Today we’d like to introduce you to Bridgette Ojo.
Hi Bridgette, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My story has never followed a straight line, and I think that is one of the things I appreciate most about it. I started my professional career in education, spending several years as a high school science teacher. I loved teaching, but I always knew there was more I wanted to build, experience, and contribute. At the same time, I was raising my children, continuing my education, and trying to figure out what success was going to look like for me beyond the traditional path I had originally imagined.
Education became one of the biggest anchors in my life. I earned my bachelor’s degree, master’s degree in biomedical sciences, and eventually my PhD in Higher Education Administration. My doctoral research focused on the experiences of graduate student-parents raising young children while pursuing advanced degrees, which was especially meaningful because I understood firsthand how complicated it can be to pursue ambitious goals while also being responsible for a family. There were plenty of moments when I was exhausted, overwhelmed, or questioning whether I was doing too much, but I kept moving forward.
Then I made another major pivot and joined the United States Navy. Going from being an educator and doctoral student to becoming an enlisted service member was definitely not the most predictable next chapter, but that was intentional. I wanted to challenge myself in an entirely different way, serve, develop as a leader, and create even more possibilities for my future. I completed my PhD while serving in the military, and that experience reinforced something I have come to believe deeply: we do not have to limit ourselves to one identity, one career, or one version of success.
Today, much of the work I am building sits at the intersection of education, motherhood, leadership, and personal development. I am the founder of Parent Scholar Hub, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization created to support student-parents as they pursue higher education while raising their families. The organization was born from both my personal experience and my doctoral research, which showed me how often parents in higher education are expected to succeed within systems that were never really designed with them in mind. My goal with Parent Scholar Hub is to help close that gap by creating resources, programming, community, and practical support for parent-scholars.
I am also the creator of The PhD Mommy, my personal brand and podcast centered on ambition, motherhood, education, discipline, identity, and personal growth. The podcast has grown to rank within the top 10% of podcasts globally, which has been incredibly meaningful because it started simply as a space for me to tell the truth about what it looks like to pursue big goals while also navigating motherhood and real life. The PhD Mommy allows me to have conversations that go beyond credentials and accomplishments and talk about the mindset, sacrifices, setbacks, and personal evolution that happen behind the scenes.
What I love is that the two platforms serve different purposes while still being connected to the same mission. The Parent Scholar Hub is the nonprofit and community-impact side of my work, while The PhD Mommy is my personal voice, media platform, and brand. Both are rooted in the belief that becoming a mother does not mean a woman has to stop becoming everything else she wants to be.
Ultimately, I think my story is about refusing to believe that one chapter has to determine the rest of your life. I have been a teacher, a student, a mother, a doctoral researcher, a service member, a founder, and a creator, sometimes several of those things at the exact same time. I am still building. I am still evolving. And I think that may be the most important part of my story: I stopped waiting until life was perfectly organized to go after the things I wanted. I learned how to build while life was happening.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Not at all. The road has been rewarding, but it has also required a lot of resilience, sacrifice, and willingness to keep moving when life did not look particularly convenient.
One of my biggest challenges has been learning how to pursue ambitious goals while carrying several major responsibilities at the same time. I have raised two daughters while continuing my education, building my career, creating businesses and organizations, and eventually serving in the United States Navy. There were many seasons when there was no perfect balance. I had to learn how to make progress in the middle of real life rather than waiting for everything around me to become easier.
Graduate school was one of those seasons. Completing a PhD is difficult by itself, but doing it while parenting young children gave me a very different perspective on higher education. There were deadlines, family responsibilities, exhaustion, financial considerations, and the constant mental load that comes with being responsible for other people while still trying to build something for yourself. Those experiences eventually became part of what I studied in my dissertation. In a strange way, one of my greatest challenges became the foundation for some of my most meaningful work.
Another challenge has been giving myself permission to evolve. My career has not been linear. I went from education to earning an advanced degree, joining the military, becoming a nonprofit founder, and building a personal brand and podcast. On paper, those things can look unrelated, and there have definitely been moments when I questioned whether I was trying to do too much. Over time, though, I realized that the common thread is leadership, service, education, and helping people see possibilities for themselves.
Joining the Navy also required me to become a beginner again. I entered the military after already having an established professional career and advanced education. Suddenly, I was in an environment where my previous accomplishments did not exempt me from starting at the bottom, learning an entirely new culture, and proving myself in a different way. That experience has been humbling, but it has also strengthened my discipline and reminded me that growth sometimes requires being willing to start over.
I have also had to overcome the idea that motherhood should somehow make my ambitions smaller. I love being a mother, but I have never believed that becoming a mother meant I had to stop becoming myself. Sometimes the challenge has simply been navigating environments where the realities of parenting are treated as an inconvenience instead of part of a person’s life. That is one of the reasons The Parent Scholar Hub means so much to me. The barriers I experienced did not just become something I complained about. They became something I researched, and eventually something I built a 501(c)(3) nonprofit to address.
Probably the biggest lesson I have learned is that resilience is not always dramatic. Sometimes resilience is submitting the assignment after everyone is asleep. Sometimes it is showing up to work when you are exhausted. Sometimes it is starting over. Sometimes it is admitting that the original plan no longer fits the person you are becoming.
So no, it has not been a smooth road. But I also would not erase the difficult parts. Many of the things that challenged me eventually became the things that gave my work purpose.
As you know, we’re big fans of The PhD Mommy + The Parent Scholar Hub. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
My work is centered around one core belief: women should not have to choose between being incredible mothers and becoming the fullest versions of themselves. I am passionate about helping women thrive in motherhood, their personal lives, their education, and their careers. I want mothers to know that wanting more for themselves does not mean they are giving less to their children.
I am the creator of The PhD Mommy, a personal brand and podcast focused on motherhood, ambition, education, personal growth, discipline, resilience, and becoming the woman you know you are capable of becoming. The PhD Mommy podcast currently ranks within the top 10% of podcasts globally, and the platform gives me a space to talk honestly about what pursuing big goals looks like when you are also raising children, building a career, navigating setbacks, and evolving as a woman.
The name “The PhD Mommy” is intentional. It represents a message I want mothers to hear over and over again: you can get the PhD and still be a great “Mommy.” You can be ambitious and nurturing. You can build an incredible career and still be deeply invested in your children. You can pursue education, entrepreneurship, leadership, financial independence, health, and personal fulfillment without believing that those desires somehow make you less devoted to your family.
I think women are often given an unnecessary either-or choice. Be successful or be present. Build the career or focus on your children. Pursue the degree or wait until the kids are older. I want my work to challenge that narrative. I want women to know that they can have both, even if having both does not always look perfectly balanced.
That same passion eventually expanded into The Parent Scholar Hub, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting parents pursuing higher education while raising their families.
What makes The Parent Scholar Hub especially meaningful to me is that it was not simply an organization I decided to create after graduate school. It was an actual product that emerged from my doctoral dissertation.
My dissertation examined the lived experiences of graduate student-parents raising young children while pursuing advanced degrees. Through my research, I explored both their resilience and the barriers they encountered involving childcare, finances, time, mental health, family responsibilities, academic expectations, and institutional support.
When I completed the research, I knew I did not want my dissertation to become something that simply sat in an academic database. I wanted the research to live beyond the degree. The Parent Scholar Hub became the real-world extension of my dissertation, allowing me to take what I learned through scholarship and turn it into resources, programming, community, and practical support for student-parents.
One of the ways we are already putting that mission into action is through our Study + Play Pop-Ups. These community-based events are designed around a simple idea: supporting a student-parent often means supporting the family around them, too. Our first Study + Play Pop-Up served approximately 40 families with young children, creating a family-centered environment where parents and children could participate together rather than asking parents to separate their educational or personal growth from their responsibilities as caregivers.
The Study + Play concept is especially important to me because it reflects what The Parent Scholar Hub stands for. We are not simply telling parents, “You can do it.” We want to help build environments that make doing it more realistic. Whether that means creating family-friendly programming, connecting parents with resources, building community, or eventually partnering with colleges and universities, I want The Parent Scholar Hub to help remove some of the barriers that make pursuing higher education unnecessarily difficult for parents.
My own experience is a major reason this mission is so personal. I pursued graduate education while raising young children myself. I understand what it feels like to complete assignments after bedtime, manage deadlines alongside parenting responsibilities, and continue working toward a degree while life continues happening around you. My work is rooted in scholarship, but it is also rooted in lived experience.
Although The PhD Mommy and The Parent Scholar Hub are separate, they are connected by the same larger purpose.
The PhD Mommy is my personal voice and media platform. It allows me to use storytelling, podcasting, and my own experiences to encourage women to pursue growth in every area of their lives.
The Parent Scholar Hub is the research-driven, nonprofit, and community-impact side of that mission. It allows me to turn what I have learned through research and experience into tangible programs like Study + Play Pop-Ups and, ultimately, broader support systems for student-parents.
At the heart of both is my passion for helping women become the best versions of themselves, not just professionally, but personally and as mothers.
I want the mother who encounters my work to walk away thinking, “Maybe I don’t have to choose.”
Maybe she can go back to school. Maybe she can earn the doctorate. Maybe she can build the business. Maybe she can become the executive. Maybe she can change careers, prioritize her health, rediscover herself, and still be an incredible mother.
That is ultimately what I want my work to represent: motherhood can be part of a woman’s identity without becoming the boundary around her potential. You can get the PhD and still be a great Mommy. You can build the career and still build a beautiful family life. You are allowed to want both.
In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
I see the next 5–10 years bringing a major shift toward more flexible, human-centered systems for both higher education and professional development, especially for women and parents.
In higher education, I think institutions are going to be forced to take student-parents more seriously as a distinct population with very specific needs. For a long time, colleges and universities have been structured around the idea of a “traditional” student whose primary responsibility is school. That reality has changed. More students are balancing education with careers, children, military service, caregiving, and other major responsibilities. I believe we are going to see greater demand for flexible course formats, stronger family-friendly policies, childcare support, emergency assistance, mental health resources, and programming specifically designed for students who are also parents.
That shift is a major reason I believe the work of The Parent Scholar Hub has so much room to grow. I do not see supporting student-parents as a niche issue. I see it becoming an increasingly important part of conversations around access, retention, degree completion, and student success. Over the next decade, I would love to see The Parent Scholar Hub grow beyond providing resources and programming into becoming an organization that can partner with colleges and universities, help institutions better understand the experiences of student-parents, and advocate for systems that make it more realistic for parents to complete their education.
I also think there is going to be an even bigger shift in how women define success. The conversation is moving away from the idea that women have to choose one identity. Mother. Professional. Entrepreneur. Student. Leader. Creator. I think we are entering a period where more women are rejecting that limitation and asking, “Why can’t I be several of those things?”
That is where The PhD Mommy fits into the future I see.
Personal brands, podcasts, digital communities, and creator-led education are becoming increasingly powerful ways for people to learn, connect, and find representation outside of traditional institutions. Audiences are not only looking for experts anymore. They are looking for people who have expertise and lived experience. They want honesty. They want to understand what success actually looks like behind the polished résumé.
I believe the personal-development space will also become less focused on simply telling women to “do more” and more focused on helping them build lives that actually work for them. For mothers in particular, that means conversations about career growth, financial independence, education, health, relationships, identity, parenting, and personal fulfillment all belonging in the same room.
That is the direction I want The PhD Mommy to continue growing. I want it to become more than a podcast or personal brand. I want it to become a recognizable platform for women who refuse to believe that motherhood marks the end of their ambition.
Ultimately, I think the biggest shift over the next decade will be moving away from asking women and parents to fit themselves into systems that were not designed for their lives and toward building systems, communities, and platforms that actually acknowledge the complexity of who they are.
I want my work to be part of that shift.
Whether it is through The Parent Scholar Hub helping a mother stay enrolled in college or The PhD Mommy reminding another woman that she is allowed to pursue the doctorate, build the company, change careers, take care of herself, and still be an incredible mother, the message is the same:
Women do not need smaller dreams because they became mothers. We need better support, more options, and the freedom to define success for ourselves.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://thephdmommy.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thephdmommylife/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drbridgetteojo/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Thephdmommy
- Other: https://theparentscholarhub.org/
