Siran Cao, a former Uber executive and the co-founder of Mirza, a software platform for employer-sponsored childcare and caregiver insurance, witnessed firsthand the struggles of working parents, particularly women, during her tenure at Uber.

"When I worked at Uber, it was painfully obvious that too many of our women employees had to quit to raise kids," Cao said during a recent podcast interview with Yahoo Finance. "I started a childcare insurance company to fix that."

Mirza, which Cao co-founded, is a software platform for employer-sponsored childcare and caregiver insurance. The company is dedicated to improving women's financial health, especially those who are frontline workers or whose jobs require them to be physically present. Additionally, Mirza provides employers with tools to help them offer childcare subsidies and earn tax credits. The platform calculates personalized childcare subsidies based on employee income, location and specific employer financial needs. In an interview, Cao discussed her childhood in Pittsburgh, where her family moved from Singapore when she was eight. Her mother, a biochemistry graduate from China, worked a day job while retraining at night to become an accountant. As a result, Cao became a latchkey kid. Her mother's struggles to make ends meet were a constant reminder of the challenges single mothers face.

Cao found herself at Uber, where she built the driver network in New York. Her team consisted of hourly workers who onboarded new Uber drivers. Almost 80% were women, many of them single mothers and women of color. Cao was struck by how childcare disrupted their day-to-day operations. Many women joined Uber hoping to ride its initial wave of hypergrowth, but not all of them could grow with the company due to caregiving responsibilities. 

Cao realized that there was a need for a technologically driven solution for childcare, which led her to co-found Mirza. The platform shows frontline workers why staying in the workforce will pay off long-term. Mirza partners with childcare providers that employees can use and handles the administrative work for tax efficiency.

Cao believes caregiving has long been dismissed as valuable work, especially because it often falls on the shoulders of women. While women continue to bear the bulk of this work, Cao does not believe it is solely a women's issue. She hopes to put real economic significance, a dollar value and dignity behind the work of raising the next generation. By helping employers offer childcare subsidies and promoting the importance of staying in the workforce, Mirza is paving the way for a more equitable and sustainable future for women and families.