Sound Body, Sound Mind Series: Lilu CEO Talks Leveraging Tech to Improve Maternal Health

World Health Day, an annual campaign from the World Health Organization, recognizes the health and wellness needs of individuals in multinational communities big and small. “World Health Day is a chance to celebrate health and remind world leaders that everyone should be able to access the health care they need, when and where they need it,” the WHO says. “The focus will be on equity and solidarity — on raising the bar for health for everyone, everywhere by addressing gaps in services, and leaving no one behind.”

With that in mind, Jopwell is highlighting the work of people in the medical field who are honing in on those gaps and creating solutions. Bringing our best selves to work is impossible without government and company policies that ensure our bodies and minds are in good health. One entrepreneur who is dedicating herself to the task is Adriana Catalina Vázquez Ortiz, the co-founder and CEO of a startup called Lilu. The company’s first product, the Lilu Massage Bra, aims to bring breast-pumping technology into the 21st century and bring more people into the conversation.

“This piece of equipment, which is so indispensable to moms, is so outdated and has fallen far behind in terms of what technology can and should be doing,” she says. “I felt disappointed and a little bit curious and thought, I’m sure there’s something we can do better.”

Vázquez Ortiz and her co-founder, Sujay Suresh Kumar, launched a Kickstarter to help fund and manufacture their prototype. Ahead, she talks about how her upbringing in Mexico City, her tech background, and her deep dives into issues around breastfeeding and breast-pumping led her to the work she does now.

How does the Lilu Massage Bra work?

It’s good that you ask off the bat because there’s a lot of misconceptions: Do you wear it all day? Do you massage and then pump? The point of this bra is to pair breast massage with pumping. The bra’s functionality is twofold: to automate breast massage so that moms can pump more milk and so that it is also a truly hands-free product.

Hands-free pumping bras have already been hand-made by many moms who cut holes into their support bras. When we built the product, we wanted to find a way to build in a massage feature. Breast massages have been proven to increase breast output and many hands-free pumping bras aren’t fully hands-free because moms still end up having to do manual massage [to stimulate lactation]. Automating that massage component enables moms to work or multitask and do other things.

Are you a mom yourself? (You don’t have to be to care about this issue!) But there is a perception that this is a domain for parents, and women.

I’m not a mom myself and that’s a question I get quite frequently: “Why are you working on this?” My co-founder is a guy and many people find it surprising that he’s so invested in this, but it’s the same for both of us. The further we go down this path, the more I have to go out and talk to hundreds of moms. We’re [designing a product] for real moms who pump in very different scenarios and who might be having their first babies or second babies so generally, there is a ton for us to learn.

I have always been involved in technology and I have a background in software. I was also the person my grandmother would call whenever her radio or TV was broken. I saw technology and tech products as a way to make our lives easier, so, when I heard about breast pumps, I really had no idea how outdated the tech was.

Initially, it was just an academic exercise for me: “Let’s imagine what it would be like to make a better breast pump or make breast pump technology different.” I started interviewing and talking to moms, and what was initially five interviews turned into twenty or thirty. Moms even began suggesting that I interview them while they were pumping. The more I looked into it, the more I felt something needed to change. These moms invited me into their homes and offices, and really opened their hearts about how challenging and disappointing their experiences had been. It was a recurring theme --even moms who didn’t have milk supply issues explained the process was tedious. I don’t think anyone can ever say, “Oh, I loved breast pumping!” That struck a chord with me. Pumping may not be an enjoyable experience but it shouldn’t be difficult. It shouldn’t be painful. It shouldn’t be stressful.

Since this started out as an “academic exercise” for you, were you still in school when you got the idea for Lilu?

I was getting my master’s degree in product design at the University of Pennsylvania and taking a robotics class with a lot of electrical engineering students. My co-founder was getting his master’s in electrical engineering, so we met as classmates. We had paired up randomly for a semester to do projects together and discovered that we had a mutual interest in medical devices. I had already started looking into how to make it easier for moms to return to work from maternity leave, and was researching breast pumps and other technology. In the class we shared, I saw a video of a robot that grabbed a small apple or an orange. It was a soft, squishy robot. At that moment it just clicked! Breast massage and compression can make a big difference a big difference in the breast pumping experience.

I still remember the day I told my co-founder about my idea. I started putting the concepts together and one day, when we were talking to the professor, I was like, “I have this idea…” My professor was immediately taken aback. He said, “This makes perfect sense. My wife just went through this problem and had so many issues with her breast pump.” It’s a vicious cycle because once your milk supply starts going down, it keeps going down. But the opposite is also true: the more milk that’s pumped from the breast, the more milk is produced. Because the professor had just gone through that experience with his wife and child, we were like, “Okay, let’s give this a try.” At that point, my co-founder’s reaction was, “I don’t know what a breast pump is…”

Four days later, he emerged from a deep Google search and then messaged me saying, “Just tell me what to do and we’ll start prototyping.” I replied, “Sure!”

I love his reaction! Maternal health has become a hot topic in the U.S., though the conversation around breastfeeding and pumping differs globally. Why do you think it’s important that people become more informed about this issue?

I grew up in Mexico and when I think about all the things that have to happen for a child or anyone to have a start in life, a lot of it is determined by a child’s health. There are basic things we need to have in place as a foundation for them to have a chance. When I started learning all this, some of which can be controversial, I thought, I wasn’t breastfed. I was formula-fed. But if I was a parent, I’d probably breastfeed.

There is enough research that shows that a breastfed child is at reduced risk for diabetes, ear and gastrointestinal infections, and at a lower risk of obesity. Controversies aside, breastfeeding does sound like one of the best things we can do for babies and future generations. But how can we expect parents to do that when the technology, the cultural support, and logistical systems are not there? We tell people that breastfeeding is the best thing you can do for your child for 100,000 health reasons — but we leave moms to figure it own on their own without the technology and without good maternity leave policies.There’s a very contradictory message we’re giving women and parents in this modern day.

While I can’t necessarily change legislation or change corporate leave policies on a grander scale, what I can do is try to change technology and the conversation around it. We’ve had the opportunity to present at audiences as large as TechCrunch Disrupt, at a lot of MBA classes where we’re trying to recruit interns, and more. Half the time, we’re presenting to rooms that are 70% male and we’ve had an amazing response. A lot of people say, “I never imagined how hard this was. It never even crossed my mind. What can we do to help?” If nothing else, we’ve informed thousands of people that we have to be more supportive of generations of new moms — and also have full respect and admiration for the millions of moms that came before us.

What has been the reception to your product?

We’ve had a couple of moms that have pumped with it for three, four, or six months, and we’ve been hearing from them about how much of a difference this has made. That’s why we’re doing this. That’s why we believe in it. We know that so many moms and parents struggle with pumping, and maybe moms that are about to quit breastfeeding or breast pumping will give it one more chance. Hopefully they’ll say, “I was about to quit and this product helped me stick with it” — perhaps not for as long as they wanted but for longer than they were before.

In all honesty, that’s why the price point of the product can be a sore point. We never wanted to make a product that’s exclusive to just a certain demographic but at the same time, it has been really challenging to fundraise in this space. Fundraising is challenging for all founders, but there is something [particular] about women’s health and breast pumping products. We’ve heard many times that it’s a “niche” problem. There’s a company called Elvie that just raised their Series B round, and I read that as they were fundraising, they’d point out that women are half of the population. These are not niche problems. These are not niche products.

What do you want the impact of your company to be beyond the product itself?

In Mexico, especially when I was growing up, the majority of the country was and still is, Catholic. My parents are Protestants, though, and they did a lot of work in indigenous Protestant communities, providing legal support to families and churches and helping them understand their legal rights because there was a lot of misinformation. We traveled around to different states and really remote areas, including the mountains in Oaxaca, Chiapas, and Puebla, and I came to see that it was really beautiful work. You don’t fully understand it as a little kid but now I think back and go, Oh my gosh. Even though I’m not doing that same kind of work with Lilu, their example instilled in me a desire to give back through whatever company I work for, this one or the next.