Notable & Quotable: Maya Hardigan, founder and CEO of maternal health startup Mae

Maya Hardigan’s professional experiences in the healthcare industry and her lived experiences as a Black woman and mom uniquely positioned her to launch and lead her startup, Mae. Founded in 2020—in the wake of that summer’s global uprising in defense of Black lives—Mae is a digital health platform on a mission to reduce maternal health disparities for Black women.

More specifically, Black women and pregnant people are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than their white counterparts, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—and two out of three pregnancy-related deaths in the US are preventable. Many factors, including lack of access to quality healthcare and implicit bias in care, contribute to racial disparities in pregnancy and birthing outcomes.

Based in New York City, Mae was founded to address these disparities—connecting Black expectant moms with critical resources to drive positive pregnancy outcomes. To start, the platform features free birth planning tools and 15-minute consults with a doula. Using Mae, pregnant people also have access to a marketplace of culturally competent maternal health experts and a suite of digital tools that inform and protect against the leading drivers of maternal morbidity and mortality: preeclampsia, cardiomyopathy, depression and postpartum complications.

On the heels of raising $1.3 million of pre-seed funding in a deal led by SteelSky Ventures in September 2021, Hardigan answers our questions about her company, being a founder and what’s next for Mae.
 

What was your background prior to founding Mae?

I grew up outside of Washington, D.C. and studied biology and psychology at Duke before attending business school at Columbia. I spent the first few years of my professional career in healthcare management consulting before joining Pfizer, where I spent over a decade. Most of my work over those years focused on patient-facing digital technologies, and specifically, care access innovation, with an emphasis on virtual engagement platforms supporting improved condition management.

For many years, I was also on the board of a maternal health nonprofit, Kangu, which focused on delivering safe birth services to underserved mothers. This experience piqued my interest in maternal health and deepened my understanding of the vast economic and racial disparities that exist—something I grew to even better understand as I grew my own family.

It was in the midst of grappling with the events of the summer of 2020 when I started working on Mae, and it really came from a place of deeply wanting my professional focus to be a marriage of my passion for science, business and equity.

“Mae really came from a place of deeply wanting my professional focus to be a marriage of my passion for science, business and equity.”

What is Mae, and what unmet need or innovative solution did you seek to address through founding it?

Mae is a digital health platform on a mission to reduce maternal health disparities for Black women.  Mae seeks to redefine the pregnancy experience for expectant mothers of color by combining weekly health tracking, real-time issue escalation support and culturally resonant resources and education. While we know how meaningful digital health solutions can be in improving access to information and resources, we also know that a digital-only approach here isn’t enough. It has been established that many of the disparities Black women face are driven by bias in care, and for that reason, Mae’s model also prioritizes on-the-ground support from community-based birth workers such as doulas who are known to improve pregnancy experiences and outcomes.

“It has been established that many of the disparities Black women face are driven by bias in care.”

Black women are more likely to have preterm births, C-sections and experience pregnancy complications that lead to increased maternal morbidity and mortality. These poor outcomes not only put us at risk, but can also lead to longstanding health consequences for our children. So many of these complications are avoidable. They also drive significant costs into the healthcare system. We see incentive across the board to address this, working collaboratively with healthcare payers, through more meaningful investment in evidence-based interventions, and driving access to these interventions at scale.

What were some of the initial steps you took to push your idea for Mae forward into reality?

We started by confirming the need for a solution like Mae. We spent a lot of time in the early days talking to our target user base—including many of my closest friends—to understand what they believed had driven their poor experiences and what could and should have been done differently. This was an important step in thinking through how we could create a solution that would directly address these needs. We also spent a significant amount of time talking to insurance companies to understand their pain points. I believe orienting our product on a path to reimbursement is key to achieving scale and equitable access, so it was critical for us to understand how to marry these needs and priorities.

What has most surprised you about being a founder?

I think I’ve been most surprised by the breadth of responsibility that founders have. Before actually diving in and founding a company, I had no idea how far the pendulum would swing in terms of my day-to-day tasks and goals. My time is spent on an unpredictable mix of product, strategy, marketing, hiring, finance, legal and administrative tasks. There is a lot of weight on the shoulders of founders and sometimes the gravity is felt where you least expect it.

“There is a lot of weight on the shoulders of founders and sometimes the gravity is felt where you least expect it.”

 

What words of advice might you give someone just starting out on their entrepreneurial journey?

Build an incredible early team, one that is as passionate as you are about the challenge you’ve taken on. Make sure they are people you love being around and who match your energy and work ethic. Also, pause to celebrate and acknowledge your successes along the way. It’s a roller coaster and you’re moving at such a fast pace that it’s easy to immediately move on from a “win” to the next challenge. But it’s so important to acknowledge milestones you’ve worked so hard to achieve—don’t overlook those victories, whether they be large or small.

“It’s so important to acknowledge milestones you’ve worked so hard to achieve—don’t overlook those victories, whether they be large or small.”

What’s something that people might be surprised to learn about you?

Over the last two years, I’ve taken on a couple of new hobbies that I’d never made time for before: veggie gardening and bread baking. It would be a stretch to say I’m good at either of these things! But it’s been so much fun to spend time on both with my 3 daughters—and a reminder of how much work, time, attention and care goes into everything we eat. I would say that both of these activities are also incredible for stress management, and I would objectively recommend giving them a try as a founder, parent, or anyone else juggling many seemingly overwhelming priorities!

What’s next for Mae? Any milestone or area of emphasis that you’re focused on as we move further into the new year and beyond?

I truly believe that there is a case to be made for more equitable investment in maternal healthcare. For our team at Mae, 2022 is really about establishing a strong base of clinical evidence with our earliest partners that we can use to drive further investment in our supplemental care approach. Whether you’re speaking to someone who is mission-aligned or speaking to someone who is financially motivated, our near-term challenge and opportunity is in building a strong case to both audiences, for greater investment in our mothers and children. The benefits to families, to communities and to our national healthcare system are immeasurable.

“I truly believe that there is a case to be made for more equitable investment in maternal healthcare.”

 

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Note: This Q&A has been edited slightly for length and clarity.