Meet Ashley Chang, the Co-Founder and CEO of Sundays, an executive assistant service revolutionizing work-life balance for parents.
Ashley’s journey to founding Sundays is deeply personal, rooted in her upbringing and driven by a mission to empower parents—particularly mothers—in their careers. Inspired by her mother’s sacrifice to prioritize her family over her career, Ashley witnessed firsthand the dilemma many highly skilled women who are forced to make the same choice face. With a vision to challenge that status quo, Ashley set out to create a platform designed to support parents in achieving both professional success and quality family time. Thus, Sundays was born.
We asked Ashley about the story behind Sundays’ founding, how she celebrates success along the way, and what’s next for her and her company.
Tell us the story behind your company’s founding. How and why did you start working on Sundays?
My mom was the impetus for starting Sundays. She was a computer scientist in the 80s and had a high-trajectory start to her career. She then faced the difficult choice between family and work. She decided to stay home with us, which I'm incredibly grateful for. But, I entered the tech industry 20 years later to companies and products that are shaped by leadership teams that lack women—especially moms.
As I've gotten older, I've also seen the smartest women of my generation having to make the same choice. Forty-three percent of highly skilled women drop out of the workforce after having kids.
Despite 30 years of progress in technology, we haven't seen very much advancement in how we support families. The goal of Sundays is to make it more possible for women to have meaningful careers and families and to get more moms into leadership roles where they can shape the companies of the future.
What makes Sundays different from other companies in the industry?
Sundays is unique because we have an intentionally human-first approach to helping families. We believe the best way to help families is to have someone who really gets to know you, your family, and how you think to proactively take things off your plate.
We combine that with smart technology on the backend, which helps our team be more efficient. We record what we learn about the types of support families need at different stages. For example, some families with two-year-olds go through the preschool application process, and we help them manage everything from finding schools and submitting applications to organizing information from school emails on the family calendar. Our technology and our teams' experience as parents help us proactively think about what families need so they don't have to ask.
Finally, we support parents holistically across work and home. Many highly skilled women are realizing their value and creating situations where they have more control by starting their own businesses. For these clients, we help with things like scheduling, email management, finding leads, social media management, and operations. We partner with them to reach their goals so they can use their time where it’s most valuable.
In what ways has your upbringing or past experiences contributed to how you operate as an entrepreneur?
Some of my very first memories are of caregiving. My mom’s parents had her when they were older. My grandfather was a NASA engineer who worked on the SR-71 Blackbird and was friends with Neil Armstrong. The year I was born, he had his first stroke. Many of my early memories are of ambulance rides, hospital visits, and the daily work of elder care.
This taught me the burden and love that goes into caregiving, as well as the practical logistics that go into caring for another person. Today, I use that empathy and understanding to shape how we build Sundays to be a real support system for caregivers.
What were the most impactful lessons you’ve learned starting and running a company?
Keep going. When you read stories of companies from the outside, they skip to the exciting part. You don’t hear about the day-to-day of what it really takes to build a company. It takes waking up every day and working toward something, even if no one else believes in it yet. But every day you work on something, you get closer to finding the right solution. It is so powerful to just keep going.
We have an intentionally human-first approach to helping families. We believe the best way to help families is to have someone who really gets to know you, your family, and how you think proactively take things off your plate.
How do you celebrate successes along the way?
My favorite successes are when we hear positive feedback from customers. I live for conversations or messages from customers saying that we really made an impact in their life. I celebrate these internally by taking a few seconds to be thankful. Then I celebrate them with our team. We have a Slack channel where I post wins that I hear from clients and tag the person who is working with them so they can be acknowledged for the great work they've done. These small wins help us build momentum.
What would you tell your younger self if you were to start your entrepreneurial journey all over again?
Trust yourself. You need to build the company that feels right for you; that you are excited to get up every day and push forward.
What’s next for you and Sundays?
We are about to hit our first birthday. Right now, we’re focused on locking in what’s working well for us so we can continue growing our remote executive assistant service. Later this year, we’re planning to pilot in-person support for families and start working with companies as an employee benefit.
