Jessica Alba is a working mama — and even as a mom of three, she’s still learning the balance.
The actress and Honest Company co-founder moderated a panel of four other businesswomen on Monday, interviewing Arianna Huffington, Katherine Power, Alli Webb and Payal Kadakia.
One special guest? Alba’s daughter Honor Marie, 10, who gave an impassioned speech discussing female empowerment and the gender wage gap in the U.S. with a resounding, “Women should have the same opportunities as men.”
In a one-on-one chat with PEOPLE, Alba — who welcomed her third child, son Hayes Alba, on Dec. 31 — revealed that she took maternity leave after giving birth to Hayes, but “I didn’t take as long as I wanted to.”
“We have a four-month maternity leave for women and two-month with men,” said the star, 37, of her organization’s parental PTO policy. “We do work with families and parents when they come back. They can come back part time or work from home — we have a flex understanding of what that means for them. ”
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Alba tells PEOPLE that “it is always challenging going back to work after kids,” and that the practice “feels weird and unnatural” at first.
But there’s a silver lining, too. “It makes me really try to be super efficient when I’m at work, so that I can get here and get what I need done and then get home and do that, as well,” she says.
“I’m not trying to meander, you know? I really try to make the time here feel really good and full and complete and when I go home, that is family time,” adds the star.
RELATED VIDEO: Jessica Alba Reveals How Family Life Has Changed Since Welcoming Son Hayes: “It’s a Different Energy”
For Huffington — founder and CEO of Thrive Global and co-founder of The Huffington Post — having her own children later in life “was the most amazing thing because it puts everything else in perspective,” she tells PEOPLE.
“It brought some joy and a lot of heartache because as they say, ‘You’re only as happy as your least happy child,’ but it has been definitely the most amazing and loving experience,” the journalist, 68, shares of her two daughters, who are now in their 20s.
Webb, 43, was a stay-at-home mom of two boys in Los Angeles when she founded what would become Drybar. As she shares with PEOPLE, “I started a little mobile blow-dry business in 2008ish and I was really just running around blowing all my mommy friends, and that business was called Straight At Home.”
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Power, 38, tells PEOPLE that her advice for other women is “not to overthink it” when it comes to business decisions.
“I think it is very easy to get caught up in the details of how something can come together and waiting for the perfect time to launch something, or the perfect partner or perfect resources,” says the co-founder and CEO of Clique Brands. “Sometime you just have to get your idea out in front of people, as quickly as possibly to know if it has likes or not.”
ClassPass co-founder Kadakia, 35, explains how getting knocked down and back up again has made her realize that success is not a straight line.
“It has been a really amazing journey of accepting this idea of failure not as failure,” she tells PEOPLE. “Failure is an opportunity, and you actually have to think about those mistakes you made and [say], ‘What is it actually teaching me, so I can get it right?’ “
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