There’s this kind of pattern you can see sometimes, when you dig behind very successful projects, a lot of times there is some woman who is dead set on making it happen. And for a lot of them, she’s working behind the scenes and you don’t find out until you get real close, what’s really going on.

But occasionally you meet these women who are badass leaders that are so dogged that they’re going to make something happen by force of will. And I’m always honored to get to meet them. Today we get to spend some time with Saundra Pelletier, the CEO of Evofem Biosciences.

This is a super fascinating company that is dedicated to creating medical and healthcare products for women. You don’t find a lot of companies focused on that, which is sad because women are the ones who drive a lot of the healthcare decisions for their entire families. So I don’t understand why the market hasn’t picked up on that one.

I think you’re going to love Saundra. She’s created a product at her company called Phexxi. It is the first and only FDA approved, non-hormonal contraceptive gel for women. They can use it anytime on demand whenever they want. This is the kind of product that is really important to change the balance of power and determining who ends up procreating and when. We want that control to be in the hands of everyone, but in the past, a lot of the responsibility has landed on women and, they’ve been given, in some sense, relatively crude tools to do it. Most women in America at least are using a hormonal contraceptive, which has a lot of additional health side effects.

As Saundra will tell you, she developed late stage breast cancer. She survived through a double mastectomy but the doctors told her the only real reason that she probably had cancer, in the first this place was being on a hormonal birth control for 20 years. Lots of stories like that, that you probably know and have heard with your own friends and family.

So I think this is a very important project. This type of advancement in a technology that changes what humans can do,  when they can do it, who has the decision-making power is important. We have a lot of options here where I’m at, but when you look globally at what’s happening with contraception in other countries especially in the developing world, there’s a lot of social stigmas that affect what women can get away with when they’re trying to find contraceptive choices.

Giving them some options is paramount, not just because I would like to see population managed in a more thoughtful fashion. And hopefully create a few less humans that we don’t have a plan for, but also to give them the ability to choose when the time is right, who the right partner is, what they want to do,  and not have to subject themselves to the entire weight of society’s idea about what they should do with their lives. That’s important, I believe for humanity as a whole. And so I’m really excited about Phexxi getting some support.  Evofem Biosciences is publicly listed. So I certainly  don’t want to give anybody investment advice, but these are some folks who could really use some help. And if they can get enough support for this company, they’ll be able to take Phexxi around the world and that’s gonna make a big difference for a lot of people.

I hope that you guys love this very soulful conversation I got to have with Saundra, and I’m thrilled to be sharing her with you.

Deep Future

Sex on Demand for Women — Saundra Pelletier

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