Is your schedule messier than your love life? There’s an app for that. Engineer Yoky Matsuoka (she / her) is a MacArthur genius and mom of 4, so... yeah, she’s busy. That’s why she’s partnered with Panasonic to launch Yohana, an app designed to match working parents with “superpowered” personal assistants.

We asked the Harvard alum how she became an engineer extraordinaire, why Google had to convince her to work for them, and how she’s leading the charge for women in the workplace.

How did you get into engineering?
I moved from Japan to the US to become a professional tennis player, and that didn’t work out. [Laughing.] I [was like,] “I like science, I like math, what can I do?” So I thought, “I want to build something.” I approached different professors, and one [taught] robotics. I knocked on his door and I said, “I want to build a robot… I play tennis, and if I can build a robot that could play with me, that’d be great.” He’s like, “Sounds great. Show up in my lab tomorrow.” Then he introduced me to a grad student building a one-legged hopping robot. I got to contribute to that, which was incredibly fun. Then I joined another [project]… That got me hooked.

You were in academia before becoming an entrepreneur. Why did you make the switch?
From the beginning, I wanted to do both, but I couldn’t [work in] industry first, because then you stop publishing and you can’t become a professor again. I established myself as a professor, then I got a call from Google in 2009. They insisted, “Come tomorrow for an interview.” And I thought, “I’m busy, I’m teaching classes, I got kids. What is this about?” Eventually, they convinced me to fly down to Silicon Valley. I thought, “I’ve been doing academic work for a while, but this is an opportunity to learn how to do this industry stuff.” And they wanted me to do robotics for health care [and] for women. I thought, “How perfect!”

What made you want to start Yohana?
The last 5 years, I’ve been working on health care products at Apple and Google. When I started my own endeavor, I wanted to make sure I was going to build something to help people. Then the pandemic happened! It highlighted a whole bunch of issues, but the one I decided to focus on was related to women—especially working moms who are trying to balance everything. We were at the point where we weren’t even able to worry about health [or] anything else. If we can’t take care of busy moms who are basically the CEOs of the family, building anything on top [of that] would be silly. That’s what our product has become. [It’s] basically a personal assistant for busy moms to take care of all the things that pile up.

How do you approach a huge company like Panasonic with a product idea?
It was a match made in heaven, to be honest. I’ve been at Google, Apple, different places. As I realized that what I wanted to do [would be] better off somewhere else, I started shopping [around]. Panasonic certainly was not on the top of the list, because in my head, they were a TV company—especially in the US, right? But the most important part is their DNA. In 1953, the founder, Matsushita-san, was shipping things like washers and dryers. He said he was building all [these] devices to help women around the world so they can have extra time to do what they want to do. That really resonated with me, and I realized that DNA lives everywhere in the company. What I wanted to do was the next chapter of Panasonic.

What’s been your experience as a working mother in engineering?
My ignorant side ignored most of the barriers, but when I really think about it, I was always the first at different things. I was the first professor to get pregnant in the whole engineering college, so I had to come up with my own maternity leave policy. When I had my 3rd kid, I came up with my own plan to bring my child to work. I would time exactly when to breastfeed, burp the baby, rehearse the lecture, [then] strap the baby on and teach the class with my baby giggling for the first 40 minutes.

Was it better when you entered the industry side?
When I was at a startup, they said I couldn’t take maternity leave, so I didn’t. Actually, my boss called me 2 hours after I gave birth. It was insane! When [my] kids were younger, I used to wake up around 3 A.M. to get things done. I always left work early so that I had enough time with the kids in the afternoon, and that’s the time I started to notice judgment. Then I thought, “Why does it feel embarrassing to leave early? Engineers come in after working out at 11 AM and they’re not embarrassed.” I really started to think about it. I didn’t even realize I was leading the way, paving the road. But now I’m making sure that I’m knocking down whatever barriers possible for the next generation.