about how equity shows up in your work, and how it undergirds much of what you do.

Jessica Chang 5:01

I think it stems from the mission. From day one, and we started about five years ago, our mission has stayed the same. It has always been about how you make childcare accessible for ALL. And that ALL is capitalized. Because I think it has a lot of meaning to say “Okay, am I solving it for the 1%? Or am I solving it for every single person out there?” Whether that’s a family, whether they’re a childcare provider, whether they’re an employer just trying to retain, and recruit people. And if you look at it, when you have that type of mindset, you end up attracting a much more equitable workforce. For example, we are majority female, and we’re majority minorities too. But also the people that you end up affecting are those that need the most care.

Our childcare providers are 97% female. And a lot of times, 85% of them fall into the category of being a minority, small childcare provider, or in a low-income area. So the parts that matter to us shape the way we think about being equitable, and who we’re making a difference for.

For us, that has always been about those that need it the most. And those that can also benefit from actually having childcare, being able to have two parents that are working and able to continue to work because they not only can afford childcare, but it’s convenient for the work schedules that they might have.

I am curious to hear a bit more about those who are the primary beneficiaries of the work that you’re doing and how they are leading in shaping the work and shaping the approach that you take to delivering your value proposition on both sides of the marketplace.

Jessica Chang — 7:15

What we’ve seen across the board is that we’ve always focused, for example, on essential employers. Generally, our biggest clients are manufacturing companies, health care companies, or grocery chains.

What we found in terms of why they’re attracted to us is we’ve been able to service more than 85% of their employees. This means we’re servicing the hourly worker that might be on two or three shifts, might have a weekend shift, might have a nighttime shift, which not a lot of other child care benefit programs can.

The reason why we can do so is that we built our network based on small childcare providers. For example, licensed home daycares that are located in residential settings and can be open 24/7, because their community generally works two or three shifts and needs that support.

What we see by actually doing so we are reaching those who, when it comes to having childcare, generally don’t have a choice. If they don’t get childcare, they can’t go to work, they can’t support their families. And that stems down to that mission that we’ve been talking about. We’re trying to focus on those for whom we can make a difference. Those who, without childcare, their families, for example, can’t get out of poverty, or they have to move to a location or drive an hour just to get to something that works for their family.

That’s a big impact on how we’re doing things. But also, when you talk to any one of our employees, you’ll find that this is what matters to them. They don’t want to be making something that only benefits 1% of the population. They want to be doing something that makes a significant shift in how people will even go to work, how women will have the opportunity to join the workforce or stay in their workforce, to be able to help children that might have never been able to have access to early childcare without the support of our network of small childcare providers.

I want to hear about some of these specific initiatives that you’re working on to deepen your impact.

Jessica Chang 10:15

Yeah, I think when it comes down to it, COVID showcased this, when it comes down to it when families are forced to stay at home, you have people that were being laid off, you have providers that were essentially trying to stay open, because that was their livelihood, right? If they don’t stay open and risk their lives, they don’t make money and they can’t put food on their table. What we saw was, it became apparent that when it came to accessibility, a lot of it was focused on affordability. If you can’t afford care, guess what? You’re stuck at home, you do not get to go to work or advance your career because you can’t afford childcare, and someone needs to take care of your child.

We saw an opportunity to address that with employers. One of the initiatives that we’re pushing on is specifically getting employers to look at some of that data and information and say, we should create a childcare stipend for our employees, and where we are helping them to pay for the cost of childcare.

When that happens there are two benefits. When the cost of childcare goes down, more and more families can afford it. But also at the same time, families can afford it because they’re being subsidized by employers. The provider is making what they deserve, and what they need to stay in the industry. So you’re not only benefiting families, but you’re benefiting providers, who generally are leaving the industry in droves. You’re trying to turn back that clock almost in some way or another and say, “Hey, you can still stay and become a childcare provider and make money and support your own family.”

Tell me a bit more about your journey, and how you ended up at this intersection of workforce and early childhood. And what brought you to early childhood?

Jessica Chang 13:12

Early childhood came to me pretty early on. I actually have a younger brother that is 17 years younger than me. When I went off to college, my younger brother was born so e never had any intersection when we were at home. My brother, he’s autistic. And my parents never really understood that. And, I come from a very traditional Asian family. And so for my parents that were just like, “oh, this is something that he was going to grow out of, right?” And they didn’t understand a lot about mental health. They also didn’t understand what autism was. And so this is the same time that I was in college, and I ended up having one of my degrees in psychology, and specifically early childhood development.

I was interested in how that had an impact and specifically how my brother would be able to learn. And I used that to be able to communicate with my parents so that they could understand what my brother was going through, and help them thrive from an early age.

My brother is right now at USC. And a lot of what helped him was being able to get an early childhood and early childcare experience and specifically actually having the ability to go to Montessori School and seeing how the impact of Montessori school helped him in those early years.

That is an incredible story. What is your brother studying at USC?

Jessica Chang 15:14

He’s studying law. He wants to be a big advocate for individuals like himself, My brother also has a lot of mental health that he’s going through. And a lot of times, that’s not understood or it’s discriminated against. So his big purpose in entering into law school is to make it more fair, just, and equitable, so that people like himself, can have the same opportunities as those that don’t have mental health challenges or have autism, for example.

That’s really unique. Thank you for sharing. I would love to hear what you find most unique about what you do and in your role as you lead WeeCare.

Jessica Chang 16:03

I think this is probably the first time that I feel great about what I do. I’ve had a lot of experiences where I’ve been in tech, where I’ve been in finance, where I think in the midday, it’s like there’s a guilty feeling that you’re just making wealthy people even more wealth.

This is the first time where we’re taking the long road. We’re trying to answer the question of, how we make a true impact. And I think sometimes you might not see it, but when you talk to the families that you help, or the childcare provider, that that you helped to stay in childcare, you realize the impact that you’re making.

This year, we celebrated our fifth anniversary in September, and we took our whole team to a retreat. As part of that retreat, we visited some of the providers that we’ve helped over the years. And we came out of there, most of us, crying. You realize the kind of impact that you’re making on these families, and you realize the impact that you’re making on the provider, who then gives back to their community. That’s been very unique to us. I think every single person in our company comes because they truly believe that they are making a true impact on families. They’re making a difference and a dent in solving a real issue.

That’s so meaningful and joyful. You sound like you’ve built a team that starts with our care and our love for our caregivers and our parents and that desire to pour into them. So just thanks for what you’re doing and the work that you’re leading.

I would love to hear about some of the partners that you work with most central to you achieving your goals for impact as you move forward.

Jessica Chang 18:16

We do work with a lot of partners, many are household names that people know about, like Panasonic, or JC Penney. For example, JC Penney has more than 50,000 employees across 50 states. And that’s so amazing that you can affect every single person, every single state. But we’re also helping those that maybe a lot of people don’t think about that also need to help, like Goodwill.

What I think is amazing to see is across the board, we’re seeing every single industry actually taking childcare benefits as a way of really putting time and effort to do it right.

They’re coming to us and asking questions on how we get into the childcare benefits space. But this is not a perk. This is a benefit. We want to invest the time to understand it, but also to get our employees to be able to utilize it over time.

That has been a really big shift. Where previous to COVID, it was seldom companies wanted to do a childcare benefit program. And a lot of that was centered around how we help people that “matter” to us, like high-achieving individuals, managers, and directors. Post-COVID, we’ve been seeing a lot of employers focused on how we help every single employee and how we make childcare a true benefit and not a perk.

It’s time to wrap up. I’m grateful for your time and for sharing with us more about what you do, why you do it, and your journey. I would love to hear a little bit about what’s next for your team. And how can our community at large support your work?

Jessica Chang 20:30

Well, we do have an exciting announcement coming up, but I can’t talk too much about it. But it involves how we can help more families in California get access to high-quality childcare. And then it’s not just focused on employers, but another, I would say entity that can make childcare more affordable. We have some exciting news coming up, and exciting partnerships coming up.

*Since recording, WeeCare launched the WeeSubsidy program. The program helps make childcare subsidies more efficient and helps families get financial assistance quicker in California. Learn more.*

In regards to how our community can help support. We’ve been here for five years, but it consistently is one of the parts that we harp on. We want people to know that there are resources for families to find childcare. Regardless if you’re working or not working, or just trying to figure out how you can balance life.

Also, resources to help out small childcare providers that generally get overlooked, because they’re not a center or they don’t have the marketing budget to like the big franchises out there. I think the newer part of it is encouraging employers, and making them aware that there are programs out there that can benefit their employees. Let employers, especially the HR departments, know that you might not think that you can offer a benefit, like childcare, but you can, and we can work with you, or even if it’s not us, you can be educated on a benefit, like childcare, which has an immense impact to working families, retaining those working families. Especially in retaining females, and working mothers, and really helping support them as they move up the corporate ladder.

Well, thank you so much, Jessica. How can folks connect with you?

Jessica Chang 22:43

The easiest way is to just go on our site and see where you fall. Are you a family or a provider or an employer? Visit our website at Weecare.co.

Learn more about WeeCare at weecare.co

This recording was created, edited, and published by Promise Venture Studio. Our mission is Supporting Innovators and Accelerating Innovations for Equity in Early Childhood Development.

Learn more about Promise Venture Studio at promisestudio.org