HDS

You don’t have to choose between your career and your humanity.

Hi! I’m Hannah DeLisle-Stall

Quality & Operations leader. Mom of two. I write about ambition, identity, and building a career that fits real life.

Essays About Hannah

What You’ll Find Here

Working Motherhood

Mental load, ambition, and real life

Life & Identity

Pregnancy, fertility, womanhood and the stories we don’t tell at work

Career & Leadership

Boundaries, systems and modern leadership

Who I am

I’m an engineer by training, a systems thinker by instinct, and a leader who believes the best work happens when rigor and humanity coexist.

I’ve spent more than 15 years leading quality, operations, and program excellence work in highly regulated manufacturing environments, including aerospace, defense, and medical device. I’m known for building management systems that actually work in real life — structured but human, disciplined but adaptable.

I live in a rural town in Upstate New York with my husband and our two boys. I live and operate in a place where leadership, motherhood, community, and creativity intersect. This site is a home for all of those threads. Through essays and reflections, I write about building things — organizations, careers, families, and identities — especially in seasons when the blueprint isn’t obvious.

Read more about me

Essay Archives

  • Slow is Smooth, and Smooth is Fast

    The first time I heard the phrase “slow is smooth, and smooth is fast,” it wasn’t in a manufacturing plant or a conference room. It was from my husband, who is a volunteer firefighter. His fire company uses the phrase when training drivers of emergency vehicles, a reminder that moving deliberately and maintaining control matters…

  • How Non-Parents Can Support Parents at Work

    (And How Parents Can Support Non-Parents, Too) We talk a lot about supporting working parents. It shows up in policies. In benefits. In carefully worded statements about flexibility and inclusion. But support is not built in policies. It’s built in the day-to-day, in how we make decisions, how we communicate, and how we show up…

  • Navigating the Uncertainty of Secondary Infertility

    I always thought having a second child would be simple. After all, we did it once—why not again? But three years in, with negative tests piling up and hope flickering like a candle in the wind, I find myself asking questions I never expected: Do I really want it THAT badly?Is wanting a second child…

  • Stop Trying to be Good at Everything

    At some point in our career, we’ve all been asked “what are your weaknesses?”. If you’ve practiced your answer, you’ve probably been trained to follow up with a summary of how you intend to address each and every one of those weaknesses. For high achievers, this can create the ultimate career rabbit hole — a…

  • On Leaving Loudly

    One of the ways leaders can demonstrate that work/life/family balance is valued and encouraged in the workplace is the practice of “leaving loudly”. By leaving loudly, or otherwise communicating our work-life boundaries, leaders signal that having family commitments outside of work is encouraged, accepted, and welcomed. Leaving loudly doesn’t mean always leaving work early, but…

  • Please Don’t Ask Me When I’m Having A Second Child

    The day after my husband and I got married, we started hearing the question: “When are you going to have kids?!” As soon as my son was born, people began asking when we would be having another child. I have always been able to laugh this off, knowing our plans for our family are our business —…

Leadership, motherhood, and career — from inside a real working life.