Eileen Maus: We’re a prescription-based therapeutic, because women aren't willing to address it. They need to understand that it's a medical condition and no fault of their own and under their clinician's care. They can get better. The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the American Urogynecologic Society and the American Association of Family Practice all recommend screening for urinary incontinence starting at age 18.
So it's not, the little lady is about to go into a nursing home. It's 18 year old ballerinas. This is going to take you through how your pelvic floor actually works, understand how those muscles are engaged. And then, you know, let's talk about a treatment because you don't have to live this way.
Meg Escobosa: Welcome to The Game-Changing Women of Healthcare, a podcast featuring
exceptional women making an impact in healthcare today. We celebrate our guests’ accomplishments, setbacks, and the lessons they’ve learned throughout their careers. And we dig into the many healthcare issues we face today, and how these innovative leaders are working to solve them.
I’m Meg Escobosa; Join me in conversation with some of the many brilliant, courageous women on the front lines of the Future of Health.
Meg Escobosa: Hello everyone, and welcome to The Game-Changing Women of Healthcare. I'm your host, Meg Escobosa. Today, we're very fortunate to be speaking with Eileen Maus. Eileen is the Chief Executive Officer of Renovia, a woman-led digital therapeutics company, addressing women's pelvic floor disorders. She was brought into the role just over a year ago, with 20 years of experience in healthcare. In our conversation, we'll hear about leva®, the award-winning fem tech product they launched.
Eileen developed a passion for women's health at Cytyc Corporation. Now Hologic, where she was the Vice President of commercial operations of the surgical division and contributed to its growth from $8 million to $700 million. Eileen also served as Chief Commercial Officer for Constitutional Medical Investors, a portfolio company of Warburg Pincus. She received her Bachelor of Science Degree from La Salle University in Philadelphia.
Hello, Eileen, thank you so much for joining us today and congratulations for being recognized as one of Healthcare Technology Reports’ Top Women Leaders in Medical Devices.
Eileen Maus: Thank you, and I appreciate your podcast. I've been listening to the original episodes and I'm 57 so I think I'm a little bit older than some of the guests that you've had on the show. And when I was coming up, I didn't have tools and resources like this. I have two daughters. They think the world is their oyster.
I think about how far we've come, you know, since I started in the business world and just such a gift for the young ladies coming up today to have the resources at their disposal to kind of model their careers after, and kind of understand some of the challenges in front of them.
Meg Escobosa: Thank you so much for saying that that really means a lot. That's awesome. I also have two daughters, so I absolutely think of them when I am thinking about these stories and making it clearer what is possible and what it takes because it has been sort of mysterious when you are sitting on the sidelines or out of the industry or not in the working world yet. So thank you so much. I'm thrilled to hear that. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got to your current role as CEO of Renovia?
Eileen Maus: Meg, I think if some of my original teachers in high school and college had heard that intro, they would say, you're talking about the wrong person. I come from, to women's healthcare, primarily being one of four girls in my family, you know, PhDs and doctors all around. I was always the connector. I just like to understand what's going on, and what's the view of the world. Probably not the most academic student. I was just more curious about everything else that was going on around me. And at that time, you say, “oh, maybe I should have buckled down on my studies more,” but I really think it was observing what was going on around me that led me to the career I'm at today.
I've always been a real hard-worker. I've just got to be passionate about what I'm working. Geometry wasn't what I was passionate about. Right. I don't know if you've ever read John Maxwell. He writes great leadership books and something that really connected to me as he once said, “the closer you are to your passion, the more intuitive it is.” That just really connected to me. And I've always been drawn to, “I understand it. I think I can take it to the next step.” I think this is where I'm meant to contribute to society because I really do believe we all have gifts and some people, it takes a lifetime to uncover. I got into women's health and I just said, “this is where I'm meant to be.” And I know that's not great career guidance, but I think when you're in your wheelhouse, it's not that it's not hard. It's not that it gets easier. It's the time flows differently.
Meg Escobosa: Would you mind sharing just some of those early days? Like, what were some of the projects that you worked on? Some of the initiatives that you were a part of that were inspiring, or at least kind of keeping you engaged in women’s health?
Eileen Maus: Well, I came into healthcare being a pharmaceutical rep and I worked with various specialties: neurology, cardiology, OBGYN. And my appeal to a woman's healthcare was just that the OBGYNs, I just felt like, we're the doctors that connect it most to their patients and the fact that it was, a lifetime relationship.
And a lot of times it's a happy relationship. And I was just drawn to that. I'm drawn to health and nutrition and exercise. It's just, how do you make things better? How do you live your best quality of life? And that's where I felt like OBGYNs were trying to do. I launched two products when I was with Cytyc that you'll know the names to this day.
One was the ThinPrep Pap Test. And when you go for your cervical cancer screening, you're going to get them prepped. And believe me, when I tell you there were many dark days that the fact that ThinPrep would be a standard of care, didn't seem like it was ever going to happen. And then we acquired a company called NovaSure, which treats endometrial ablation or heavy periods.
What, about 15 years ago, we didn't talk about having heavy periods. Right. It was just something that women had to deal with. And I just found that outrageous that we had to deal with that. And that has been my connection to woman's health. Like what can we do better so we live a better quality of life?
Meg Escobosa: That's great. I mean, just very clear problem-solving mentality of like, not being intimidated by a medical field that you don't necessarily have actual training in, but more just from a human-centered perspective of let's address this, this is a real problem. How can I help?
Eileen Maus: Absolutely. And can we get rid of the taboos? When I was a pharma rep, we sold birth control pills, right? I mean birth control just became available. Was it in the seventies? And you had to be married to get it. Like, when I tell my kids these stories, they can't even comprehend it. It's just mind-blowing.
Meg Escobosa: Absolutely. And how empowering it is to be able to make your own choice. Yeah, exactly. I wanted to just talk a little bit about sort of fem tech and just that space, that field, we're defining fem tech is software and technology companies that address women's biological needs.
We did a little bit of, you know, gathering of some data. It looks like in 2019, that space generated about $820 million in global revenue and received just about $592 million in venture capital investment, according to PitchBook. That's pretty small potatoes compared to the med tech space overall, which I think drew $3 billion in venture investments in the first half of 2021, according to MassDevice.
What is your perspective on the potential barriers that might be preventing greater investment in fem tech solutions? If you see any barriers today and what might we do to address it?
Eileen Maus: A couple of different things, Meg. I think fem tech, digital tech, all your techs are new and not understood and there's different types, right? There's consumer-based, there's clinician-prescribed, there's reimbursement challenges so I don't necessarily think it's because it's women's health care that it's not getting as well-funded. I think it's because it's new and people don't understand nor have there've been a ton of companies that have been incredibly successful bringing those products to market.
So it's the great unknown, which happens to be a space I like to work in, like, we call it the “wild west” because you can create your own destiny. I will say 98% of the investors I talked to are male. Absolutely. You know, have they had urinary incontinence? No. Do they like to talk about it with their wife or their kids? Some, but I think appreciating, like if your spouse goes through fertility struggles, I think you're there 100%, right. You feel for that. Menopause, kind of lesser understood, I think for men, but I really think it does come to our obligation as pioneers in this field to understand how it changes the quality of people's lives.
Meg Escobosa: Absolutely. And I do think, I mean, there's, I know the app or solution called Clue that's for tracking your periods. I know that there's those types of brands helping to create greater awareness of women's health issues. Can you maybe talk a little bit more about Renovia and your aim to address pelvic floor disorders, maybe even let's unpack what is a pelvic floor disorder cause I think some of our young people may not be aware of it because as you get older, that becomes more of an issue. But young people probably not so familiar. So describe that and then we'll get into more of the digital therapeutics.
Eileen Maus: I think what the young people get is that you need a strong core. Cause they see that all the ab exercises. Like this whole vacuum thing that they do. I'm always like fascinated by that cause there's so much conversation on a strong core. And we're talking about flat abs, but your core is really your pelvic floor and your pelvic floor supports you. It allows you to walk upright and have flexibility.
It gets damaged when you carry a baby for nine months, it becomes looser as you age, just the effect of gravity. So it's really the cradle in between your sitz bones is your pelvic floor, right. And when your pelvic floor, okay, these are muscles you don't see. So this is no one's fault that it's not understood. If you're in the gym doing a plank and you think you're doing it great and you look over in the mirror and you realize like the shoulders are hunched, you can correct that when someone tells you to do a kegel or a pelvic floor muscle exercise. You're sucking in your abs. You're clenching your glutes. It's really hard to isolate those muscles.
So what is pelvic floor disorder? It's a lot of different things. It can be urinary incontinence, which means that you leak when you're doing your jumping jacks or going running, or you have to go to the bathroom and you can't make it to the toilet, or you're getting up three or four times at night in order to go to the bathroom. It can also be fecal incontinence when you're leaking, you know, feces, when you don't mean to, it can be some types of sexual dysfunction.
So there's a lot in pelvic floor disorders. We're primarily focused right now where we're selling now, we have our indication is for urinary incontinence and, you know, it's women anywhere from age 18 to end of life, that suffer from urinary incontinence. It's one of the leading reasons women are admitted into nursing homes.
And you think about it, Meg, like you're at Costco and you're buying Depends for your mom. Like it's a $9 billion market for diapers that mask the symptoms. And we, as women don't realize that's us, if we don't take care of our pelvic floor.
Meg Escobosa: Yes. And when I became aware of it was after having children and I remember vividly being at a football game and having to go to the bathroom and waiting in the line for the women's bathroom at this football game. The men's room, no line. The women's room; it was wrapped around the stadium practically. And I thought to myself does no one here realize I've had two babies. That's right. This is a disaster. All these, you know, women, I can't believe we're in this situation.
Eileen Maus: Well, it affects 60% of women, and this is what blows my mind and what draws me to it. So first-line treatment that all your medical societies recommend is what's called pelvic floor muscle therapy. As you probably read in like Glamour magazine, kegels.
Yeah. But women can't do them correctly. So your choice is to go out to pelvic floor therapy, which if you’re a mom working, mom, whatever. That's difficult, like to cut out that time in your day and go there and it can be rather intimate. So what leva® really did is we took the best practices of pelvic floor, muscle therapy and incorporate it in a way that uses digital technology so it's kind of like motion sensors in a wand that you insert into your vagina and the feedback of that is displayed on an app. So it teaches you how to lift your pelvic floor muscles correctly and consistently, and then we have a coaching team that kind of encourages you tries to understand your goals, but what's really interesting about leva® is that it's prescribed by your clinician, right, so they may remain engaged in your care. And we send them monthly reports to know how you're progressing against your goal. So this isn't something you're going on, Amazon for. This is medical technology that just happens to be digital in nature.
Meg Escobosa: Well, that's great to hear. Okay. I know you guys actually pursued some innovative approaches to figuring out and getting approval, getting the clearance from the FDA for the leva®. Maybe you can describe a little bit about the virtual clinical trials you've done. You know, that's amazing.
Eileen Maus: Well, it just like COVID for humanity has been incredibly challenging for the advancement in healthcare, it's been amazing because it, to me, it just took patient's willingness to engage and clinician's willingness to engage to a whole new level. As people said, we can have care from home, but find a way for clinicians to still be engaged in it. So we had FDA approval for leva®, but in order to really have the same rigor around our technology, as we would expect from any pharmaceutical or medical device, we wanted to do a randomized clinical trial.
And, you know, in this environment to have pair acceptance, you need that work as well. So we were about to start a brick and mortar randomized clinical trial. And this is before my time in the company, Meg, so I'm telling their tales, but our medical director, her name is Mandy Pulliam, a fantastic urogynecologist and Robin, who is our clinical affairs person.
They were ready to do this brick and mortar trial and COVID hit. You're not going to bring patients into a hospital facility during COVID for a clinical trial. Like almost all clinical trials, I think were shut down except for COVID-related. So knowing that we're digital technology and the whole point is to have your therapy at home, they just recreated the wheel. As we always say, necessity is the mother of invention, right? Like you never see it looking forward, but you see it looking back how something happened, you know, in your journey to bring a product to market that was so important and pivotal, you know, you look at it and say, of course, it's a digital technology.
It should have been done this way, but the benefit of doing it. Meg, is like we were able to recruit patients from 35 states, usually you do a clinical trial just by the medical universities. You know, we went out on Facebook and said, “Hey, are you leaking and does it bother you?” And people were coming out of the woodwork to participate.
Also, the women in the trial were a little bit heavier, you know, their BMIs were higher than we see in our general patient population. So maybe we got some of those women that were embarrassed to go to their doctor and talk to them about it or more comfortable having treatment at home around their schedule.
So I love that about this technology is because, you know, it was kind of a real-life situation. And, you know, we were able to adjust to what was happening in the outside world, but really do it when you look back and say, can people do this at home? Do they have to be overseen in a physical location?
Meg Escobosa: And I know you weren't at the company at the time, so you may not have the answer to this question, but I'm curious. What do you remember? Did they share the actual pivot? What, what did that look like? The process to make that shift? How long did it take to go from what would have been an in-person clinical trial to a now virtual one? And they get the number of people participating as they had hoped or more?
Eileen Maus: Absolutely. The amount of women that we had, we had to shut down enrollment of the trial and actually completed the trial on time, which I think is virtually unheard of happening. So the pivot was very quick and it really was a funding-driven pivot because we needed to get this clinical trial complete. So we could go to not only the clinicians, but the payers with the data that says this really is a fantastic option for women. So I mean, like everything in a startup - high pressure, short timelines, and not a lot of money to do it with.
Meg Escobosa: Awesome. You kind of already addressed this a little bit, but just maybe even describe a little bit of the benefits of digital therapy over traditional drugs or surgery.
Eileen Maus: Well, I think adherence is better and that's what our studies show. And when you're doing the leva® therapy, it's going to transmit to the app. How often you're doing it. You're supposed to do it twice a day for two and a half minutes. So it's five minutes a day of therapy. But like when your dentist asked you if your flossed teeth, do you just remember the day she did it?
And it was kind of funny in the clinical trial because we had an arm that was patients doing pelvic floor, muscle therapy and the leva® arm, and they both report it adherence as part of the clinical trial. So we're checking the adherence in the background. It didn't match up to the patient-reported adherence.
Right? So you go, you go into your doctor and they say,” oh, have you been doing your kegels?” And you're like, ”yes, sir,” right? You know, and then you move down the treatment pathway to more aggressive therapies. Hopefully first-line therapy would have worked for you if you were able to be adherent to it. So I think that's really one of the beauties of it. It's attainable. And you think about if you're a nurse and you're working all day, right? Do you have time to go out to another appointment? You might take your child. They sprained their ankle at soccer practice, but to carve out that time for yourself, five minutes a day is all you need.
Meg Escobosa: Fabulous. I was also thinking, you know, I know when you go to do any kind of weightlifting, weight training, they really want to see your posture, the position, the way you do it, so that you are not hurting yourself cause that's the other you don't want to harm. And so that I think is one of the also interesting components of the solution. It sounds like you actually do get that feedback that you're either on track, you're doing it correctly or you're not. And that sounds very, very helpful.
Eileen Maus: Yeah and commonly what women do when they're told to do, kegels or engage their pelvic floors, they bear down. It's a very common way of doing kegels that's inappropriate, not good for your pelvic floor and the app will say, “no, stop, deep breath, relax,” and that's, you know, it's really interesting because when you're seeing the lift of your pelvic floor on the app, you'll see there's like a, like almost a speedometer that lifts up so you can see you're getting stronger and you hold it for 15 seconds.
And Meg, when I tell you you'll break out in a cold sweat, the first time you do it, because you're like, how can I not engage these muscles? This should be so simple. Of course, you get stronger as you go along. But to hold for that full 15 seconds, we have patients that see tremendous results and were never able to hold for the full 15 seconds. So anatomy is very specific to the individual, but we see great results because it is based on your individual anatomy.
Meg Escobosa: Can you just share a little bit about the stigma around, I mean, obviously urinary incontinence, nobody wants to talk about it. It's just embarrassing. How do you address it?
Eileen Maus: That's why we're a prescription-based therapeutic, because I feel like women aren't willing to address it. They need to understand that it's a medical condition and no fault of their own, and under their clinicians care, they can get better. As I mentioned earlier, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the American Urogynecologic Society, and the American Association of Family Practice all recommend screening for urinary incontinence starting at age 18. So it's not, the little lady is about to go into a nursing home. It's 18 year old ballerinas. And I think the stigma comes from, hey, “you're a three and a half years old. You're out of the diaper, do you really want to be back in one,” it's embarrassing that you can't control that type of bodily function. And you know, that's a lot of the education we do in the clinician offices is we have these great video brochures that the healthcare provider will hand the patient that says, okay, this is going to like take you through how your pelvic floor actually works, understand how those muscles are engaged.
And then, you know, let's talk about a treatment because you don't have to live this way. And I don't know. Have you ever read, Meg, the book, The Giving Tree. I never saw this book until I had my first child. Someone sent it to me as a gift. And this is my take on the book: that a woman gives away her leaf so the child can play in the branches, so the child can build a house and all that's left of her at the end of the book is a stump that the child's sitting on and sadly, I feel like there's been a lot of conditioning that women give, give, give, and don't necessarily take care of themselves.
And I've done market research on breast cancer, on cervical cancer, on areas like heavy bleeding; the most depressing market research I ever listened to was around urinary incontinence because women were so defeated and didn't think there was any hope because what it really comes down to - it's a loss of dignity. And that's hard. Nothing worse. Yeah. I mean, aging is enough, right?
Meg Escobosa: It sure is. Let me tell you.
Eileen Maus: It's only the wisdom that we get. That's the benefit, the benefit, but it's really, I don't tell this story often, Meg, but I hope your listeners can take something about it cause it's really what drives me in this space.
My mother suffered from MS for many years. And she was just such a fighter, right? Like she just wasn't going to let it get to her. She was going to live her quality of life. And she had a really nasty form of it. What broke her was being fully incontinent. It's when she said, “I can't do this anymore”. And believe me, Meg, she had every right to say “I fought hard enough. I've lived a good life. I've seen my grand babies,” but like, understanding how every insult that had been thrown at her with the disease, what was the last straw was not being able to make it to the bathroom or take care of herself after she had accidents.
It’s not an easy thing to share because I want to preserve my mother's memory and dignity, but I think she'd be okay because that's, that's the type of person that she was, but it really is. And I say, when I talk to doctors or sales reps or investors, “who is your north star, who's that person that is the reason you're here”. It could be your significant other, or your daughter or your, whoever that is. “Do you want this for them?” You want them, you know, if they're an athlete running their marathon and diapers, or, you know, being at the county fair and work in the funnel cake machine, and you have to keep running out to go to the bathroom or pushing your grandkids out of the way, because you have to get to the bathroom first. Nobody wants that. Right. It's completely in our hands to fix it.
Meg Escobosa: That's wonderful. Yes. What has it been like to see your efforts? That you've put so much time and dedication to, you know, get it out into the world and make a larger impact.
Eileen Maus: Meg every time I say like, if I'm out doing sales calls and I see ThinPrep Pap Test vials, I'm just like, cool. You know, when someone tells me they had no NovaSure, not knowing any of my association with it, I'm like, that's right. And you know, here it is, cause we have a care management team, right. Yeah, I have a lot of interaction with their patients. And everyday we know that we change the quality of someone's life is a day.
My head goes to sleep on my pillow, knowing that I did the work that I'm here meant to do. And one of the things that I should probably point out, you know, when we went through my biography, when I worked at Cytyc and the jobs I did after that, I had caught lightning in a bottle. We had the right product, the right people and were passionate about it. And I felt like I had done really important work and I had kids at home and I retired and my mom was sick. I wanted to be there for her. And I was really content. I'm still walking the dog and feeling like I had lived a good life and contributed to society.
And I feel like that's really important. And why a lot of women are drawn to women's health. If you're going to work all these hours, this madness, let it be for something good. And that's how I always thought about women's health. But, you know, I was in a good place. Then I got tapped on the shoulder, was someone I had worked with for many years and he said, “Eileen, you need to see this. And if not, we say in our company, if not you who. If we won't tackle this, it won't get done.” And when you're involved in a startup, that's absolutely got to be your mentality because this is the other analogy I use: we're walking between skyscrapers on a tight rope in high heels with sticks, balancing plates.
Like that's, we're not any different than any other startup when it comes to that. That's how precarious it is. But I believe we all have this tunnel. We see the future, you know, like I say, someone gets a pack of pills and they should have a leva®. You should have a leva® after every baby you deliver.
Right? Like this should just be a normal part of women's life. That the pelvic floor is something that gets weak and we need to work and exercise. It should be as ubiquitous as Pelotons much at a lower price point, but it just should be start of how we take care of ourselves as women and we're a company that all really believes that and you're not going to knock us off our perch.
Meg Escobosa: Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, That's the thing, just as I described my own experience, it was sort of this eye-opening awareness now of a problem that I could be living with for the rest of my life. And I thought to myself that is totally unacceptable. I cannot believe this has not been addressed more directly or obviously, so thank you for this product.
I actually, I mean, there's just so much about it. That is very, very cool. And we're excited to see where it goes and we want you to have the great success. Maybe we can talk a little bit about the failures you might've experienced or risks that you've taken that just didn't pan out. And what you learned from that experience.
Eileen Maus: And, Meg, this might be part of my, I am an eternal optimist that I look at anything that didn't work out and it's vivid. Right. It's just like, okay, we did our research. We thought that was the right thing to do. And it didn't pan out. Maybe we were just too early or maybe we were too late. I get the question all the time - why aren't we doing more direct-to-consumer? And I just say, “because women aren't searching, they don't Google search for urinary incontinence or leaking.”
This is something that clinicians need to educate patients about. Women aren't necessarily willing to share their journey. I hope we can normalize that conversation and change the narrative, like yeah, you know, you have a baby, you might leak. Hopefully you'll recover, if not, there's leva® for you. You're going through menopause or you're having problems with urinary or you’re leaking when you don't want to, or do you have to go all the time? Can you not make it to the toilet? There's something that we can do for that. You can take care of it at home, on your convenience. And as, as soon as four weeks, you're going to see significant improvement without easy to access treatment. I mean, everybody, I think people know about sling surgery that you can have for your bladder, if you have stress incontinence.
Meg Escobosa: Sort of, yes. Only because I know somebody that had it, but I wouldn't have known about.
Eileen Maus: Meg. I have to tell you I was on the Peloton, I think it was women in business, Facebook page, and someone posted a picture of themselves coming out of surgery, bladder surgery. And within 24 hours, there were 300 comments on, “I didn't know there was anything I could do. That's why I got this because I couldn't run anymore. Oh, I don't have to take these medications.” I was just like, “Wow. We have so [much education to do.”
I got off your track about failures, but I was brought up in an environment. Gene Kranz. Now I'm dating myself, right with Apollo 13. That failure is not an option. Failure is only an option. If you give up or you don't make a change based on it.
So when, when it's something as important as this, 60% of women experience urinary incontinence, 60%, right? 78 million women, according to the latest papers, how do we not, as a society, address that, right?
Meg Escobosa: Absolutely. Who are some of your biggest influencers or mentors?
Eileen Maus: And I know this is a woman in leadership show and I'm supposed to probably mention women.
Meg Escobosa: You don't have to at all.
Eileen Maus: I mean, Meg, I came up a long time ago. And the people that were above me were men. And I had great mentors and I think it's age and stage, right? Like I worked in startups and every person needs to contribute and they need to be able to contribute outside their lane, right? There's always a new challenge. And I need someone to take that on and I was just given the flexibility, right? Raise your hand, go get it, figure it out. And that was so empowering to me. So that's what I've taken away from mentors.
I can say I walked beside some really fantastic women. I worked with Shacey Petrovic, who's the CEO of Insulet and what a great job they've done in the diabetes space. I worked with an ad agency that, you know, she was just baller. I don't know what else to say to her about her. You know what I mean? The way she approached work and the way she commanded a room, but, you know, as a working mom, I didn't grow up in business seeing other women like me.
Meg Escobosa: And I was just going to say, like you just described two women, what was it about them? The one who was so confident in front of the room and sort of declaring what they wanted to achieve, that style, that personality attracted you. What was it about it and where did you find your own confidence?
Eileen Maus: Well, she knew her stuff. Right, and the confidence that came from that, and nobody knew the business she was addressing better than she did. And I really appreciated that. My background is commercial, even though I'm a CEO and I'm very customer-focused and our customers are patients and clinicians. I like to spend a lot of time with them, chat with them, understand where they're coming from. Nobody should know my business better than me. Not meaning I know every aspect of the business. I have someone who runs my development and operations, who is a double MIT.
Meg Escobosa: Make sure your team is smarter than you.
Eileen Maus: Right, andnd you got to compliment each other. You don't want 10 people that have the same core strengths. Right. You need to have all, all the different offerings, all the different styles.
And I think about our team and we all talk differently, act differently, think differently, but our values are the same. We think women should have better options and that's where we come together, right, and that's where we keep focused on. I take things from people I see every day, whether it's an analogy on how they phrase something or it's a viewpoint, I love different viewpoints. Right. It takes. I liked being the boss because at the end of the day, when I heard all the viewpoints, I get to make the decision.
But I love it when someone challenges me. And I think about things differently. Like that's what brings me out of retirement and helping women is that we're also equal. You couldn’t get me to go to a large fortune 500 company, not for all the tea in China, because what's appealing about that? Like I like my small group as Margaret Mead said, small group of committed people that are going to change the world.
Meg Escobosa: You guys are a woman-led organization. So can you describe what that is like? How is it that having a group of women at the top is different maybe from other experiences you've had?
Eileen Maus: We’re extremely productive. And you know, virtual plays into that too, because we're an all-virtual company. I didn't see the people I worked with for the first six months, because it was deep in the heart of COVID. I think it's stage-dependent too, Meg, because we're small and people have to wear multiple hats. We talk things through.
Meg Escobosa: And is there maybe a culture, like something that women leadership created sort of certain kind of culture in an organization or not necessarily, it's just unique to the specific women that you actually collaborate with.
Eileen Maus:
I think that the virtual work environment is the best thing that ever happened to moms in the workforce. And I'll say our dads too, like you hear in the background of a Zoom call, someone's going to pick up their kids from soccer, you know, football practice. I also know that from that person, I get a dump of information at 10 o'clock at night cause he made up those hours. Are women leaders more attuned to that because they've been doing that juggle more of their career? I don't know. It's certainly the environment that we work in now.
Meg Escobosa: Yeah, it is. It's so amazing. Our team has been a virtual team all throughout our history of a company. And so it's really interesting to then see our clients shift to becoming a virtual environment and the reality of their lives intruding on their work more than they maybe had hoped and that how human it is to see that. And, you know, we let our hair down a little bit more, which just makes it all more easier to interact and connect.
Eileen Maus: Well, authentic leadership. When they see who you really are. I actually think employers get more out of people when they're working from home, because there's not that fine line, and it's easier to be on Zoom calls and hop out and make dinner and hop back in. My kitchen's right there.
Meg Escobosa: Well, exactly. I mean, it's the blessing and the burden, you know. Because it's true. I noticed that. Yeah, you can basically start working really early and then keep going. And so that's the problem it's sort of making yourself step away, close the computer, get back to your family or your life and, you know, create some more boundaries.
Eileen Maus: They just intertwine, right. Hey, I know when, when my daughter, I have a senior in high school, when I get the 10 minutes that she wants to engage with me, I know that phone needs to be down. I need to connect one-on-one, but to be able to pick back up. And I think the challenge for companies is how do you keep the working hours when you need to be together consistent?
Meg Escobosa: So that you're all actually able to connect live, together, in a way that everyone's on the same page and then adapt to everybody's unique schedules depending on what they are. I also have high school daughters, and so one of them is a junior. So what do you have any words of wisdom for the next generation who might be considering a career in healthcare?
Eileen Maus: I think it's the most rewarding and fulfilling business that you can be in because it combines the best of everything are doing great things for the world, in general. So you can feel good about your contribution. It's got intrigue, right? Like what's the new technology that's coming out. Challenge of having investors that are supportive and it's everything right? It's like you're dealing with the government. It just combines a little bit of, of everything. So I think no matter, like think of all the analysis that's going on in the healthcare field. Like how we're understanding each individual and we're just feeding incredible amounts of data to predict outcomes, whatever your skill set is, I just feel like in healthcare it can be used and used for good, which is what I love about it. Nothing against any other profession out there. This is just the one that I connected to and have enjoyed for too many years than I care to count. Now, I think I'm going to do this and then maybe take a longer sabbatical next time.
Meg Escobosa: Have you guys been out raising funds? Is this something you guys are doing right now? What's that been like for you?
Eileen Maus: You know, there is a term they use from the movies in selling that ABC - always be closing; the same in a startup. You're always fundraising making sure because hey, once you get, you hit one milestone, then the next milestone is going to need more money. And we have our pivotal trial done. And you know, we have a co-promotion, but we really want it to put our own sales force behind that effort and you see their success and you just want to do more. Right? You want more salespeople out there? You know, we're starting our conversations with payers for reimbursement, right? So that takes fundraising to have the experts in there to do that. So it's just the more successful you are, the faster you can go and the more money you need to do it. So that's a good thing.
Meg Escobosa: Yeah, absolutely. And what has that been like just to speak to investors? Have you noticed anything, like, are you speaking to women investors primarily, or are you hitting it across the board and have they noticed anything about those two groups?
Eileen Maus: It's really interesting, Meg, because I think of what we are, were not what med tech investors would invest in because there's the digital component, and we're not necessarily fem tech because a lot of that is direct-to-patient conduit. Oh, right. Yeah. So we don't really fit into any specific investor class or what they're really comfortable with. So we do have a lot of conversations. I would say 95% of the people we talk to are, are men. I mean really educated, smart as whips, but sometimes when you're investing, you're placing a bet, right. Especially when it's a brand-new technology on a journey that hasn't been done before. So are you going to place that bet in a space that you're more comfortable and understand more about?
To me as a female, this is such a white space. Women need this help and not a bet because it's clear, but it's those conversations. We have a fantastic group of investors that have been with the company for quite some time now and have been really lucky.
Meg Escobosa: That is great, and hopefully you don't need to spend too much time defining and educating investors on what your offer is and what product is, but it sounds like, yeah, there still is some of that groundwork that needs to be laid.
Eileen Maus: And the beautiful thing about we've been selling to OBGYNs for the past year. Now I can just say call a couple of the GNs, right? It's so much better to come out of their mouth than it is from mine to understand the impact it has on their practice. That's I think that's the comfort they need and what they need to hear.
Meg Escobosa: Do you guys have an advisory board as part of your organization?
Eileen Maus: Well, we have like, medical advisory board that Mandy, our CMO uses when she's putting together clinical trials. And then we have more of a corporate advisory board. So lots of different, and people are just wonderful, generous with their time. Right. We have a lot of clinicians that are like, “I've been waiting for something like this,” and just freely will share their thoughts and expertise and how it's impacting their patients with us.
Meg Escobosa: Stepping back. We're just going to pull the lens away from healthcare for a moment, just to just, what are some other things in your life or areas of interest that aren't necessarily related to your work that you think make you who you are and influence how you work?
Eileen Maus: I think Meg, make no bones about it. If you want to be successful in a startup, you eat, sleep and breathe it, and I'm in a fortunate phase of my life. My husband's retired. So now he does the Target and Costco and public runs. And I just about cook dinner. I only have one left at home and she's pretty independent. So I happened to be at a time that I can, I mean, I go to sleep thinking about work.
I dream about work and my feet hit the floor, I'm working. And I know that. And when I retired or took my sabbatical, however, you want to look at it, to come back, I did not do lightly. And it was a family meeting. Like I'm not going to be there for everything because I don't want to say women can have it all. Cause it's really hard to have it all at the same time. And you better be really careful when you decide to start a family that you talk to, some women know how they do it. I had nine au-pairs, like my girls were raised by and I have a son he's 10 years older, but my girls were raised by au-pairs and it had such a fantastic influence on their life.
Right. So did I feel guilty about it at times? Heck yes, but did it make him into the strong, confident woman they are today? Then 18 year old from another country who didn't speak English as their first language can come over here and do everything they did and learn everything they did. That's an amazing experience. Is that the way I was raised? Heck no. Did my mom give me grief about every moment of my life pursuing a career. Yes, she did.
Meg Escobosa: So funny. It's so strange, right? Cause she wants you to be happy, but then to challenge the fact that you're pursuing a career, it's interesting, isn't it?
Eileen Maus: Well, you think about these, I'm sure yous are the same way. Super smart kids who are so dedicated to their schoolwork and have such ability to achieve great things. Let's hope society balances it so they can, and I look at my son and you can’t find a more supportive husband. Right. And I'm like, gosh, I hope my girls are so lucky.
Meg Escobosa: No, I agree. And I remember thinking too, cause I had a little chapter, short chapter where I wasn't working very much and I thought to myself, you know, actually it's really important for me as a mom of daughters that I want them to see me working and doing something I'm really interested in and that I care about and that I'm, you know, have my own life outside of them. Actually, that was another important message. I wanted them to see, like, you guys are important, but you're not everything and it's a strange message.
Eileen Maus: Meg, no. So true. So true. You don't want them to be the giving tree, right? They've got to be fertilizing. It's so, so true.
Meg Escobosa: So what do you hope to tackle next, if anything? I know you're, I mean, you're newly into this role, so it may not be really, this is what you're tackling, growing this business?
Eileen Maus: Like I said earlier, like a pack of pills and a leva®. That is my vision for the future, that this is just part of women's health as they journey throughout their life.
And I always, I believe in destiny. Right. And when I was on my sabbatical and I retired, I was very open to if the right thing comes in front of me, I'll look at it. Like you never say no, but how lucky have I been to have the right people, the right product and such a passionate group twice in my career.
I don't know, Meg. Maybe I'll just like travel to Tuscany and do some yoga and walk my dog and know that I’ve helped women fight cervical cancer, and they don't have to have heavy periods of, they don't want to deal with that. And gosh, I'd like to put Depends out of business.
Meg Escobosa: We’re just thrilled to have this opportunity to learn more about your path, the product you’ve launched, the unique approach that you’ve taken to get it approved, and thrilled to have this change to talk to you. Thanks, Eileen!
Eileen Maus: I've really enjoyed it, Meg, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Hopefully we'll get some more women some help.
Meg Escobosa: Thanks for joining us for The Game-Changing Women of Healthcare, a production of The Krinsky Company. Today’s episode was produced by Calvin Marty, Chelsea Ho, Wendy Nielsen, and me, Meg Escobosa. This podcast is engineered, edited, mixed, and scored by Calvin Marty.
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