Organised Chaos: A Working Mom’s Ode to the Whirlwind

By Zeenat, COO, AIP Capital Management

Some people crave a calm lifestyle. They like tidy schedules, one task at a time, and the soothing hush of a perfectly planned day.

Me? I’ll take the beautiful, messy symphony of madness any day.

I’m a working mom, which means I don’t just survive in chaos, I live in it.

My life is a whirlwind of deadlines and dinner prep, performance reporting and half-eaten school lunches, trade allocations and mismatched socks.

By day (and, let’s be honest, often by night), I head up operations at AIP Capital Management, an alternative asset manager where hedge funds, private equity, and everything unconventional come with the territory. This is a space where complexity is the default, and precision is non-negotiable.

Trade settlements, audits, contracts, offshore funds, regulatory compliance, none of these details are courteous enough to wait their turn. They all seem to be due yesterday, all marked “high priority.” And of course, there’s always a new project that absolutely must have been done two business days ago.

The stakes are high, timelines tight, and the demands ever evolving. I sit at the centre of it all, keeping the engine running smoothly while building systems for the future. Systems to make us faster, more efficient, and ready to scale.

At AIP Capital Management, we’re not just running an alternative asset manager, we’re building something bigger, bolder, and more relevant.

And then there’s life at home. Where the mayhem continues: sticky hands, homework battles, bedtime negotiations. Walking through the door means stepping into a minefield of schoolbags, muddy shoes, and rogue sports gear, all while trying not to trip over the cat, who’s weaving around your legs like it’s his full-time job.

I’ve learned to embrace the cluttered counters, the missing TV remote that was “definitely put right here,” and an ever-evolving family calendar that feels like my third child. While I’m making sure everyone’s eating enough vegetables, I’m mentally updating tomorrow’s to-do list, and the day after that, too.

But this isn’t chaos for chaos’s sake. This is organised chaos. Controlled. Directed. Purposeful.

It’s where I rise to the occasion and show up as my best self. Because when you’re a mom who works, or a worker who moms, you become an expert at managing complexity with grace. You learn that productivity can look like a tornado and that doing a good job at home sometimes involves a lot of spilled juice.

In the momentum of it all, we still chase the progress, the laughter, the connection, and those small (and sometimes big) victories that come from making it all just work.

When everything around me is moving, I can’t be still. So this chaos? It’s mine to embrace. And I thrive in it.