Chiyo

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Jennifer Jolorte and I always had the big dream 💫 to build Chiyo into *the* personalized & integrative food-as-medicine (my whole focus prior!) platform to guide the next generation of mothers through each life transition. However, with that dream also comes with listening intently to our customer on the phasing of the build, and ruthless prioritization of resources. We're finally ready and thrilled to announce a few new team members to get us to the next level: Brooke Berns is our new COO: As Chief of Staff at The Athletic (content & technology startups) and most recently running GTM Strategy & Ops at Papa (healthcare startup), she gets where we're going and how we'll get there. She'll be running our clinic partnerships & practitioner program, reach out to say 👋🏻 if you're interested in bringing us into your practice! She's also a dear friend, one of our early angel investors, and has been cheering us on on the sidelines. We're pumped to now have her in the arena with us. Gabrielle Rinne is our new Research Fellow: our nutrition program efficacy studies were always a goal for us, and we can't wait to kick this off. ⚡ Her prior research experience has focused on biopsychosocial factors (nutrition being a component) in the prenatal period through childhood as a sensitive period for prevention and early intervention. We can't wait to share the work that comes out of this. Thank you Kristen Lee for the connection! Nicole Eid is joining as our new Strategy & Ops Associate: she'll be supporting various teams to get new programs up and running (more to come here 😉) and helping with the transition as our all-star Chief of Staff extern Rebecca Harrington rolls off next month. Here we go team! 🚀 🚀 🚀 P.S. We're always on the look out for good talent, so feel free to email team@wearechiyo.com for when the time is right.

This is wild! 🤯 I was feeling emotional after seeing this headline in Fortune because it's often felt like an uphill battle for this type of care -- albeit a norm in other countries -- to be taken seriously in the US. At least from the traditional gatekeepers. Thankfully, we weren't deterred. When you know what's available in other countries, and compare it to how we care for women in the US, it's hard to let things continue status quo. It was what we wanted, what our early clients wanted (we had enough preorders to open! and The New York Times + Bon Appetit shortly after), and we knew it could be a viable business. …but we also knew we needed R&D investment and a path to accessibility — this requires funding. Have you seen the investment stats for female founders? + minorities? + building a product specifically for the maternal journey? It’s easier to put an idea like this into a box, to limit its potential. Even when it’s a glaringly obvious of the unmet need. And when you solve the hardest problem first, you earn the right to care for other parts of the journey. Solving for the hardest problem first means creating a custom solution for the unique stages and symptoms of the fertility to postpartum journey, not a retrofitted one. This means learning from the best of other cultures, and bridging it with the latest nutritional science. It means honoring the journey as you would for an athlete preparing for the big match — with planning, intention and recovery. I wish we’d invest in women’s health like we do for the sneaker resale market (not an original thought, but a mind-blowing one from Sara Mauskopf that I'll link in comments). You can chase the big markets, or you can build it - of course, with enough signal! Luckily, we had some early investors who saw our potential and maternal health partners 🙏🏻 who opened their doors to help us fight the good fight. And most importantly, our clients who were willing to take a chance on us and help us grow to support more families. One foot in front of the other. Thank you Fortune Emma Hinchliffe for seeing the need and the opportunity that’s been severely overlooked. We’re just getting started 🚀 And have to acknowledge the incredible trailblazers who've laid the groundwork that allows companies like ours to run! Some we've collaborated with, others we're inspired by - thank you for what you do. Simmone Taitt Elaine Purcell Kimberly Ross Suk Park Boram Nam Behzad Varamini, Ph.D. Hannah Varamini Alex Taylor Sarah Hardy Allie Egan Alex Friedman Heng Ou Hilary Coles Carolyn Witte Felicity Yost Erica Chidi Gina Bartasi Afton Vechery Halle Tecco, MPH, MBA Kate Ryder Jill Koziol Tammy Sun Allison Whalen Blessing Adesiyan Reshma Saujani Eve Rodsky Chiyo

We started Chiyo somewhat accidentally. Accidentally as in I had the idea, thought it needed to exist, convinced Jennifer Jolorte to join me and built the scaffolding in an excited frenzy. All I thought about was getting it off the ground. But then in the most fortunate series of events, we become a top Google search result ranking overnight, and were featured in NY Times and Bon Appetit in our first quarter. That’s when things got serious. I still had 1.5 years of graduate school — I hadn’t yet thought about what needed to be true for me to take on building the business. I dragged my feet because I knew it’d be hard, and I knew the odds would be stacked against us in every dimension. Even more so, I was worried about compromising my values to prioritize profit above all else, knowing I’d have to raise capital to build my vision (incentive structures drive everything!). Can you really build a business that balances profit and impact? Especially in such a delicate space as maternal health, I was convinced I couldn’t. It took an agonizing, windy 25 pg final paper in my Harvard Kennedy School Social Entrepreneurship class with Stephanie Khurana & Jim Bildner to realize, I wouldn’t know unless I tried. Since then, I’ve been lucky to witness and learn from incredible trailblazers like Sarah Hardy Laura Modi Kim Gebbia Chappell, Jane Baecher, Carine Carmy and countless more. Now I know there are many ways to make waves, and impact can be prioritized when you have the right leaders at the helm💪🏽. I’m so proud to partner with their organizations for our first campaign — Who’s Mothering the Mother: https://lnkd.in/gt2vyBeE We started Chiyo because we couldn’t believe the lack of support in the US for postpartum recovery. In other countries, there’s a holistic regimen for a mother’s recovery after birth (thank you Heng Ou for exposing the US to this). With this campaign, our goal is to bring awareness to the postpartum experience, normalize postpartum care plans, and make it easier for new mothers to find their communities earlier. Let’s dream big about what we deserve and let’s get others into the fold. It takes a village. Join us in writing a letter to a mother: https://lnkd.in/grr9-sg8. 💌 And we sweeten the deal with a chance to win our 💫 dream postpartum care package: https://lnkd.in/gnbSU85x. It’s what we wish for every mother, and we’re fighting to make this happen. It starts with a cultural movement to bring policy change.

Djenaba Johnson-Jones of Hudson Kitchen is a true gem in this industry. From that fateful day when we happened upon her space, to the many ways she supports us today - her operations and insight has been key to make a lot of our goals come true. Give it a listen!