Katie Hintz-Zambrano Thinks About Moms 24/7
The founder and editor of Mother magazine has made it her mission to foster a supportive community of moms.
Lambeth Hochwald & Mickey Brown
Mar 20, 2025
Katie Hintz-Zambrano says as far back as she can remember, she always wanted to be a mother.
“I loved playing house and playing with Barbies, and the Barbies having big families,” says Hintz-Zambrano, the founder and editor of the parenting website Mother. “I was always into that dynamic, of children and family. It's something that’s always interested me.”
Once she outgrew her dolls, she found other ways to fill a kind of mother role. She started as a babysitter when she was 13 and worked as a nanny for six years in New York.
Her affinity for motherhood also stemmed from the role model moms she had in her life.
“My mother and grandmother loved being mothers,” says Hintz-Zambrano, who has one son, an 11-year-old named Diego. “They found a lot of joy and humor in parenthood and motherhood. They didn’t look at parenthood as stressful, so that made me not feel stressed out about wanting to become a mom someday.”
Making Mother's Day personal
Those experiences and influences have shaped Hintz-Zambrano, giving her a reverence for parenthood and being a mom — and she carries that with her wherever she goes.
“At Mother, we celebrate Mother’s Day 365 days of the year,” says Hintz-Zambrano, who lives in the Bay Area with Diego and her husband, Horacio.
In fact, she and her team spend months prepping for the day, including publishing several Mother’s Day gift guides. Motherhood looks different for everyone, and “moms” come in many forms, so having gifts for all those relationships is important.
When it comes down to it, though, Hintz-Zambrano admits that her favorite gifts on Mother’s Day come from the heart, not a store. In fact, the gift she wants most from Diego: heartfelt words.
“Diego writes really good, really heartfelt letters, and words of affirmation are one of my love languages,” she says. “This gift doesn’t cost a thing, but it means everything to me.”
An idea born out of necessity
In 2012, after writing and editing at a variety of magazines, Hintz-Zambrano was running the west coast division of Refinery29, a digital media brand focusing on lives of millennial women — though not necessarily motherhood.
The next step in her career happened on a whim, she says, when she and a friend started a Facebook group called the Cool Moms Club in 2012.
“We ended up growing to 500 members, and we had a waitlist,” says Hintz-Zambrano. “We would do park meet-ups and over-the-top holiday parties with crazy gift bags. The club was filled with all these interesting creative women and mothers who were pitching in for the love of the group.”
After giving birth in 2013, Hintz-Zambrano returned home from the hospital and had yet another lightbulb moment, one that kept her up in the middle of the night as idea after idea surfaced. While researching a particular parenting topic, she realized there weren’t any websites that gave a flattering depiction of motherhood.
“That’s when I realized this is the thing I was supposed to do,” she says.
Katie Hintz-Zambrano's Mother's Day Product Picks
Nurturing the brand
Within a year, she launched Mother. Since then, the site has grown to be an invaluable resource for parents of all kinds, providing them a space where they can share their personal experiences with the intent of helping others throughout their parenting journeys.
“Motherhood can feel really isolating, and nobody knows what the outcome will be,” Hintz-Zambrano says. “We need to have places where women can talk about the ups and downs together — especially the downs — but also the joys.”
When women don’t have “mom friends,” as Hintz-Zambrano calls them, they tend to suffer. She says all mothers need people in their life — even just one or two — who understand what they're going through.
“Women coming together, supporting each other, forming community around motherhood is really important,” she continues. “It's vital to the mental and physical health of women.”
She cites the saying “The only constant in life is change” as the basis for one of her favorite pieces of advice she offers fellow moms. She likes to remind mothers that whatever they’re going through will not last and to embrace the inevitable newness of motherhood.
“Every phase (of parenting) I'm in, I really try to indulge in it, because I know it's fleeting,” Hintz-Zambrano says. “I know this is only a moment in time, so I don't look back or forward too much ― I just try to be in the moment.”
Hintz-Zambrano says she’s proudest of being part of the motherhood conversation over the past decade — and that Mother has helped give rise to other types of communities that help moms find each other.
“I hope women — even those who might be in a small town and don't feel like they have anyone that is ‘their type of mom’ where they live — can look to the women on our platform and be inspired by them and feel like they're in community with them,” she says. “We've seen a lot of beautiful relationships bloom, both offline and online.”
Balancing it all, and impacting others
In addition to overseeing all the content on Mother, Hintz-Zambrano runs events for entrepreneurs through her In Good Company brand that she launched in 2017. And last year, she debuted The MOTHER Podcast, which features interviews with inspirational women from all walks of life.
In other words, her schedule is very full.
“Every day is like a challenge to figure out how you’re going to do it all,” she says. “I keep throwing more things in, but lately, I’ve become comfortable dropping the ball.
“I’m going to fumble balls all over the place — sometimes the motherhood ball, the career ball, the partner ball. You can’t dribble everything at the same time.”
That's something Anna Chiu, a mom of three and the founder of the fashion brand Kamperett, has wrestled with since becoming a parent. Chiu has been friends with Hintz-Zambrano since their Cool Moms Club days, and she says the latter has helped her find balance in her parenting philosophy.
“She’s made me realize that you can live your life and have your kid with you, too,” Chiu says. “You don’t have to choose to either stay home with your kid or go to a party — you can go to a party with your kid. I think that’s a gift.”
Angela Tafoya, an editor and writer, and owner of NOOMOON, a secondhand children’s clothing store in San Francisco, first met Hintz-Zambrano at a Refinery29 launch party. When Tafoya found out a decade ago that she was pregnant with her first child, a girl, one of the first people she told was Katie.
She has since had a son, and that has brought the two of them even closer.
“I've really learned how to be a more conscious parent from her, from seeing how she does it with Diego and how patient and kind she is,” Tafoya says. “It’s amazing to see how thoughtful she's been with raising him, and I'm excited to continue to tap her for advice and input as I navigate being a mom of a boy.”
Bringing it home
As Mother’s Day approaches, Hintz-Zambrano is reflective on how far she’s come as a mom — and where her parenting journey is heading. Diego started middle school this past year and is on the verge of becoming a teenager.
She knows the next few years will be a test of her parenting skills, not to mention the insights she advances through her media platforms. The hope is that all the building blocks she put in place for Diego will come together — and that he’ll know she’ll always be there for him.
“I’m sure he will start to pull away as he gets older,” she says. “I’m trying to keep us close right now so that when he feels that urge, he’ll feel there’s a soft space."
Hintz-Zambrano is looking forward to spending this Mother’s Day with her family, and getting that handwritten letter from Diego. Other than that, she doesn’t need anything to make the day special.
“I want to teach my child that it truly is the thought that counts and that not all gifts need to cost money. Gratitude and love are great gifts to give.”
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AUTHOR
Lambeth Hochwald is a New York City-based journalist who specializes in trends, lifestyle stories, and issues of importance to women.
Mickey Brown is senior editor for floral & gifts in the 1-800-Flowers.com Content Studio. Previously, he was an associate editor in the NBC News Brand Studio and the managing producer of icenetwork.com. He started his career in sports marketing and communications.
