Now and Forever: Telemedicine Founder, CEO Changing The Health of Women 24/7
Alicia Jackson, founder and CEO of Evernow,at a recent TEDx talk.
You’re never too young to start thinking about your health as an older woman.
Alicia Jackson is CEO and founder of Evernow, a company focused on helping women live longer, healthier lives coping with menopause with a prescription-based model with telemedicine access to doctors and treatments 24/7.
“@DrAliciaJackson, CEO, and @Liyabrook, are co-founders of Evernow.co, a company focused on helping women live longer, healthier lives coping with #menopause. #femalefounded”
“By 2025, 1.1 billion women are expected to be postmenopausal. The space represents $600 billion of spending opportunity but is still largely untapped by startups and brands that could be creating new products and services for these women, according to data from early-stage investing firm Female Founders Fund,” Crunchbase reports.
“Only 5 percent of femtech startups address menopause, and overall the opportunity is huge,” Adrianna Samaniego, investor with Female Founders Fund, told Crunchbase News. “Fertility is nine months, typically, but menopause can last anywhere from four to 30 years.”
Women’s health is an extremely competitive—and lucrative—space. Of the top 39 medical startups in the area of women’s health, 14 of them are founded and run by women.
“Women’s health is an extremely competitive—and lucrative—space. Of the top 39 medical #startups in the area of women’s health, 14 of them are founded and run by women. #femalefounded”
Read more in Take The Lead on a healthcare startup founder
Medical Futurist reports, “As technology companies recognized that the area offers excellent potential, and women started to use digital health increasingly, or better say, ‘Femtech’ products for the female wellbeing, the culture around women’s health issues began to change. While the global Femtech market is expected to be worth more than $60 billion by 2027, technology companies’ attitude towards women’s health is far from ideal. A growing number of female-led startups and female VCs are also expected to take the stage, but the segment is still very male-oriented; and tech solutions reflect this dominance.”
Enter into this vibrant and growing space Jackson, the daughter of a Protestant minister, who grew up moving around to different churches from Michigan to Illinois and Ohio. As an undergraduate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1988 to 2002, Jackson says it was a culture shock coming from smaller rural areas.
In her third year at MIT in 2005 of pursuing her PhD in material science, engineering and nanotechnology, Jackson had an epiphany. “I realized I didn’t love this enough for academia to be my career. But what am I going to do?”
Read more in Take The Lead on healthcare startup founders
A random introduction from then-MIT president Susan Hockfield at a dinner party secured her next move. Jackson landed a fellowship with the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Commission.
“I landed on the Hill where nobody cared what my PhD was in, and my whole world was turned upside down. Nobody cared how smart I was, everybody cared about what you could get done,” Jackson says.
Working on energy technology issues, industry regulation and its impact on people, Jackson says she was part of policy making to move the U.S. forward as a coalition builder. But after three years, she says, “I decided politics was not for me.”
In 2010, Jackson joined the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, that works with government, but it is not part of government.
“I built their biotech office,” Jackson says. “We funded Moderna. It was a new idea then on how to make vaccines. It was one of the most fulfilling career choices I ever made.”
And one of the most historic choices as Moderna is a key player in the global COVID vaccine market. “Usually your bets don’t pay off that way,” she says.
In 2015, she left DARPA and moved to Silicon Valley, to start the first of several companies, this one was Drawbridge.
“It was a fantastic intersection of healthcare and consumers. I loved getting involved with fertility and women’s health,” she says.
Read more in Take The Lead on healthcare startup founders
As co-founder and chief technology officer at Drawbridge, she helped to grow that women’s healthcare company from the start in September 2015 until she left three years later.
Jackson says she took the next six months off to travel and learn more about women’s health, fertility and menopause.
“I was deeply interested in women who had gone through menopause early due to chemotherapy and wanted to see how you can reverse that,” says Jackson, who is a TEDMED editorial advisory board member.
It was then she became friends with Dr. Peter Klatsky, an obstetrician/gynecologist who is now part of the Evernow team as a women’s health advisor. She says he told her, “This problem is way bigger than you realize.”
She adds, ”Every woman goes through menopause and very few know how to treat it. At the same time my mother was going through menopause. She was still working and couldn’t sleep. I was thinking, ‘This is bananas.’”
So the entrepreneur in her wanted to jump into the problem and solve it. The scientist in her wanted to create science-based, factually-informed action.
“”Every woman goes through #menopause and very few know how to treat it,” says Evermore.co CEO @DrAliciaJackson. The #entrepreneur in her wanted to jump into the problem and solve it. The scientist in her wanted to create action. #womanowned”
“There is a huge market need, a gap in treatment and not enough doctors who know how to treat this. Yet there are a lot of Federal Drug Administration approved medications,” she says. “It was just game over. We need to solve this problem.”
Evernow was born in 2019 because Jackson says it is a problem not prompted by a single event or crisis. “So it is suited for virtual care. It can be managed and treated based on health history, symptoms, age.”
She adds, ”Menopause is not one moment in time, it is a decade-long journey.”
Understanding the health needs of women over 50 will also help this demographic in the workforce, which is growing.
“”#Menopause is not one moment in time, it is a decade-long journey,” says @DrAliciaJackson, founder and CEO of Evernow.co. Understanding the health needs of women over 50 will also help this demographic in the #workforce, which is growing. ”
According to the UK think tank, The Resolution Foundation, “In the years preceding the pandemic the number of over 50s in work grew substantially – particularly women. On the eve of the pandemic some 68% of women aged 50-64 were in work, compared with 46% in 1990. The 50-64-year-old employment rate in 2019 was 73%, higher than at any point since the Office for National Statistics’ Labour Force Survey data begins in 1975.”
In the U.S., the Department of Labor reports, 73.9% of women ages 45 to 54 were working, while 58.4% of women ages 55-64 years old were also actively employed.
The twinset of ageism and sexism is at play for women over 50 at work. A 2021 academic study found that "if ageism is undoubtedly problematic for older workers' identity processes, ageism and gender-stereotypes represent a double risk for women over 50 in the workplace," according to SHRM.org.
Kathy Gurchiek writes in SHRM that Bonnie Marcus, author of Not Done Yet!: How Women Over 50 Regain Their Confidence and Claim Workplace Power, says, "‘Workplace practices remain based on these ageist assumptions. Policies about hiring, firing, promotion, and compensation reveal the underlying bias. And women, unfortunately, suffer earlier because of the perceived importance of good looks and the bogus notion that aging women aren't attractive. This has a substantial impact on our career trajectories.’"
Stereotypes and the realities of health symptoms challenging women over 50 complicate perceptions in the workplace. Having the resources to readily and consistently address symptoms may mitigate concerns.
“Stereotypes and the realities of health symptoms challenging #womenover50 complicate perceptions in the #workplace. Having the resources to readily and consistently address symptoms may mitigate concerns. ”
Since its launch, more than 5,000 women are part of Evernow’s subscription-based membership community. The pandemic has also made virtual medical treatment much more commonplace.
“The effects of COVID are that it has accelerated the comfort consumers have gotten receiving healthcare virtually,” Jackson says.
At work now on a study of 40,000 women “to have a picture of what menopause looks like for women,” Jackson says it will offer data and hopefully solutions to therapy and treatment.
As women’s health through menopause is at the center of Evernow’s commitment, Jackson says treating diabetes, osteoporosis and yeast infections are also in the future.
“As #womenshealth through #menopause is at the center of Evernow’s commitment, @DrAliciaJackson says treating diabetes, osteoporosis and yeast infections are also in the future. #virtual #healthcare”
What Jackson has learned in her latest healthcare company founding is “how different the cultures of the medical side of the house are from the entrepreneurial side of the house. Doctors are not trained to be innovators, they follow they status quo.” She adds, “Merging these cultures together is a constant balance between those two sides.”
