Camp season has a way of pushing parents to the edge.Endless tabs, forgotten logins, waitlists that fill in minutes, and group chats that never sleep. In this episode of the AI-Empowered Mom podcast, host Sarah Dooley sits down with Molly Morse, co-founder of Recess, to talk about why planning camps and activities has become so chaotic and how it can finally get easier.

Molly shares how becoming a mom and a marketplace founder opened her eyes to how fragmented and outdated the camps and activities ecosystem really is. She explains why parents feel like everything is sold out while camps still have empty seats, and how Recess is creating a centralized marketplace to bring clarity to the chaos. The conversation also dives into how AI matchmaking helps surface the right options for each family, how group booking and scheduling tools could change everything, and why parents should trust their intuition when choosing programs for their kids.

This episode is a must-listen for parents staring down camp season and wondering how it got this hard and how it might finally get easier.

In this episode of the AI-Empowered Mom podcast, host Sarah Dooley is joined by sociologist and author Allison Daminger to unpack the invisible mental work that keeps families running and why it still falls so heavily on women.

Drawing from her book What’s on Her Mind? The Mental Workload of Family Life, Allison explains how traditional measures of household labor miss the constant anticipating, researching, organizing, and monitoring that happens inside parents’ heads. She shares insights from interviewing nearly 200 parents, including why time is the wrong metric for mental load, how the “superhuman and bumbler” dynamic shows up in many homes, and what her research revealed about different gender couples compared to queer couples.

The conversation also explores divorce and mental load, calendar partners, weaponized incompetence, and how AI could either reduce or unintentionally increase cognitive labor if it is not designed thoughtfully. Allison offers a grounded, compassionate reminder that if the mental load feels heavy, it is not a personal failure. It is a structural one.

A must listen for parents, caregivers, and anyone trying to understand why family life feels so mentally exhausting and what might actually help.

When AI can design almost anything, where does human creativity still matter?

In this episode of the AI‑Empowered Mom Podcast, host Sarah Dooley sits down with Deanna L. Leonard, fractional CMO, AI strategy leader, and one of LinkedIn’s Top 100 AI Creative Educators.

Deanna shares her journey from lifelong artist and corporate marketing executive to teaching AI confidence to midlife women and advising global brands on ethical, creative AI adoption. Together, they explore where humans outperform machines, how emotional intelligence shapes better AI outcomes, and why AI should act as a tool and not the storyteller.

This conversation covers AI fatigue, creative burnout, “AI slop,” ethical design, prompt mastery, and what 2026 may bring with AI agents and workflow transformation. Deanna also offers practical guidance for parents and caregivers navigating AI at home, including guardrails around creativity, screen use, and protecting children’s likenesses.

A grounded, human-first conversation about creativity, leadership, and designing a future where technology supports connection instead of replacing it.