Georgina Ngozi, President, Brooklyn Children’s Museum

Mother of Kwaku, 36; Khlid, 30 and Maya, 26 Grandmother of Eva, 6; Nora, 1; Samara, 1; and Kyiona Ayo, 1 month

Georgina Ngozi always knew she wanted to be a mom.

As a teenager growing up in Brooklyn, she envisioned herself living on a farm with a husband and a dozen children (six boys and six girls, she says). Today, Ngozi has three grown children and four grandchildren, and as president of the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, she has an entire borough of kids to look after.

After a long career in children’s advocacy and education that took her from New York to Michigan; Washington, D.C.; Texas and South Carolina, Ngozi returned to her hometown last fall to take the helm at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum. When not raising funds and awareness for the museum, Ngozi spends her time advocating for children’s causes. She also encourages her staff to remember that, no matter what they have on their agenda, the museum exists for the children it seeks to educate and enrich.

“One of the first things I asked the staff to do was, in their day, find a child to say hello to, find a child to compliment, find a child to encourage,” Ngozi says.

While visiting the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, you’re likely to see Ngozi in the lobby, talking to visitors. And don’t be surprised if you spot her in Prospect Park on the weekend, stopping families and asking them to be her guest for a day at the museum. She wants people to know that it’s a place where parents and children can learn together.

After decades of being a mom, Ngozi still cherishes the role she plays in the lives of her three grown children. “I love seeing their joy, I love seeing their faces, I love so much about it,” she says.

Ngozi takes pride in the way she sees her sons—the fathers of her four grandchildren—interact with their kids. “My sons are the best fathers and husbands. They try to comb hair, they give baths, they eat with their families, they are very engaged and very loving,” she says. “For me, that’s the joy—watching them share the gift of kindness with their children, my grandchildren.”

—Brittany McNamara

---

Christie Rampone, Professional Soccer Player

Mother of Rylie, 5, and Reece, 2 months

The transition from having one child to becoming a mom of two is challenging enough on its own. Add in competing in the Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS) league and you’d scare off most—but not Christie Rampone.

As an Olympic gold medalist, captain of the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team and leader of New Jersey’s Sky Blue FC soccer team, Rampone is used to juggling a lot at once. Which is why she was able to lead her Sky Blue FC team to victory in the WPS championships while she was three months pregnant. “I never had a second thought. I had the OK from my doctor, and I was in top shape,” Rampone says.

So how is she handling motherhood the second time around?

“I was stressed more the first time,” reflects Rampone.

“Now I go with the flow. I hate the saying, but it is what it is. When the child needs something, you give it to them. When I’m training, I focus on that.”

When New York Family caught up with Rampone, she was enjoying a gorgeous spring day with her girls—Rylie, 5, and Reece, 2 months—in their Manasquan, N.J. backyard. The outdoors is Rampone’s favorite place to be. She grew up in Point Pleasant, N.J., and her family was always extremely active.

“My dad went to college for baseball, and it was an athletic household, but nothing was ever pushed. We all love to compete,” Rampone says.

That spirit served her well. Rampone started soccer at age 5 and played at the recreational level until around 10, when she became more serious and joined travel teams. She also played field hockey, ran track, and played basketball. In fact it was basketball, not soccer, for which Rampone went to Monmouth University on a full scholarship.

“I was very lucky,” Rampone says. “I never had to decide. Club sports now are very demanding, and I don’t agree with making kids decide so young what sport they want to focus on. Look at me: soccer wasn’t my first sport, and now I made a career out of it.” Rampone continues, “I want Rylie to try different things and do what she likes; there’s no rush to get her into a competitive situation.”

It’s the same healthy attitude Rampone encourages amongst the kids who attend the Christie Rampone & K. Hovnanian Children’s Hospital Girls Soccer Camp, where second through eighth graders learn a lot about soccer— but also have a lot of fun. “I love to give back to the community and interact with the kids,” Rampone says.

With so many accomplishments already under her belt, what else is Rampone looking forward to? “Right now, I am focused on picking up training again and playing with Sky Blue this summer. There’s the 2011 World Cup and 2012 Summer Olympics … but even if it all goes away, becoming a mom has made my career so much more rewarding. It puts things in perspective. I love my time on the field, and I love my time with the kids.”

— Michelle Levine

---

Mary Brosnahan, Executive Director, Coalition for the Homeless

Mother of Quinn, 7

Troubled by the homelessness in her NYC neighborhood, Mary Brosnahan reached out. As she spoke with each individual, she learned that many had difficulty finding a place to clean up so that they could go to work, while others suffered from mental illness and lacked resources or support. “I started to get a sense of the complexity of the issue,” Brosnahan says. “I realized this was what I wanted to focus on.”

Today, Brosnahan serves as executive director of The Coalition for the Homeless, the nation’s oldest organization helping homeless individuals and families. While most people know the Coalition for their advocacy, it also operates service programs that affect the lives of 3,500 homeless people daily, and feeds 1,000 each night. Each night there are 39,000 people in the shelter system—including 10,000 families and 16,000 children. In addition to providing shelter and securing permanent housing, the Coalition provides a walk-in crisis center, job training for homeless mothers, and Camp Homeward Bound, a summer sleep away camp for homeless children.

Brosnahan admits that while burnout is a reality in this field, she is encouraged by each individual and policy success. “We’re trying to go out of business solving this problem,” she says. And when she spends time at Camp Homeward Bound, she is delighted to see the campers finally having an “opportunity to just be children.”

Becoming a mother to her son Quinn, now seven, had a profound effect on the way Brosnahan approached her work. Suddenly, she says, she felt a special empathy for the homeless mothers and children she encountered.

Despite the suffering she sees each day, Brosnahan takes joy in the role she plays in the lives of homeless families, as well as her role as mom to Quinn. After all, she says, children are “magical creatures…they keep us looking at life with fresh eyes.”

—Lora Heller

---

Sophie Demenge, Co-Founder, Oeuf

Mother of Mae, 8 and Marius, 5 1/2

French-born Sophie Demenge blazed an unusual path to starting a family and a furniture business in Brooklyn. After studying philosophy at the Sorbonne, she felt that “the way university works in France doesn’t let you blossom into what you are supposed to be.” So she moved to San Francisco, where she studied art, took trapeze classes at a circus school, and discovered a passion for industrial design, which led her to enroll at New York’s Pratt Institute.

In New York, Demenge met Michael Ryan, an established furniture designer, at a party. Within weeks, Demenge says, she and Ryan were living together, and soon after she graduated from Pratt, they founded R D Design, a home furnishing line.

When daughter Mae was born in 2002, Demenge was searching for simple, stylish and non-toxic nursery furnishings—but to no avail. So, drawing on their design backgrounds, she and Ryan created their own crib and clothes for Mae. That same year, they founded a new company, Oeuf, out of their Park Slope apartment to fill the gap they saw in the market. Today, the brand is known for its thoughtful, functional and high-quality modern children’s design, from cribs to toys.

As Demenge’s family has grown—today eight-year-old Mae has a five-and-a-half-year-old brother, Marius—Oeuf also has expanded to offer a bed for older children, a bookshelf and clothes up to size eight. “My husband is now working on a bunk bed” for Mae and Marius, says Demenge, “because it just makes sense.”

And just as Demenge and Ryan once sought “steel with the perfect give” for a baby lounger that would allow their daughter to bounce herself at her own rhythm, the couple now solicits Mae’s thoughts on colors for photo shoots. Everything Oeuf produces, says Demenge, is “with the use of the child in mind.”

Oeuf also stands out for its commitment to “doing the right thing,” according to Demenge, whether in the form of ecologically sensitive manufacturing or donating some of its profits to help victims of Haiti’s earthquake. Oeuf’s partnership with the Bolivian women who knit their woolens has been especially rewarding for Demenge. In 2002, Oeuf contracted with four women; today, some 190 full-time knitters have income from Oeuf that gives their families better prospects. Her children, says Demenge, “inspire me to be the best I can be.”

Demenge credits her parents with raising her to follow her passions. “That’s something I want to pass on to my kids,” she says, and smiles as she talks about the fundraising Mae did for a nearby soup kitchen for her sixth birthday. “She has experienced how good it feels to give. It is part of who she is now.”

—Molly O’Meara Sheehan

---

Amy Wilson, Actress and Author

Mother of Connor, 7; Seamus, 5; Maggie, 2

Like most parents, actress Amy Wilson felt pressure to do “the right thing” for her three children, now seven, five, and two-and-a-half years old. Then, during a preschool interview, she had an epiphany: “It hit me like a ton of bricks that I was not enjoying parenting my children,” she says. When asked what she did for fun with her children, Wilson blanked. “I was naming stuff that I did because I thought it was right for them, but I couldn’t say that I really enjoyed any of it. It was all stuff I did because I thought I ought to.” That, Wilson says, is when she told herself, “I gotta stop living this way!”

The simple enjoyment of being a parent, of taking pleasure in doing things with your children on their own terms, is a message Wilson says mothers need to hear. It is the over-arching message of her one-woman play, “Mother Load,” which has enjoyed a successful off-Broadway run and national tour since 2007. Described by The New York Times as “like ‘Annie Hall’ wearing a nursing bra,” the show is at once funny and confessional, covering everything from organic baby food to self-important lactation consultants and confronting the impossible standards and guilt faced by modern-day moms.

Inspired by the reception “Mother Load” received, Wilson translated that same message into her new book, “When Did I Get Like This? The Screamer, the Worrier, the Dinosaur-Chicken-Nugget-Buyer, and Other Mothers I Swore I’d Never Be,” a funny and insightful memoir which hit shelves last month. “I had to get back in touch with enjoying parenting, instead of being stressed about doing it well,” Wilson says.

So what does Wilson actually enjoy doing with her children? Going to Symphony Space! “It’s always good,” she says.

“You can count on showing up and the kids are going to have a good time.” She also reads Harry Potter with her oldest son, and makes time to help her two-year old daughter brush her dolly’s hair. Setting aside the Blackberry and other distractions of modern life is important, she says. “They just need a couple of minutes of your undivided attention.”

Wilson also wants moms to know that it’s OK to take time out for yourself. For her, that sometimes means leaving her youngest with a babysitter in order to write. “I carry around such guilt for that, but I also know that when I see my daughter later I’ll feel so creatively fulfilled and I will be a much more patient and loving parent for her,” she says.

It’s a necessary juggling act that allows her to spend time with her children while balancing her growing career. “Not that I’m so evolved and never stress and never yell,” she admits. “I’m still crazy every day! But I am trying to become a calmer and more present parent and not worry about all that nonsense that just gets in the way.”

—Meredith Lopez