An executive mother offers her take on what employers ought to do to retain star female employees who want to start a family. 

By Georgia Collins, guest contributor

FORTUNE -- I never thought I'd be a working mom. My mom wasn't a workingmom and I loved that she stayed home. I wanted to be like her. I still do. But somewhere along the line, I found a career.

So before I started a family, I had a solid amount of time to build and refine something else -- a skill set, a team, and, most importantly, a passion for what I do. Suddenly walking away from all of that didn't seem like the right thing to me.

It wasn't easy going back to work in March -- five months after my son was born -- and I'm still conflicted on a daily basis by my choice. Luckily, I know an extraordinary group of women who've taken the same path as me. They are amazing moms who also have incredible careers -- across a wide variety of industries. These women are overachievers across the board. So when it came to finding a way to balance being a mom and having a career, their starting point was not about compromising one for the sake of the other. Instead, it was about finding a way to make both work, and work well.

I asked them what tips they would give other working moms and what advice they'd give employers about how to keep high-performing women in the workforce.

Here's what they had to offer: More