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Tell us about the journey that led you to Maven Clinic.
I serve as the VP of Employer Sales here at Maven Clinic. My job is to oversee our sales team that works with employers across the world and helps bring Maven to them and shares who we are, what we do, and how we can help their employee base navigate all things family-building and family benefits.
I got here through kind of an interesting path. I have been at Maven for just over a year and have spent the majority of my career working in high-growth startups across various industries—most meaningfully in ecommerce. I joined Maven after I was introduced to our CEO and founder, Kate Ryder, by an individual in the investment community who was familiar with my work.
I joined after I acutely felt the challenges of being a working parent after having my first child in spring of 2021. I certainly get why people—particularly women—leave the workforce when they have a child, and I felt inspired and motivated to make a bit of a career change. I’m able to leverage my functional expertise in launching and scaling high-growth commercial teams, but I’m doing it in an industry that felt much closer to home given my own experience. I am an incredibly ambitious and driven individual, and I thought if I’m struggling to do this, how can other people do this?
Tell us what your company does.
Maven is the world’s largest virtual clinic for women’s and family health. Our technology platform offers 24/7 virtual care, easy financial reimbursement, peer communities, and concierge support to members across our fertility, family-building, pregnancy, parenting, pediatrics, and menopause programs. We cover over 15 million lives across 175 countries.
How does your service address the pain points of your customers?
Starting and growing a family is an incredibly personal and complicated journey. Even if you have the easiest pregnancy or have the easiest time getting pregnant, there are a lot of things that happen in starting and growing a family that people just don’t talk about. Our health care system, in particular in the United States, does a pretty poor job of helping people navigate this life stage physically, mentally, and financially.
Maven fills these gaps through our virtual care platform that brings high-quality, incredibly culturally appropriate care to the palm of your hands in a matter of minutes. Real-time care when you need it is something that you know we are able to do regardless of where you are in your life journey. Maven seeks to be that trusted advisor and guide.
Maven is the only platform to offer an end-to-end solution, from preconception, family building, fertility, and maternity to parenting, pediatrics, and menopause. For instance, 58% of Maven’s surrogacy members need help finding an agency, and 47% of adoption members need help finding an agency.
Most people would be surprised to know …
how comprehensive we are in terms of our support for fertility and family-building. For example, the fact that we have a menopause offering is surprising for a number of individuals. We are really that end-to-end holistic support. And we’re not just supporting folks through one perspective—it’s not just through financial reimbursement. We can be a guide for folks regardless of where they are in that life stage.
What are the most exciting things happening in your segment of the industry right now?
There are some things that are really exciting and make me quite optimistic, as well. For example, I think we’re all experiencing and aware of a softening economic climate, but what we have seen is that employers, in particular, have made a real commitment to doubling down on their fertility and family benefits—despite external economic conditions. That’s really because we’re moving away from fertility and family-building benefits being thought of as a perk to really being thought of as standard health care.
That is quite a transformation. We are seeing a real shift toward value when it comes to fertility benefits and aligning incentives to find the shortest path to bringing home a healthy baby. At Maven, we focus on how we can help people bring home a healthy baby safely, affordably, and efficiently.
I’m really excited about a destigmatization of a lot of needs for families across things like their own reproductive health, including things like menopause support or premenopausal support. This is not something that many folks were vocalizing or felt comfortable vocalizing to their employers, but it has a meaningful impact on their ability to show up to work happy, healthy, and productive. I’m inspired to see people speaking up about their needs, and I’m inspired seeing employers really invest in meeting these needs.
What are your favorite things to do on weekends?
I’ve been in New York for a number of years, but I lived in New York as a young person—as a childless person—for the majority of my time here. As a new mom (I have a 1.5-year-old daughter), I get to experience this city through an entirely different lens. I’m still spending time in a lot of the neighborhoods where I used to spend time in my late 20s and early 30s, but I’m there trying to find the best parks, the best museums, the best shops, and kid-friendly restaurants. I’m experiencing the city in an entirely different way, and I have found that really fun to do with my husband and our daughter.
What’s the best Netflix series you’ve watched?
Bridgerton was my favorite Netflix series. I think it’s incredibly aesthetically pleasing. The costumes, the interior, and the overall visuals were incredible. I’m a huge Shonda Rhimes fan myself—not only the content she produces but just of her as an individual and as a businessperson. I’ve always felt quite inspired by her, and so I love supporting the work that she’s doing.
What’s a great book you’d recommend to your colleagues or customers?
I love this book called Setting the Table. It is written by Danny Meyer, who is a huge restaurateur and sort of hospitality legend here in New York. He started a really famous restaurant when he was in his mid-20s that still is around and still is thought of as an incredibly special place to visit.
He wrote this book in which he describes this concept of enlightened hospitality, and it talks about relationship-building. It talks about customer satisfaction. It talks about how to create special moments in business—whether you are a salesperson, an executive, or a waiter. He applies and shares so many lessons that I personally have found really meaningful in building relationships and setting up successful partnerships internally and externally.
What’s the biggest misconception about Maven?
There’s a bit of a misconception about Maven being specifically a women’s health and women’s benefit company. We cover 15 million lives globally, but actually about 40% of our member base identifies as male, and we certainly support a nonbinary population as well.
Maven is for everybody—not just for women. Women are an incredibly important part of our community. They make up 50% of the population, and they make 80% of health care decisions. So certainly, we support women, and they definitely are the lion’s share of our members here, but I think it’s a miss to not know that we support all humans—regardless of how they identify.
