Although her stunning red carpet moment during her date night with Prince William at the Royal Variety Performance might have gotten more attention, it was far from Kate Middleton's only notable royal engagement last week.
On November 18, the Princess of Wales delivered her first major public speech since her cancer diagnosis when she appeared at the Future Workforce Summit at Salesforce Tower in London, which was hosted by her Royal Foundation Business Taskforce for Early Childhood.
The Future Workforce Summit "brought together over 80 of the UK’s most influential business leaders to champion investment in the early years, highlighting how vital social and emotional skills formed in childhood are crucial for the workforce of today and tomorrow," according to a post about the event on the Prince and Princess of Wales' Instagram.
Speaking to some of the U.K.'s most influential business leaders, Kate urged audience members to support, encourage and enable their employees to strike a healthy work-life balance—especially if those employees have young children.
“Every one of you interacts with your own environment; a home, a family, a business, a workforce, a community,” she said in her speech.. “These are the ecosystems that you yourselves help to weave. Imagine a world where each of these environments were built on valuing time and tenderness just as much as productivity and success."
Prioritizing children's development during their early years is a cause that Kate has championed for years now, and former BBC royal correspondent Jennie Bond says that, for the royal mother of three, the issue is personal.
“I admire Catherine for practicing what she preaches,” Bond told the Mirror. “I’m sure she fully understands the pressures that exist for many working parents, and means every word she says."
The royal expert pointed to Kate's own parenting style and how she's prioritized her own children above all else in their early years, putting the advice she gives other parents into practice in her own home.
“She is a hands-on mum as much as she can possibly be and she has encouraged William to be a full-on dad," Bond explained. "Obviously they are both incredibly privileged to have some choice in the matter and they’ve taken a fair bit of flak for doing things like ring-fencing school holidays as family time. But Catherine believes passionately that these early years in her children’s lives are by far the most important and formative."
As Bond points out, Kate, like many parents, contends with other strong demands on her time and attention, from her duties as a working royal to, recently, managing her health and undergoing treatment for cancer.
“She was also speaking as a mother with the awful added pressure of managing ill health, following her diagnosis," Bond added. "There’s no doubt she understands and appreciates that being able to take time off from work to prioritize her health and her family was a privilege, and is incredibly grateful for this. Now she appears to be using her platform to highlight the good that she knows can come from that privilege, for the benefit of other parents and society as a whole. It is a cause that is incredibly close to her heart.”
