Space for family and career: Edda’s story

Edda Dupaquier is more than just a working parent of five—she’s an inspiring leader in her community, an expert in her field and a proud recipient of the 2024 “Working Parent of the Year” award at Johnson & Johnson. Born in Honduras and now based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Edda shares her journey, the lessons she’s learned along the way and why she believes everyone can write their own working parent success story.

Work ethic, flexibility and working parents

Growing up in Honduras as one of four siblings and 42 first cousins, Edda understood the rhythms of life within a large family from her earliest days. “I always knew that having a large family was something I wanted for myself,” she says.

Her desire for a big family came with a deep appreciation for the values she learned from her own parents—her father the army general, her mother the entrepreneur—whose strong work ethic she’s now passing on to her children.

“The best thing about being in a non-office-based role as a member of the field sales team is that I have a chance to really demonstrate my work ethic to my kids every day,” she says. “They see mom get up, do all of these things before work, work hard all day and still magically have enough energy to help them with their homework. I really love that part of being a working parent. I do it with pride and with joy.”

“All are welcome”: A picture of resilience and inclusivity

“Having two kids with special needs can be hard,” Edda says. Like many parents of special needs children, she worries that not every school is equipped to meet the needs of students with autism like her son Noah—a concern which recently led her to transfer him to a different school.

“That was rough, really rough, on me,” she says, “because I really liked that school in other respects, and I hoped he could stay there for the long run.” But she also looked around and had an epiphany: “There must be others in a similar situation. This can’t only be happening to me.”

Quickly pivoting in this way, from setback to resilient action, is instinctual for Edda. She resolved to form a support group at her church, describing the goal as “not only sharing our stories and experiences as parents of kids with special needs but being uplifting, really inspiring one another.” Small at first, the group grew into a full ministry called “All Are Welcome.”

Today, this ministry puts on bimonthly Sensory Masses for the special needs community that are truly one of a kind—and deeply meaningful to Edda.

“It’s not just for people like my son who have autism,” she explains. “It’s for people of all ages, people who might be hearing impaired or have Down syndrome or difficulty seeing, because the word is ‘masses,’ right? So we have everybody. The service itself is a little bit shorter, because attention spans are shorter, and the lights are down really low, because too much light can be overstimulating, and the noise is—well, it gets loud, because everybody is making noises. But it’s a place where nobody is ever going to shush you. Everyone feels comfortable. Everyone feels loved. It’s beautiful.”