Sarah O’Leary: CEO of Willow

Episode 623

On this episode of The Kara Goldin Show, we're joined by Sarah O’Leary, the dynamic CEO of Willow, the company that revolutionized the breastfeeding experience with its wearable breast pumps. Sarah dives into how Willow has shifted the landscape of maternal health technology and how under her leadership, the company has grown from an innovative startup to a leader in the industry. We explore Willow’s journey from its inception, focusing on its mission to support breastfeeding mothers through state-of-the-art technology that offers both freedom and functionality. Sarah shares insights on the challenges and breakthroughs in developing such pioneering products, and how customer feedback has shaped their evolution. This episode is a deep dive into how a commitment to innovation and understanding user needs can create impactful products that change lives. Tune in to gain invaluable insights into leading a tech-forward company with a strong mission of support and empowerment. Now on The Kara Goldin Show!

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Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be you. Just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked out, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs and really, some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Goldin show. Super, super excited to have our next guest here. We have Sarah O’Leary, who is the powerhouse CEO of Willow joining us here today, and Sarah’s at the helm of transforming the breastfeeding experience with Willows innovative wearable breast pumps that are changing the game for moms everywhere and Under her leadership, Willow isn’t just a company, it’s a revolution in maternal health tech from executive roles to leading Willows charge towards a more supportive world for breastfeeding parents is what Sarah’s journey is all about. But I love all the innovation that she’s leading now, and I can’t wait to dive deeper into Willow, but also her own personal experience of how she got here. So let’s get started. Welcome Sarah.

Sarah O’Leary 1:39
Thank you, Kara, I’m so happy to be here. Super thrilled to

Kara Goldin 1:43
have you join us so often we, I would say the majority of episodes we have are founders and CEOs, but every once in a while, for really special products and brands like Willow, I like to bring in the CEO and sort of talk about their journey too. How did they get here? And you and I were chatting briefly before, so I can’t wait to get into that. But for those who aren’t familiar with Willow, I am and love what you guys are doing. But what’s the 32nd elevator pitch on what makes Willow really stand out in the market. Yeah, so

Sarah O’Leary 2:21
before Willow, basically, all breast pumps were kind of bulky, Kara contraptions that had a big motor external with tubes and cords and flanges and all kinds of attachments. Moms would have to essentially undress and be plugged into the wall in order to pump. When you are a new mom who’s committed to breastfeeding, and the vast majority of women in the US are trying to breastfeed for a year, pumping is happening for 90% of those people. You’re basically pumping a couple times a day for 20 to 30 minutes at a time, and it’s an incredibly challenging set of constraints. What Willow did was say it doesn’t have to look like this. It doesn’t have to be this way, and we completely reinvented what a breast pump could look like by putting everything into your bra. So Willows wearable pump launched at CES in 2017 and essentially unplugged moms from the wall, allowed them to multitask while pumping. And our technology has continued to be sort of leading the category in terms of its effectiveness and the freedom and mobility that we provide for women who are pumping throughout that first year of new parenthood and beyond.

Kara Goldin 3:38
So the original inspiration, and I guess the original product, I always tell founders, me, being a founder myself, is that the initial product, I’m sure, even though you weren’t there at the very, very beginning, it’s changed either a little or significantly. I mean, you haven’t been out for that long, although 2017 may seem like, for those who are not founders, it may seem like, well, that’s, you know, quite a long time ago. Time flies when you’re having fun, right? So how has the, how has the actual product changed since the very beginning, and maybe even the has the mission changed at all? Or inspiration? I’d be so curious to hear.

Sarah O’Leary 4:23
So I don’t think the mission has changed. You know, we were founded out of a medical device incubator focused on trying to build something innovative for moms. That’s really what happened. And originally, the way that Willow came about was women could not stop talking about how much they hated pumping, and so it was like, Okay, this is something that we can we can address what has and that mission to sort of put mom at the center of innovation. We’re a breastfeeding company, but we are focused on innovation for women, for the person using the product, and that really hasn’t changed. What. Has changed is the category has continued to evolve. There’s a lot more options on the market today that are wearable in format. We still have really differentiated technology, but we’ve kind of recognized that there’s different needs that the customer might have, that the mom might have, that we’re trying to solve for some of that is the original pump actually is an incredibly smart pump. It almost does everything like it’s incredibly special technology on what we’ve been able to do since then, we launched Willow go in 2022 as a more to for more affordable option that maintained the best in class milk output and performance of the pump, but took some of the mobility, totally differentiated mobility, away in order to bring the price down. And so what we’ve really done is tried to figure out how we can take our special technology and make it accessible to as many moms as possible. And that’s really kind of how I would describe what’s shifted since the very earliest days of just can we launch a product and disrupt a category. Now, how do we make that product available to as many moms as possible?

Kara Goldin 6:06
Really, really smart. So the brand started as an E commerce brand, right? And today is an omnichannel brand. And I mean, that makes total sense, trying to get the price down so that you can really scale, but you came in as or can you talk a little bit about how you got to Willow and and, you know why it excited you? But what were you doing? And then how did that transition into the CEO role?

Sarah O’Leary 6:35
Yeah, totally. You know, it’s funny. I sometimes I am not the founder of the business, but the sort of passion I feel for what we’re doing, I think, is founder like I spent my career in a variety of strategy, sales and marketing roles, and focused mostly on consumer products. So had worked in a variety of categories, skincare, kids apparel. I had my first child in 2018 spent a year trying to pump and breastfeed and do all the things while as a working mom, and then had the opportunity to join Willow come to me through a recruiter, and they were looking for someone to help bring e commerce, leadership expertise to grow this new technology. And it was one of those stars aligned moments where I had literally just experienced the problem that this problem product was solving, and all of the emotions of being a new mom and, you know, career, career professional at the same time. And so I just jumped at the chance to say, I’m going to apply what I know to, you know, improve women’s lives in this stage of life and and essentially, then my journey at Willow started out driving our E commerce business, which was the way we went to market at the time. And then as the business expanded, I took on kind of broader scope. So I I hired our head of sales, who sold the company as well, to lead expansion into retail partnerships, ultimately insurance distribution as well. We expanded to Amazon and then took on marketing, brand marketing, customer service, and was working as our Chief Commercial Officer up until a year ago, when our our then CEO moved on for personal reasons, and I was asked to step in as CEO. And it felt like again, one of those stars aligned moments where this, you know, has kind of become my baby at the same time as as it’s been part of my career journey with with two of my own babies at home. So So that’s, that’s, that’s the journey, and I’ve been thrilled to to be at the helm. Over the last year I see you.

Kara Goldin 8:55
I think part of I’ve been involved in B to C companies my entire career, a career. And I always tell people who aren’t as familiar with B to C, it’s like, you have to make it so simple, right? Even if you have this incredible technology that makes you stand apart, you have to make the product so simple. And I would imagine, especially for mothers, right, that where they’re already stressed out, especially if you’re a first time mom trying to figure out how to use a pump. You know, they’ve never had this experience. But what are some of the biggest challenges that Willow faced, either with either model, really? I mean, it sounds like it was also probably a good thing to get the word out. Not only did the price come down, but I would imagine the technology got a little less or simple, or simplified to some extent. But how do you, how do you overcome that? Yeah,

Sarah O’Leary 9:54
you know, I think what’s interesting is the project of what we’re trying to communicate to the customer. It’s changed over time as adoption of our product and other wearable type products has increased. So very early on, we were trying to literally explain what the product was. People would say things like, but where does the milk go? Like, they just didn’t understand how a product when they’re so used to this form factor that was so inconvenient, I think there’s almost a sense that, like, well, it has to be that way. That must be part of why it works. And so there was an element early on of just really saying this pump, everything happens inside your bra. You don’t need all those tubes and cords. It doesn’t have to be that way. So describe that early stages as very much kind of explaining to the world what the technology was, how it was actually similar to a traditional product, and therefore better. What’s happened since is that we have had lots more products come on the market, kind of trying to go after the space of a more convenient pump. So really, now we’re in a position of explaining what’s different about our products. As you know, medical device company innovation that have really been designed around not only being convenient but being efficacious for pumping. You know, at the end of the day you are pumping to feed your baby, you need your product to work to get great milk output. That’s what our products have been engineered to do. And so in some sense, it’s just as the stage of the category has shifted, what we’ve had to do in terms of explaining the products to the customer has changed. And then you mentioned affordability, a really big piece of that has been expanding insurance coverage, so that not only are we working to bring the price of the technology down over time, to make sure moms have access to great technology at great prices, but also that insurance can cover on, you know, a big piece of that to create even more access for moms.

Kara Goldin 11:56
Has that changed over time? The the insurance aspect of it, do you Has it gotten harder for people to get it covered? I mean, I know, for me personally, like there’s things that that I was insured for and I’m no longer insured for, or I get less back. I’m so curious, like, as it relates to the pump, are they open to paying for that.

Sarah O’Leary 12:22
Yeah. So the Affordable Care Act was the kind of first federal legislation that required that a breast pump be covered by insurance for each pregnancy. So that was a big shift in the category overall, that kind of allowed moms to access breast pumps as part of their insurance coverage. Now the amount of coverage has varied widely, and unfortunately, as you just said, what we’ve really seen happen is that coverage has gotten smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller over time, as insurance companies are sort of figuring out where, where they want to put their support on, and what’s been helpful within the wearable pump category is that as products like ours have come into the market, there is an increasing understanding and acceptance from insurance providers that these are coverable products, so they’re not so new to the world that there’s skepticism about their functionality. So we do see that moms can use their insurance coverage towards a Willow pump. What I wish for in the world was that women had access to great technology that was actually covered, instead of just cheaper products, because those are covered. So we’re working on it, continuing to advocate and show the great results that we see women who use our products having we are seeing that moms who pump with Willow are actually extending their breastfeeding journeys by several months compared to moms pumping with the traditional pump. So there’s real impact. And we’re hoping that we can continue to advocate for better coverage for more moms.

Kara Goldin 13:55
You know, I remember one of the reasons why I pumped so I, you know, would breastfeed, but one of the reasons why I pumped was if I was going to be out, you know, for the weekend, or I should say away for the weekend, or maybe I would go out and I would be having some wine or something, and, you know, I wanted to make sure to be able to put that in the refrigerator and be able to breastfeed them, and then also for my husband, so that my husband had, you know, the the ability to bond with this young baby as well. So how do you support that in the Willow process?

Sarah O’Leary 14:35
Yeah. So you know, as I mentioned, breastfeeding is literally a full time job. So if you breastfeed for a year, mom is typically spending about 1800 hours during that year feeding. And if you are feeding a newborn baby, you either have to pump or breastfeed every two or three hours. That’s kind of how the biology works. And so by definition, if you are not with. Your baby and actively, you know, feeding at the breast, you have to pump. 90% of women do pump. And so that’s for a wide variety of reasons. As you described, it can be, you know, that that dad wants to give baby a bottle, partner wants to give baby a bottle. It can also be, and for many women, is they’re at work and they are separated from baby, not not necessarily just for something fun, but for their obligations. And so you know, what Willow really has allowed women to do is to take all of that time and not only pump during that period of time. So when you have to pump, you can be working. You can be at a bachelorette weekend. You know, there’s all kinds of things that you can essentially allow your pumping to fit into your life, instead of your life fitting into pumping. And that’s really what the core of the technology was designed to do, was to give women that freedom. And that time back,

Kara Goldin 15:56
that’s awesome. So how does customer feedback. I mean, you talked a little bit about I can imagine customers are calling you and saying how much they love this and not having to have this whole other tubes and whole other device. But how has customer feedback really driven innovation and product development as you’ve really started to adjust your product and enhance your product.

Sarah O’Leary 16:24
Yeah, so, you know, as I mentioned, we, we were built basically from customer feedback. It was essentially the voice of the woman using a breast pump that said, Please fix this. You know that that there was that almost, that, that office space where they kind of smash the fax machines like that kind of sense of like this technology is making me crazy and and so we have inserted sort of the voice of mom into our development from the very outside of the company, and really tried to center the woman using the product in our product development. And that extends today to everything that we do, every feature that we develop, whether that’s, you know, adding some incremental functionality, we have a connected app so we’re actually able to connect and kind of converse with our with our moms. We actually just launched an AI conversational AI tool in our app this week, and to kind of continue that, that back and forth with our with our customer, but essentially, it’s almost hard to answer the question, because every piece of what we do is factoring the voice of the person using the product. And I do think that that’s a very unique difference in Willow, and how we came to develop a product that looks so different from what the existing solutions were is because we were centering that mom and not just saying, Well, how do you get milk out of a body to give to a baby? But rather like, who’s using this and does this product work for her and for her life, and not just for the sort of end goal of milk extraction.

Kara Goldin 18:02
So I’m curious if, if you know this stat, but are people breastfeeding more over? Is the number going up? Is it going down? It’s interesting. I had this conversation with my OB GYN when I was in they’re getting my annual. And, you know, she was talking to me about how many of she’s high risk, OB, GYN, and how many people are, you know, she has 50 year olds who are having children and in vitro and and so I’m wondering how that has changed for you. Overall, are more people breastfeeding as they maybe get older. Maybe are, you know, more aware of what they’re putting, not only into their system, but also into, you know, their their baby’s system too.

Sarah O’Leary 18:52
Yeah. So, you know, I think, let me frame sort of the breastfeeding statistics at the highest level, there’s been a strong public health push to encourage breastfeeding over the last number of decades, as compared to several decades ago, and all kinds of initiatives, Baby Friendly hospitals, lactation consultants, visiting women in the hospital, encouraging skin to skin after birth, all these things that are kind of shown to help with breastfeeding in the United States, the vast majority of women initiate breastfeeding. Almost 90% breastfeed at least once. Breastfeed at the beginning in the hospital. 80% from a survey that we recently did in collaboration with some other feeding companies, planned to breastfeed for a year. Only 40% of us women actually make it to the goal of breastfeeding for for a year. So even despite technology like Willow and we are very proud that what as I mentioned, moms who use Willow are actually breastfeeding on average longer than than women who are using other pumps. But. Women are still failing to reach the goals they want to. And at the highest level, we see that as problems of support. Women go back to work, many women as soon as two weeks after giving birth, the in the US, one in four women actually goes back to work two weeks after having a baby. And we see huge inequities in terms of breastfeeding rates based on income and race and ethnicity, and we’re just not providing the kind of social support and the tools that women need to actually reach those goals of successfully breastfeeding for a year. So Willow is a piece of what we can do to help to create tools that fit into your life, that allow you to to actually breastfeed and meet all the other obligations that you have in life. But there’s a lot more work we can do on the advocacy and kind of social policy side as well. So

Kara Goldin 20:54
can you talk a bit about the pump enactment and what shifts have you observed in the market around this, yeah,

Sarah O’Leary 21:02
so you know again, I think just like the ACA covering breast pumps, there have been some good supports that have started to come through in terms of federal law. So the pump act essentially mandated more universal requirements for employers to provide accommodations for breastfeeding employees. There’s all kinds of carve outs to that. So flight attendants and train conductors. You know, there’s, there’s people who are not, still not covered by the provisions of the pump act. But essentially it’s, it’s enhancing the rights that breastfeeding employees have to have the time and space that they need to breastfeed. It’s a great step in the right direction where we are, you know, happy to be seeing the attention on these issues for moms. It’s still being implemented. We’re still seeing, you know, not necessarily, full adherence to to the requirements or some social pressures within a work environment that maybe the pumping room is there, but a woman still doesn’t feel comfortable taking the break, taking the time out. So we have a long way to go, I think, is how I would describe it, but we are seeing better tools, better policies and better support for working parents to try to enable breastfeeding rates in that first year postpartum, which is great.

Kara Goldin 22:23
What I’m hearing out of you is, you know, jumping into this role at leading a company, your first CEO role is not just about the consumer and selling products and making sure the product is innovative, but also you’re an advocate for women who are choosing to pump right? You’ve got, you are dealing with legislative issues, or you, maybe you not directly, but you’re having somebody sort of like, you have to keep up on all of this, because you are the voice of of you know, women that are really relying on you, right? And and many ways, even though they may not think of Sarah as that. I mean, that is, that is all part of the role. How different is this role than you thought it was going to be when you were asked to take it on? Yeah, you know,

Sarah O’Leary 23:18
that is a, that’s a flattering framing. I, you know, I take on that responsibility. I, you know, I think we are an advocate at Willow, and I, one of the things I have loved most, actually, in the last year as CEO, is, is really being able to use my platform to advocate for all the moms who are using our products, and all the moms who are experiencing, you know, new motherhood. I remember having my son in, you know, 2018 and I, you know, I was an accomplished professional. I was a organized person, and my world was totally rocked by the experience of having a baby in the first place, which is such an, you know, massive shift in your identity, not to mention the physical and emotional and hormonal experience that you’re going through. But one of the things that I remember just being so thrown by was how little support there really was. You know, a new mother goes to see her doctor a lot before she has a baby, and then you’re sent home from the hospital, and you go see your doctor once, if you’re lucky, if you get to that appointment six weeks in and that’s it, and they’re like, good luck, you know? Yeah. And it just felt wrong. It felt like this should not be so lonely, so unsupported. And as I’ve kind of come out of that chapter of newborn motherhood, brand new motherhood, I take it really as a responsibility to kind of keep in my heart what that felt like. And, you know, I think our. Moms are, are they are busy with things other than advocating for paid leave policy at the federal level. But we can help with that, right? So we can give you better tools, and then we can leverage this platform and this incredible community of moms that we’ve built to say, you know, we we can keep pushing for how to make the world a little bit better for this stage of life. And so, you know, I do think that’s an important piece of this role, and it’s one that I am very kind of honored to have, have the opportunity to have impact in.

Kara Goldin 25:30
Yeah, it’s, it’s interesting, because when I started hint water, you know, I wanted to help people get healthier and have a product that didn’t have sweeteners in it. But over time, we were working on federal initiatives around school lunch programs and then clean water and at state levels as well as federal levels and so. And you know, my day job was always doing making sure that the product was was done well, and the team was being supportive, and all of those things. But I think that a lot of people don’t understand when they think, Oh, I’m going to go and start a company that you know when you’re talking as much to your consumers, and you’re actually fixing things and and that’s kind of what your mission is, of your company, I think that there’s a lot more responsibility that a lot of people just don’t realize. Yeah,

Sarah O’Leary 26:28
well, you know what our mission is? Really solving problems for for moms, and when you look at those, there are problems that can be solved with product innovation, and that’s our core focus, but they sit inside of a lot of other opportunities for change and impact and and, you know, it’s something that we can, again, you know, sort of leverage the power of our reach to our customer base and to all the moms that we interact with, whether it’s on social media or, you know, in other formats, to say, you know, here’s what’s important To this constituency, right? And I always think about some of the supports that that would make a difference in terms of policy, supporting families, paid family leave, as well as affordable childcare, as well as maternal health and well being, all issues that we’ve partnered with an organization called Chamber of mothers, a bipartisan, nonpartisan organization that advocates for change in these policies. These are massively popular. They’re not partisan issues, but they’re all important to these individuals who are living inside their homes taking care of a new baby. And so it’s it is part of our opportunity to say, let, let’s bring those voices together and and try to advocate for what are ultimately popular policies for lots of people, but that don’t always have a voice supporting them.

Kara Goldin 27:50
So looking forward, and this the last question, but what legacy do you hope Willow will create for future generations of parents?

Sarah O’Leary 27:59
Yeah, yeah. So we are one of the first companies to get the label of a femtech innovator, this idea that investing in women’s health, innovating in women’s health, is something that’s important on and we have been kind of a trailblazer in that, in that way. And I think we’re starting to see, finally, more broad attention on women’s, women’s health, investment and innovation, although still a fraction of what it needs to be. And I, you know, I hope that we can continue to sort of shine a spotlight on the opportunity, the business opportunity, as well as the impact opportunity. When we invest in products and services and support that makes life better for women, that there, there is meaningful business to be had, and there’s a meaningful impact to have. And, you know, that’s really what I think Willow has has done, is start to pave that path on and we’re, we’re, we’re not going to, you know, stop innovating, and we’re going to continue moving forward. But I you know, I also believe we are an example of of in the marketplace, an organization that has said this is important, and we’re going to focus on it and and I’m proud of that legacy as well, awesome.

Kara Goldin 29:18
And you should be so well. Thank you, Sarah, for sharing super incredible insights about the industry that you’re working on, and obviously shared a lot more about Willow too. We’ll have all the info in the show notes. But really, really incredible what you guys are doing, and such interesting technology, for sure that you have brought forward, but also that you’re continuing to innovate on and all the changes, legislative changes too. So thank you so much for doing all of that. So until next time, thank you. Thanks

Sarah O’Leary 29:55
for the time today.

Kara Goldin 29:56
Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If. Would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit. And of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms. At Kara Goldin, I would love to hear from you too. So feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book, undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building. Hint, we are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening and goodbye for now you.

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