When I worked at Uber it was painfully obvious that too many of our women employees had to quit to raise kids. I started a childcare insurance company to fix that.

• Siran Cao is the co-founder of Mirza, a platform for employer-sponsored childcare insurance.
• She witnessed the struggles of working parents firsthand as head of partner support at Uber.
• She says her mission is to help companies stop losing workers who can't afford childcare.

This is an as-told-to essay based on a conversation with Siran Cao, the co-founder Mirza. It has been edited for length and clarity. 

When I was eight, my family moved from Singapore to the US — Pittsburgh to be exact. We had made the trip in search of better job opportunities for my father, a nuclear engineer. 

Three years later, he left us.