My professional life to date has been spent largely slumming around ad agencies, trying to get interesting ads over the line while also satisfying clients' needs (and let me tell you, these two things rarely co-exist).

I was an account exec: a role that I sometimes compare to a translator. The agency people and the clients speak two languages and someone has to play go-between, making sure the two groups stay synced and work gets done on time, budget and strategy. (I'm overgeneralizing... the best agency people, across departments, care about clients and the best clients know how to elicit great work from agencies... but these trusting relationships are the exception.)

On any given day, my role involved:

helping clients articulate and clarify their goals;
working to develop a "brief" - a succinct document written in plain English that conveyed the assignment to the agency team;
leaning on subject matter experts for wisdom (production people, creative experts, strategists, analytics gurus, media mavens)... and not being dumb enough to pretend I knew as much as these people about their crafts;
working behind the scenes with the agency team to make sure the work (media plan, creative idea, whatever) delivered on the brief;
hand-holding everyone through the process... which involved a lot of feelings and art and science and late nights and glasses of wine and the proverbial blood, sweat and tears;
developing trust with clients, and understanding their perspective well enough to represent them back at the agency;
actually representing the client's (sometimes unpopular) POV without pissing agency people off... or with the least possible pissed-offedness involved;
coaching teams of junior account people toward flawless delivery of client service.

Anyone who has worked in advertising knows that producing an awesome, effective campaign is analogous to birthing a baby. There is a fragile, vulnerable little being (in this case, an idea) involved that gestates for about the same length of time as an actual baby, and sometimes with almost equal levels of physical and emotional investment from the creative parent(s). Birthing it (or, concepting, testing, producing and editing) is stressful and exhausting and often very emotional.

The skills I acquired during my advertising years are transferrable to the work a doula does. I envision myself helping clients articulate their goals, hopes and concerns. I anticipate talking to them about how to then reach the goals and developing nimble birth "plans" (in pencil, with flexibility built in!). I will lean on and foster deep respect for on the experts (midwives, doctors, nurses). I know that the process of getting a baby out draws upon wisdom from both art and science. I will develop trust and the ability to advocate for, coach and hand-hold my clients through whatever comes at them.

After any major advertising effort, my hope was always that the brilliant, hard-working people involved were PROUD of the work and accepting of the decisions made along the way. We weren't always satisfied, but darned if I didn't work hard to try to get us there. Another good parallel.

Ultimately, an ad is not a human baby and of course there are lots of ways that the work of creating advertising looks nothing like childbirth. There are usually not ACTUAL blood, sweat and tears involved in ad-making. But it is incredible how many skills from my former career apply!