WoW Woman in FemTech I Cecilie Hvidberg Jakobsen, founder and CEO of wawa fertility
Cecilie is first and foremost a mum, and secondly the Founder & CEO of wawa fertility. Experiencing pregnancy loss firsthand and seeing friends go through the struggle of fertility treatment, was the reason Cecilie founded wawa fertility in late 2020.
Cecilie is fueled by her passion for helping women and their partners with pioneering data-driven solutions, in an industry that has been standing still, for far too long. The wawa fertility community takes one of Cecilies core values and builds it out to the world: the idea that no one should be alone in what is often described as the most difficult periods of their lives.
Cecilie has a background as a data analyst and has a strong technical and managerial background with 10+ years of experience in the technology sector. After selling a company where she was a partner to KMD (the main supplier of tech solutions for public healthcare in Denmark) she spent two years working with public healthcare tech solutions. Cecilie discovered her passion for healthcare along the way but at the same time got surprised by how little - if any - innovation was done in healthcare. Now she is on a mission to change that, one data point at a time.
She graduated from Copenhagen Business School with an M.S. in Business Administration and Economics.
Tell us a bit about your background and your projects so far.
My career background has been a combination of data analytics, entrepreneurship, and product management. I have been working with digitisation and technology for more than 10 years. For many years I was primarily working in FMCG and in FinTech with experience in product strategy, marketing, product innovation, and creating new business opportunities, products, and solutions for major international brands and clients.
Previously I was a partner in a large tech consultancy in Copenhagen. We had a successful exit after selling the company to KMD. KMD develops IT solutions for Danish municipalities, government, and others. I was working for KMD two years after we sold the company and this introduced me to the healthcare sector. In Denmark the municipalities are responsible for a number of health and social services and Denmark is known to have one of the most digitised healthcare sectors in the world. However, I was very disappointed to see the level of innovation and data. But I saw lots of possibilities to improve people's lives. I fell in love with that possibility, and the change that it could create for millions of people’s lives.
Today I am the founder and CEO of wawa fertility, a reproductive healthtech company fixing the broken fertility treatment model. My responsibility is to create the overall strategy, be the Chief Product Officer and operate the business day-to-day. I am also responsible for managing our relationships with investors and developing a strong network of contacts within the fertility industry.
How did you get into this industry? Has it been an easy industry to get into or have you had many challenges?
I started working with data analytics as a student assistant 13 years ago. The importance of data has increased like crazy - especially in the tech sector. This gave me a clear path into the tech industry.
How long did it take you to be where you are now? What was the biggest obstacle?
wawa was founded in late 2020. So it took us two years to get to where we are now. This period included a lot of hit-and-miss experiments, learning from those mistakes, and a lot of hard work.
The biggest obstacle I faced during this time was without a doubt finding the right people to help build wawa fertility. I started out with partners - but we found out that we were not aligned on what it took to build a company like this. This was not an easy process - personally or professionally, but it taught me a lot about myself, and I am thankful for the process today. Furthermore, our team consists of healthcare professionals, marketing experts, and more classic tech developers. So we’ve been hiring from very different sectors and it has not been an easy process. Today, I feel like everything has settled the best way possible and that we made the best decisions for the future of wawa fertility. Also, I am proud to say that 70% of our team are female across tech, marketing, and healthcare professionals.
What are the challenges of being in the industry you are in?
There are many challenges. But the biggest challenge of the healthcare sector is, funnily enough, the same thing that I was attracted to in the first place: that healthcare is really struggling with technological innovation. That means that we have to convince and reassure a lot more stakeholders. Healthcare professionals can be intimidated because they are used to traditional ways of working, investors need more persuasion because they haven’t seen enough convincing cases yet and as we are creating a new generation of employees working in healthcare - we cannot recruit existing talent like in FinTech. So we have to do a lot of passionate persuasions to get everyone onboard.
What are your biggest achievements to date?
Our biggest achievement to date is that we are the biggest fertility community in Scandinavia. We have 30.000 women in our community participating in our mission and contributing to improving fertility treatment every day. We are now expanding this to the UK.
I am also proud that we have already gathered data for research that has been almost impossible to collect up until now. For example, in an internal study using wawa data, we have recently proved the correlation between sleep and anxiety for women in fertility treatment. Something that has been almost impossible to research until now. We are working on how to improve sleep for women in this situation and hopefully, this will significantly reduce symptoms for those involved. We are also hoping to run a full-time patient trial on this.
Another big achievement is building a team that is motivated to improve the lives of millions of people. We have fantastic days in the office together and everyone is as passionate about the mission as I am.
What are the projects you are currently working on?
Currently, I'm working on the clinic tool that we are launching very soon. The tool gives clinics a chance to monitor their patients and change the course of treatment on an ongoing basis. This is based on much more data than previously, data wawa has gathered, and allows clinics to have better communication with their patients in general. This is huge!
Furthermore, we are starting a certification process for our research offering to make sure it is easier for researchers to get their trials and studies approved when they use the wawa fertility app for data collection. This is to accelerate research and create new knowledge about reproductive health and make these processes smarter for researchers.
Is the #WomenInTech movement important to you and if yes, why?
Without a doubt. Looking at the numbers for women in tech and female entrepreneurs I think it should be important for everyone in the industry. It is such a male-dominated space, which makes it difficult for women to be successful. It is a statistically proven growth hack that more diversity equals more growth. 70% of our team is female (including, critically, across tech and product teams) and that is something that we are very proud of. My dream is to see the strong women from wawa start new businesses in a few years and make sure that even more women get a chance to help push the tech sector forward.
What will be the key trends in your industry in the next five years and where do you see them heading?
During the pandemic, we saw accelerated adoption of technology in healthcare. This has made way for a new wave of innovation in healthcare, where we can promote the systematic use of health data to create a more efficient, personal, and outcome-oriented healthcare system. Some of the key trends are:
Personalised healthcare: Treatments will be specifically tailored to patients and allow patients to make more choices about how they’re treated.
AI in healthcare: AI is already deeply embedded in the healthcare ecosystem but I believe we will see new ways of using AI in healthcare in the next few years. For example, to manage patient journals, or to analyse data collected from self-reporting patients to provide early warning or predictive diagnosis of various conditions.
Patient communities: Communities are already on the rise. I think this trend will be seen more in healthcare as well, like the adoption of online patient communities, where users can come together to share help and advice related to their treatment and recovery.
What is the most important piece of advice you could give to anyone who wants to start a career in this industry?
Find something that you are passionate about and make it your business. It is not always easy to start a business or work in tech. If you are working with something that you are passionate about it makes it easier to keep your head above water even in the most difficult situations - and there will be lots of difficult situations. And stay positive!
Who are three inspirational women in your respective industry you admire?
Henriette Svarre Nielsen is a clinical professor doing research into reproduction and women's diseases, including the connection between reproduction and health as well as mapping of pathophysiological mechanisms with a view to optimise diagnostics, prevention, and treatment. She is the initiator of many important research projects within reproductive health, which is helping a lot of patients, and a big role model for many in this industry.
Dr. Fiona Pathiraja is Managing Partner at Crista Galli Ventures, an early-stage healthtech VC fund. She used to work as a Radiologist in the NHS. She is still one of the very few women running a VC fund and she is working to improve the representation of women on both sides of the founder-investor table - and innovate the healthcare system as we know it today.
Stine Mølgaard founded her first company in 2013 and has been working with technology for more than 12 years both in a corporate global role and founding several tech startups where she led one to a successful exit. Today she is an investor and sits on the Innovation Fund Denmark's investment panel and the Innovation Council at Denmark's biggest hospital. Stine is incredibly valuable for female entrepreneurs and healthtech in Scandinavia.
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This interview was conducted by Marija Butkovic, Digital Marketing and PR strategist, founder, and CEO of Women of Wearables. She regularly writes and speaks on topics of wearable tech, fashion tech, IoT, entrepreneurship, and diversity. Follow Marija on Twitter @MarijaButkovic and read her stories for Forbes here.