Women I Want You to Know by Andrea L. Johnston™

Closing the Maternal Health Gap: Underfunded, Understudied and Expecting More

• Andrea L. Johnston • Season 1 • Episode 10

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There is a moment in every career when the challenge stops being someone else's problem to solve. For Aimee Corso, Senior Vice President of Growth at Mirvie, that moment happened at the intersection of the most underfunded corner of medicine and one of the most consequential windows of a woman's life: pregnancy. 

In this episode of Women I Want You to Know by Andrea L. Johnston™ Podcast, Andrea and Aimee unpack why pregnancy is not just a joyous event but a powerful diagnostic window into a woman's future health, how RNA-powered diagnostics can predict complications like preeclampsia before symptoms appear and what it looks like to bet your career on changing a system where 80% of maternal deaths are still preventable.

Aimee has spent 20+ years taking what science proves and making sure it actually reaches people. She built that skill in the lab. Sharpened it at agencies and across two of Amazon’s largest healthcare initiatives. Tested it as a Chief Marketing Officer. And then made the boldest call of her career: walking away from one of the most resourced platforms in healthcare to join a pre-commercial startup in pregnancy health.

Not because it was the safe decision. Because she saw where the science is going and who is finally funding it.


In this episode, listeners will hear:

  • Personalized pregnancy care starts with data – and data gives you agency. Pregnancy is not just a joyous event: it’s a diagnostic window. The more you know about your own body, the more control you have over your outcomes, during pregnancy and beyond, before a crisis happens.
  • The US maternal health crisis is preventable. 80% of maternal deaths don't have to happen. Awareness and advocacy are the starting line.
  • Advocate loudly. Women of color are disproportionately not heard when they report symptoms. Every woman needs to know her biology and push back on a system that defaults to generic risk guidelines.
  • Translation is as important as the science itself. Healthcare needs more than researchers. It needs communicators, marketers and operators to truly have an impact. Don't count yourself out because you're not a clinician.
  • Career passion is not cliché — it's purposeful. When layoffs happen, companies pivot and startups lose funding, passion is the mechanism that keeps you moving. Build your career around it on purpose.
  • Block time for self-care.  Don’t rely on your good intentions. Put restoration in your calendar or it doesn't happen.


Resources & Connections


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SPEAKER_00

Pregnancy is like a real-time stress test for your body. You know, it gives us insights into the cardiovascular, metabolic, and immune systems. And so it's actually one of the best predictors we have of lifetime health and what the future health profile may be for the mom and actually for the baby.

SPEAKER_01

Hi everyone, I'm Andrea Johnston, entrepreneur, communications executive, and believer in the power of women and the unlimited potential in all of us. On Women I Want You To Know, we shine a light on real women who are breaking barriers, blazing new trails, and redefining what leadership looks like. These are real conversations about ambition, drive, difficult choices, and impact. The kind you won't hear anywhere else. Because every woman's story has the power to propel another from dream to reality. This is Women I Want You To Know. There is a moment in every career when the opportunity stops being someone else's problem to solve. For today's guest, that moment happened at the intersection of the most underfunded corner of medicine and the most consequential window of a woman's health. Hi everyone, and welcome back to Women I Want You To Know. I'm Andrea Johnston. And I'll be honest with you, I've spent most of my career in and around healthcare. I've had two children, and I did not fully understand what those pregnancies were telling my body about my future health until I sat down with today's guest. That's not a gap in my attention. That's a gap in the system. It's exactly the gap her company is closing. Amy Corso has spent 20 years doing one thing exceptionally well: taking what science proves and making sure it actually reaches people. She built that skill at agencies, she sharpened it at Amazon across two of its largest healthcare initiatives, she tested it as a chief marketing officer, and then she made the boldest call of her career, walking away from one of the most resourced platforms in healthcare to join a pre-commercial startup in pregnancy health. Not because it was the safe decision, but because she saw where the science is going. She understood that women are now beginning to fund solutions to their own problems, and that this was the moment. In this conversation, we talk about what it takes to read an industry that well, why the translation of science is as important as the science itself, and what it means to bet your next chapter on a space the system has ignored for far too long. Let's dive in. Amy, thank you so much for being here. Thanks so much for having me, Andrea. It's so great to be here. Excellent. Well, I think there's so much to dive into. And given that our audience is largely women, many of them moms, they've all gone through challenges. And then there are some that are not yet mothers, but maybe hope to be one day. So talk to us about what you mean by pregnancy health.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, by pregnancy health, I mean the full picture of health during pregnancy, not just the baby's growth, but the mother's biology, her risks, and the outcomes for both of them. Pregnancy is really a stress test for the body. And, you know, having been pregnant twice, I didn't really understand this when I was pregnant. And so it's so important for me personally to make sure other women know, and that this becomes part of the healthcare system's understanding, which is pregnancy is like a real-time stress test for your body. You know, it gives us insights into the cardiovascular, metabolic, and immune systems. And so it's actually one of the best predictors we have of lifetime health and what the future health profile may be for the mom and actually for the baby. And so it's both immediate safety that we need to be looking at, but also where does it fit into long-term prevention?

SPEAKER_01

I feel like being at the age that I am and also having had two children, this has been an area that's been long neglected. I was very surprised in my own pregnancy journey, just how little was known and just how poorly equipped the healthcare system really is to support women through pregnancy and to collect some of the data that you talked about. So why is this even an issue?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's a great question. And sadly, I'd like to say, I mean, your daughters are about the age of my kids. And so I wish, you know, to say it's been different since we were both pregnant, but the reality is it's not. And it may even be worse, which is probably one of the few areas of healthcare where, you know, things are getting worse and not better with innovation and science available to everyone. You know, I'm passionate about global maternal health issues, but really the US is at a crisis that's both tragic and in many cases preventable. I mean, you know, there's a I think there's a lot of reason why bias has happened. I mean, beginning with the fact that women weren't included in clinical trials and that mandate didn't come until 1993, which, you know, is really not that long ago. But in reality, it it does relate to both systemic racism issues that exist in maternal health, and then also just the fact that women have been underrepresented. And so while pregnancy is, you know, one of the most common occurrences, we just haven't invested enough in understanding it. And so, you know, I'm encouraged about, you know, the trends that I think are turning this around in the awareness. But there's a lot of reasons to unpack why, you know, the results are what they are today, which is the US has got the worst results of any industrialized nation, which, you know, is is hard to admit. It's it's not a stat I like referring to.

SPEAKER_01

No, it's actually really mind-blowing. And I think we have some of the most expensive pregnancy-related care and delivery-related care, which is like a whole nother episode of fun. Exactly. But I really admired your career because you have not had the typical path when it comes to healthcare communications. I've always thought of you as someone who is very much at the forward edge, whether it was digital health, where whether it was going to something like an Amazon health. Like you've always been thinking about what's next. So it gives me hope that you have now chosen to focus in pregnancy health because I feel like, okay, that's where the next wave is. We're going to focus on women's health. We're going to focus on pregnancy health. So tell us about the company that you've joined and what the focus is there and how you're tackling pregnancy health.

SPEAKER_00

Well, thanks so much. I really appreciate that. Yeah, I feel from a career perspective, it's, you know, I actually started at the bench and thought I would do science. And then I quickly learned that the science doesn't matter unless, you know, you can translate it, right? Discovery is the only the beginning. And how do you cross that chasm to real-world utility? And so that's how I, you know, communications was such an amazing career to help bring innovation to market. And I really became, you know, focused on how do you, how do you take what's scientifically possible and make sure it actually reaches patients. And you're right, I think for women's health today, and specifically pregnancy for me, it was this opportunity to really go where the stakes are so high and so immediate and have such impact. And so for me, you know, joining Mirvy, which is we're focused on looking at seeing if we can discover the underlying biology, that then with that knowledge, you can go ahead and predict complications before they happen, you know, give the molecular data that's required to build therapeutics. You know, we can actually do something about it. And so, you know, always have that science background, always focused on that translation of healthcare innovation. And so it was a really easy choice. Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment in some ways, but it's really exciting to be at a place in a time where we really can look at pregnancy not as a one size fits all condition, but really look at personalization. And I think that is what's going to change this trajectory we're on because, you know, we've seen this in so many other conditions, cancer as an example. I mean, if you think about just where we are with breast cancer, you know, it wasn't that long ago. It was just viewed as a common condition where we didn't have, you know, personalized therapeutics. And once we started saying, well, let's look at the genes, let's understand cancer, we changed the outcomes for women. I believe we can do that in pregnancy as well.

SPEAKER_01

It's interesting to think about it the way that you just articulated it, because I think for a lot of people, especially people who have never been pregnant, they think of it just as the joyous occasion that it is. And they don't think about some of the very significant stresses. As you said earlier, it is the ultimate stress test for the body, but also the numerous things. I mean, I honestly didn't know until I had kids just how risky and how many things can go wrong or how many ways your health can deteriorate. Because, you know, I was just so excited to be pregnant and be able to have a child. So I think your point about the fact that there are these other aspects of pregnancy, you know, to think about breast cancer, people immediately think, oh, that needs to be treated. But people, I don't think, bring that mindset to pregnancy that there may be things that need to be treated. There may be things that need to be learned and addressed. How is your company taking that on?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, well, and it's, you know, I think it's important to also, I mean, you know, I feel like when I was pregnant, it was very in vogue to talk about like, let's not medicalize pregnancy, let's make it that joyous occasion. And I think there's a balance, right? Because at the end of the day, I mean, it is a natural biological process. And I think it's important to look at it in a way that, to your point, it there's a lot of bad things that can happen, but but really just like any part of our body, it's really the more information we have, the more control we have and the more agency we have over what those outcomes will be. And I think that that's the subtle shift that's happening, which is that if if you have data and you understand what's happening and you understand and your clinician understands, you know, that pregnancy progress, then it doesn't have to be a crisis at the end. And that's what, you know, Mirvi's focused on by using, you know, we've started with pregnancy complication of preeclampsia, which is one of the most common pregnancy complications. It's also the most common reason for preterm birth, which happens in about 10% of pregnancies, which, you know, is a stat that I think is too frequent. But it's pretty simple because if we can predict it before it happens, then there's steps that we can take. And they're very simple. It's taking low dose aspirin, it's blood pressure monitoring, it's some lifestyle modifications. Those things don't have to be medical interventions. They're, you know, they're basic, and they really can change the trajectory for pregnancy so that it doesn't end up in a crisis, right? So it doesn't have to feel that I I have a you know a disease. It's really about being informed and then being proactive. Certainly there are, you know, very serious complications that can happen that do result in hospitalization or you know, really that need for significant medical intervention, but there's a lot that can just be part of a healthy pregnancy. And I think we have to shift that narrative because otherwise we're just going to continue to, you know, wait till symptoms happen and then react.

SPEAKER_01

And how are you able to identify the potential for something like proclamsia? Like what are the factors that you're looking at, or what is it in the DNA that sort of highlights this potential?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So what our scientists who are truly amazing have been working for almost eight years to get to this point have discovered is first of all, we're actually looking at RNA, which is the, you know, tells you how the pregnancy, the the developing biology of the pregnancy, so what genes are turned on and then what proteins are going to be encoded from there. So, you know, certainly there's been some research, and I think there will continue to be research to look at DNA. Is there something about me genetically that that's going to impede my pregnancy from, you know, progressing in the way that it should? But what's exciting is today, you know, we can look at how the placenta is developing, how the mom's immune system is reacting. And so what we've discovered is really the ability to look at the genes that encode that healthy placental development. And, you know, short of removing the placenta and, you know, biopsing it, you're not going to know, right? So this is where RNA is such an important predictor. And so getting that data early in the pregnancy, you know, roughly 18 to 22 weeks when far enough along that the proteins are there, but you know, not so far along that you can't do something about it, that's where we believe that, you know, kind of the magic is going to happen. And the more we discover about those molecular signatures, the more we're starting to be able to have a you know huge data set that allows data predictions around what pregnancy is going to develop, you know, certain conditions.

SPEAKER_01

Do you feel like testing and earlier diagnostics are making enough headway in medicine? We, you know, spoke to a patient advocacy leader who deals with a rare disease, you know, that is genetically based. And then we've dealt, we've spent time with a woman who's the CEO of a diagnostic company. And so I continue to be awed by the potential of how diagnostics and the information, like what you've described, can truly inform so many areas of health and medicine. But I struggle with are people getting enough access to it? Is the healthcare system making it and creating enough awareness about how diagnostics can really inform and lead to better health without having to wait to your point to treat something?

SPEAKER_00

I mean, it's clear the science is so far ahead of the system. It is just the reality. But I do think that we can get there. Absolutely. I mean, if you look at rare diseases, right now, cancer, I think is the area where there's been the most success in bringing, you know, diagnostics and molecular, you know, understanding of disease. But we we have to do more. I mean, it is just it's the flip though from a system that is reactive and really, you know, oriented around economics of pain for treatment versus a system that is oriented and paying for prevention. You know, very early in my career, I was very passionate about using diagnostics and you know, our own biology as a means to reduce the cost of health care. But a few decades later, we're not here yet. But we have to be. This system, we know it's running out of money. And I think this is the path forward. That's very exciting.

SPEAKER_01

And I hope that's the case, not only for us, but for our daughters. Like I think, you know, we each have a daughter. You know, hopefully, if they decide they want to have children, that will be available to them. And I hope that they can have the kind of care that you've described and the opportunity to have insight into, you know, what their health during their pregnancy could look like so that they aren't forced into reaction mode if the unexpected occurs. Do you have any sense of sort of if you were to predict kind of timing of when these things could actually impact pregnancy health and pregnancy care? Like what are we thinking? Is it the next five years, the next decade? What do you anticipate?

SPEAKER_00

I'm rooting for the five years. I'm realistic about, you know, the journey that it is to bring innovation to market. But I I think what is interesting specifically about pregnancy is there is awareness growing that, well, one, we can no longer tolerate the statistics, right? You know, 80% of maternal deaths are preventable. I mean, that is just a staggering statistic, right? You have disparity across states, right? So the states that are suffering the most, they are actually leading because they have no choice. They have to lean in. So I think that's super important. I think the other trend that is going to push this forward is women themselves, right? More women are standing up and and you know, asking the questions, looking into you know, care pathways for themselves. They're asking the questions. I mean, pre-clampsy is a really interesting one because today the guidelines basically end up putting everybody at risk. If you're 35, if you had IVF, if you're black, if your BMI is high, none of these guidelines truly are predictive, though. And so, you know, that leaves both women and care teams saying, I don't know how to predict risk. And so I think with the science available, we're gonna see more change, especially since it's, you know, the the interventions today are are low cost, right? I think when you have high cost intervention, it it puts a drag on that adoption cycle. So I'm hopeful. I mean, I think we don't have a choice. I think what the system is starting to realize too is that again, pregnancy health is lifetime health. So you you have a window into the future, but also, you know, birth trauma creates issues that just persist, right? Families that begin in crisis have a hard time getting out of that crisis. And so the impact of having healthy births is well understood to be not just care for that family, but but honestly, it has a ripple effect in public health.

SPEAKER_01

Can you expand on that a little bit when you talk about pregnancy health is indicative of you know broader health and how important it is from a healthy birth perspective, and anything that's traumatic in that can have longer-term ramifications. I would love to just expand on that a little bit to understand what that means.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I think there's, you know, two sides of this story. So looking at pregnancy complications as a predictor of future health, Europe is leading the US in data here, but there's been a lot of data that, for example, if a woman has pre-eclampsia and experiences that the risk of going on to have hypertension or metabolic disease or even neurologic disease like stroke or epilepsy, it's just higher. You know, I've seen some studies out of Europe that look at, you know, incidence of adult onset epilepsy is almost six times higher risk if you had pre-eclampsia. It's a pretty scary statistic. You know, I personally have friends who had pre-eclampsia and they've had early onset heart failure. You know, they're, I mean, they're doing okay, but these are things. And if you think about it, you know, I know personally, you know, they often ask you, you know, have you had pregnancies? Have you had a live birth? How many children do you have? But people don't really ask you, did you have pregnancy complications? I think they're doing better now. I just had a doctor actually put that on a forum, but I hadn't seen that before. So, you know, it's it's really, as I said, it's a stress test. So, you know, similar to how you to go to a, you know, kind of mayo whole health physical and get a stress test, pregnancy is a stress test. So it gives us a lot of insights. Trauma is another interesting conversation, though. So when you talk to a family, a pregnant person that's had a traumatic birth, it does create not only the physical health issues, but their mental health issues. And when we look at maternal health, mental health issues are contributing to maternal death. And so, you know, if you think about starting off a family with this mental health burden, that does have repercussions for years for the little baby as well as the mom and even, you know, caregivers, the the dad, the grandparents who stepped in. And so it is has a ripple effect. And I think that's an issue that just is not talked about enough.

SPEAKER_01

I agree. And I'm really glad you helped clarify that because I think that many women out there can really relate to and would nod their heads in understanding of yes, that is absolutely a real lived experience and something we need to do better about addressing. When you think about women's health broadly, like I get excited on LinkedIn, I see these posts, this fund has been raised and it's 100% dedicated to, you know, women's health. Melinda French Gates, like she's donating all this money to women's health. What keeps you excited and optimistic in women's health in addition to the incredible work that your company is doing?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, well, the trends I like seeing is, and you just mentioned it, women investing in women's health. Like many areas, the women representing themselves is required. I think you can talk to many founders. You yourself are a female founder within the healthcare industry, and I'm sure you've seen this. There have been historic issues of women's health underfunded because the people funding were men or were not representative of the population who could be served. And that's not a ding against the men. It's it's just the reality, right? I think the recent JP Morgan Health meeting is a great example, huge turnout for women's health. But, you know, there's still a gap between the events that are happening outside of the physical JP Morgan conference and the conversations happening there. So I'm optimistic that the shift with women leading funds and more women having more economic power. You know, if we look at and talk about the great wealth transfer, I'm really excited about the statistics that show, you know, women are poised, inherit, and really have economic power in the future. I think that is what is going to help make the transformation that that, you know, is good for everyone, not just women.

SPEAKER_01

I also share your excitement about that and in the work that I do with women founders, just seeing the number of women starting businesses and seeing their desire to take control over their own destiny, not only financially, but in so many other facets of life. And I think that that is going to be the game changer because really having control over your destiny is control over your health and your body and how you nourish your body, how you move your body, how you create time and space in your life for those things, how you interact with and bring voice to your interactions with the medical system. To ensure that you are an advocate for your own health. There are so many elements to that. And I do get excited because I think as women get more confident in their ability to take ownership and to use their voice, the more incredible things that will happen to also benefit society. Because that's the great thing about, you know, women being moms. I think they have a tendency to bring that kind of broader perspective to all of these conversations so that it's not just advocacy for themselves, but it's often for, you know, the broader community, the broader family units. So I think that that can have a ripple and domino effect for the benefit of many things. Do you think that when you sort of look back at your career journey and some of the different things that you've done? You've been on the agency side, the company side. As I mentioned earlier, you've done some non-traditional things in healthcare. Now you're in pregnancy health. What are sort of the key takeaways for you from that career journey? And what would you say to other women who are going down the healthcare path or the healthcare comms path?

SPEAKER_00

I think it's amazing. So I encourage everybody to do it any chance I get. You know, for me, it's always been about following passion. I used to joke, and I don't really joke so much about it anymore. It's true, and it's just what we were just talking about. I mean, for me, health has always been a very clear value prop. You know, when you have health, you have so much. You have wealth, you have joy. And so, you know, when I started early in my career and, you know, I had kind of some consumer work and healthcare work, I used to joke like the value prop, like, you know, dead or alive, healthy or happy, or, you know, I love shoes, but you know, it's a little hard to come up with the value prop as to why these are so expensive. So I think finding passion is super important to success in a career, right? You know, things aren't going to always go your way, you know, layoffs will happen, companies will change directions, startups will not get the funding. But if you can spend your time each day focused on something that matters to you, for me, that's always been ultimately where I derive joy and, you know, found my peace and motivation. So for me, healthcare brings that. And so I really think it's such an important industry. And there's so many different facets, right? I started thinking I was going to be a scientist, maybe a doctor. And then I found healthcare communications and healthcare marketing. And I spend a lot of time with kids who are pursuing STEM. And, you know, they realize like, I'm really great at math, I'm great at biology, but I don't actually enjoy the doing the science. And when I talk to them about healthcare communications or working in adjacent roles to a scientist, it opens up doors that, you know, I know no one told me about because, you know, I was on this like biology track. And so I think there's so much. And I think the more that we can think about health as an industry that needs different types of backgrounds and different types of people that have different lived experiences, the better off it is for everybody.

SPEAKER_01

I love that. And I hope a lot of the women listening will take that to heart because finding your passion, finding your purpose really does make sort of everything else fall into line. And as cliche sometimes as that may sound, or as much as an Instagram, you know, inspiration moment, it is true. It really does change the game. And I feel like it changes how we show up because we are that much more committed and we there's a fulfillment to it that is often hard to explain. And when you are working in healthcare and that connection back to patients and our own lives and the lives of our families, like it's very real. So I love the way you you articulated that.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely. And it's, you know, it's it's humbling as well, right? I mean, we can't take health for granted, and so it's always just a good reminder of what matters.

SPEAKER_01

You are a mom.

SPEAKER_00

You are a mom of two, correct? Yes, I have a son and a daughter.

SPEAKER_01

And they are in college, so you are uh empty nesting, sort of. And they still come home, I hope, for breaks. Because it's so different when they finish school and they, you know, don't get those lovely long vacations anymore. But obviously, you had an incredible career throughout the entire time that your kids were younger and you know, raising them and having a family. And so one of the things I always like to ask our guests who have children is how have you juggled work and life? How have you avoided burnout and managed kind of the demands across the different areas of your life?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, well, it's it's great you bring up that what that life transition is with older kids. I mean, I'm I'm in that right now. My son graduated last year and my daughter will be graduating in May. And it's a good reminder for me that, you know, there are these chapters. You know, juggling has always been about, you know, kind of going back to the purpose that we talked about, but also just being mindful of how I was spending my time. And for me, it was also about really incorporating my family into my work life. And, you know, my work life had a lot of travel. It's funny, my kids both ended up in Boston, and it was a city that was familiar to them because they had come to Boston with me a lot. That wasn't the reason that why they ended up there. But if I look back and think about that juggle, it really was making sure that I could be present, but also figuring out how I could include them so that I could be present, even if I had to be away from them. The other thing is is always talking to them about what I was working on. I mean, it wasn't that it was two separate lives either. And so now that they're adults, you know, we have really strong conversations about what careers mean and and the importance of passion. And so ultimately I think it helped that I felt that they were a part of my life always. It wasn't that I was, you know, separating the two because frankly, that would have been hard to do. And that's that's the reality of having a busy career, and especially one that's, you know, involves a lot of travel. You know, burnout, I think is an interesting concept. I think if we're all honest with ourselves, you know, you have to kind of ride that line of burnout if you are super passionate about what you're doing and you're super busy. And so for me, it's it's both enjoying those periods of high activity and even high stress, hopefully the good stress, more good stress than bad stress, but then carving out time to restore. And I think that that is what's so important. And, you know, everyone has their own ways of restoring. For me, it's often travel, moving my body somehow, some physical exercise and music. I often combine them. It'll be a trip to go see a concert somewhere, and then, you know, I'll throw in a run in a foreign city. And that is enough kind of pulling me out of my day-to-day to, you know, give me some distance and perspective. And that's what I find restorative. And so I think at the end of the day, it's making family work and, you know, mom guilt, it's always gonna be there. I tell people it's not much you can do, but it's really your relationship with it that's important, and then carving out the time for yourself.

SPEAKER_01

I really like the way you talked about carving out time for yourself because I feel like sometimes it gets overwhelming to think about how every day I'm gonna carve out, you know, an hour here or a half hour there. So I like your concept of, you know, if you like the concerts and you like the travel and you like to move your body, maybe you just go take those few days to go see a concert, take get that run in, and you're not beating yourself up for, you know, what you didn't do that one day or that one week. So I like it when we can make things very doable and not feel so insurmountable. So thank you for that.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's it's an interesting concept that, you know, frankly, I learned at Amazon. Well, I knew about the concept, but I think Amazon it's an excellent lesson that they teach incredibly well, which is the importance of mechanisms. You know, Jeff Bezos always says, you know, everyone has the best of intentions. That's why you need mechanisms. And, you know, not to be, you know, brass tacks, but like having a mechanism by which you build in relaxation or the things you like to do into your schedule, it has to happen. Otherwise, it doesn't get done. Very true.

SPEAKER_01

Yep. I think that that is something every year. I'm like, I'm putting it in the calendar. And if it's not in the calendar, it doesn't happen.

SPEAKER_00

And I also think you have to be forgiving too, right? Because there's plenty of days, didn't do the run, canceled that, you know, trip because something came up. But it's okay, right? And so then it's also I think taking a step back. And I think as I've progressed in my career, being able to look at things at a longer time frame and a little, you know, more expansive view is helpful as well. Cause on any given day you can be super critical, but you know, kind of taking stock at a at a longer time frame, I think also is is helpful. And, you know, you give yourself a little bit of a break too.

SPEAKER_01

So, Amy, before we wrap up, is there anything else that you want women to take away from this regarding pregnancy, pregnancy health, or women's health kind of broadly?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I think there, I mean, first of all, advocate for your own health and well-being is critical for women, especially women who are disproportionately, you know, not represented in the healthcare system or affected, right? We know that black women are more likely to experience complications, are more likely to have preterm birth, but it's not necessarily because there's biologic differences of disease. This is a really interesting concept, but it's because they're not being heard when they bring up symptoms or or you know their concerns. And so if you extrapolate that, that is a really difficult place to be. But all women have to advocate. And I think, you know, what is exciting about where we are with women's health is as you and I already discussed, like having women who are passionate about it, that's what's needed. And so whether it is, you know, a friend, a daughter, yourself, you know, get empowered to know, right? There, there are diagnostic tests out there that can help predict complications, they can help guide care, they can help tell you more about your own biology. And this isn't just in pregnancy, right? We're we're at this cusp of learning so much more about where diagnostics fit. I think being informed and you know, being prepared, it's the best thing we can all do for our own health and well-being.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you for that because I love ending on an empowering note. And I think everything you just said is very doable and it's very action-oriented. So I appreciate that so much. And I really appreciate you being here and sharing your knowledge and your perspective with us. It's also just a real joy to connect with you like this and see you. So thank you, Amy. Thank you so much. Amy said something early in our conversation that is still buzzing in my brain. Pregnancy is a real-time stress test for our body. And for most of us, including me, nobody ever told us that. Nobody asked us what that stress test revealed. Nobody connected it to what might be coming next. That's not our fault. That is the system. And I hope you will take from this conversation that it is that system that is starting to change. Not because it decided to, but because women like Amy and the team at Mervey decided to change it. Amy saw the gap from the inside. She spent 20 years learning exactly what it would take to close it, and then she made the move. That is the life sciences story. Nobody is telling loudly enough right now. The researchers are doing the science, and the women who know how to translate it, fund it, and demand it are finally in the room. I find this incredibly exciting. And if you are building or leading inside life sciences, pay attention to where Amy is standing because she has a track record of being early to what matters. And if you're a woman who has been pregnant or hopes to be, advocate for yourself. Ask questions, know your risks, do not wait for the system to come to you. Because as Amy made very clear in today's interview, the system has not always been looking out for you. Thank you again for being here, Amy. Thank you for being here today and sharing in this inspiring story from Women I Want You To Know. Please leave a review and share this episode with another woman in your life. And please join the conversation and connect with us on LinkedIn and Instagram and keep fueling the future for female founders and leaders.