Meet Mae is developing a digital care marketplace that connects expectant mothers with critical resources throughout pregnancy, labor, and postpartum. Mae’s offerings include doulas and maternal health experts who serve as a first point of detection for high risk and high cost diagnoses. with the goal of reducing pre-term labor, C-section, and avoidable postpartum complications. Focusing first on Black mothers, Mae is targeting payors, especially Medicaid, to underwrite its services and make them accessible to those who couldn’t otherwise afford them.
CEO: Maya Hardigan
Headquarters: New York, NY
Year Founded: 2020
Year Avestria First Invested: 2021 (Fund I) & 2023 (Fund II)
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Launched - Mae: a maternal health tech platform for black expectant mothers
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February 13, 2024: Maya Hardigan is returning to the Reproductive Health Innovation Summit. She is a speaker on the “Reframing Postpartum Care Models through Research and Policy” panel, alongside Kristal Lau of Bridges in Health and Everett Hanford of the U.S Department of Health and Human Services. At last year’s Reproductive Health Conference, Maya Hardigan was not only a speaker but also the winner of the 2023 Innovation Showcase.
December 18, 2023: Mae’s most recent partnership is with Aetna Better Health® of Illinois. By partnering with Aetna, Mae is able to offer digital health services and certified, community-based doula to pregnant and postpartum mothers in Illinois’ Cook and Kane counties. Aetna will fully covers the doula services. This partnership is not the only one between Aetna Better Health and Mae; in April 2023, Aetna Better Health® of Maryland launched its pilot program with Mae.
December 5, 2023: Silicon Valley Bank (SVB)’s inaugural “Innovation in Women’s Health 2023” puts the spotlight on women’s health: on both its need for funding and R&D and on the founders and companies heading innovations in the space. Mae was featured as a company serving women in their middle to later years. Antiva Biosciences, AOA, Axena Health, Madorra, and Midi - five other Avestria portfolio companies - were also mentioned throughout the report.
June 5, 2023: Maya Hardigan was quoted in this MedCity News article about the positive effect that doulas have on maternal health outcomes. Women who are supported by a doula are less likely to have caesarean sections or babies with low birth weights and can have emotional, physical, and informational support that they don’t receive in the existing healthcare infrastructure. However, as Maya Hardigan notes, not all states reimburse doula care and states that do still can have a choppy execution. Services like Maven Clinic and Maya Hardigan’s Mae are thus stepping in to fill that gap: help pregnant women access doula care and get those services reimbursed.
May 19, 2023: This PitchBook article interviewed three women’s health-focused venture capitalists, including Avestria’s Linda Greub, about the femtech companies that they think are worth watching: both in and outside of their current portfolio. Avestria portfolio companies AOA Dx. and Mae were both highlighted in this article for their ability to transform early ovarian cancer detection and maternal health for mothers, starting with Black mothers, respectively.
April 20, 2023: Aetna Better Health® of Maryland, a CVS Health® company, announced a pilot program with Mae. Mae’s services include doula support and a platform to track expectant women’s physical, emotional, and social needs during pregnancy and postpartum. These services can help reduce premature births, unnecessary medical costs, and the rate of birth complications and/or maternal mortality rates for Black women, which are already significantly higher than white women’s.
March 21, 2023: P.S Blossom is a podcast series dedicated to helping and empowering women - especially Black, Indigenous, and other Women of Color - regarding their healthcare. Maya Hardigan joined the P.S Blossom team across two episodes to talk about serving moms wholly: including how integrated care can aid healthy pregnancies, what doulas are and how they’ve shown to be beneficial during labor and delivery, and what support mothers need during pregnancy, labor and delivery, and postpartum - and how Mae can help provide that care.
February 15, 2023: Maya Hardigan made Business Chief’s list of the Top 10 Black business founders to watch in 2023. This list, a celebration of Black founders in honor of Black History Month includes founders from all sectors, including air travel, investment, talent recruitment and acquisition solutions, and, in Maya’s case, healthcare.
February 15, 2023: The Reproductive Health Innovation Summit is held every year in February as an offshoot of the Women’s Health Innovation Summit (which takes place in September). Both events have a company showcase, with companies submitted and voted upon by a panel of investors, including Linda Greub. Mae was chosen as one of the finalists, allowing the company to pitch in person at the event in front of investors, potential partners, and other women’s health supporters. Curio and Raydiant Oximetry - two other Avestria portfolio companies - were also chosen as finalists. Maya Hardigan will also be speaking as a panelist at the event.
February 15, 2023: Maya Hardigan is one of the speakers at the annual Reproductive Health Innovation Summit, which is held in February in Boston. Maya’s panel, which takes place on the first day of the conference, is “The Journey to Heath Equity Through Increasing Access to Care.” She’ll join Ru-Fong Cheng from Johnson & Johnson, Roopan Gill from Vitala Global, Neel Shah from Maven Clinic, and Asima Ahmad from Carrot Fertility to talk about new innovations that target underserved communities and improvements to be made to help these populations receive care in the first place.
February 10, 2023: Maya Hardigan sat down with the hosts of the Momtourage podcast to discuss the resources that Mae brings to expectant Black mothers. Maya shares why the current inequitable healthcare system makes Mae necessary, the healthcare resources and connections that Mae offers, and even the inspiration behind the company’s name. ‘Mae’ pays homage to Dr. May Edward Chinn, who was the first African American woman to graduate from what is now the NYU School of Medicine.
February 2, 2023: Mae was named a 2023 NY Digital Health 100 company by Digital Company New York. The “NY Digital Health 100” celebrates the most innovative and exciting health start-ups in the New York area and is announced as part of the New York Healthcare Innovation Report 2023: the state’s sixth annual publication which covers companies, data, people, and trends that help make New York a hotspot for healthcare innovation.
February 1, 2023: To kick off Black History Month 2023, Mae’s founder/CEO Maya Hardigan and Head of Growth, Alisha Lalani, are hosting a webinar called “A Digital + Community-based Approach to Address Disparities for Black Expectant Mothers”. This webinar covers the overarching problems facing expectant Black women, who have a 2-3x higher maternal mortality rate than white women in the U.S alone, and how Mae’s solution can improve their prenatal, pregnancy, and postpartum care and their overall health outcomes.
January 23, 2023: Maya Hardigan and Mae were featured in this PitchBook article, which focused on 19 women’s health companies made for and founded by women. Mae joins the ranks of companies like Joylux, Maven, and Thinx: all of which have had a past year of growth and attention.
January 12, 2023: Maya Hardigan is one of the entrepreneurs in the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center’s Winter 2023 Milestone Makers Cohort. The Milestone Makers program helps accepted companies meet their milestones, improve the lives of and support communities globally, and work towards two of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals: Peace and Justice (#16) and Reduced Inequalities (#10). Because Maya Hadigan is one of the cohort members, Mae’s logo will display at the top of the NASDAQ Tower in NYC on March 8th, which is also International Women’s Day.
October 17, 2022: Mae was highlighted in this Business Insider article about 35 of the most promising femtech startups, according to VCs. Tracy Dooley, Avestria Partner, was quoted about Mae’s payer-based approach or its focus on who needs its services, who can afford them, and how to bridge that gap. Avestria portfolio companies AOA Dx, Curio, Midi, and Raydiant Oximetry were also included in this article. Note: membership required for viewing.
July 27, 2022: Maya Hardigan is one of the speakers at the Women’s Health Innovation Coalition’s Women’s Health Forum on reproductive health, joining Maria Velissaris of SteelSky Ventures, Sophia Yen of Pandia Health and Linda Goler Blount of the Black Women’s Health Imperative. Together, the four women aim to bring together the reproductive health community, educate and advocate, and talk about the work they’re doing as founder and funders to make reproductive health safe and accessible. Note: Maya’s section starts at 38:50.
May 20, 2022: A recent Rock Health report found that 2021 was the first time in five years that women reported using digital health tools at similar rates to men. This Axios follow-up piece not only breaks down the percentage of women who reported using digital health tools but also reports that data by ethnicity. The article also pulls in voices like Mae’s Maya Hardigan and Rock Health’s Jasmine DeSilva, Gabrielle Dell’Aquilo and Adriana Krasniansky, to share the perspectives on why digital care needs to represents users’ identities and cultures and the consequences it will have if it doesn’t.
April 14, 2022: This “Good Morning America” story focuses on Wanda Irving who founded Dr. Shalon's Maternal Action Project and launched the Believe Her app after her daughter died shortly after giving birth to her granddaughter. The goal of these two initiatives is to make giving birth in the U.S equitable for all; currently, Black mothers have a maternal mortality rate that is 2-3x higher than white women’s. Maya Hardigan was also featured in this story, who was inspired by her own “vulnerable” birth experience to launch Mae: another medium through which Black mothers-to-be can access resources and support networks, track their health, and feel empowered.
March 30, 2022: Maya Hardigan was interviewed alongside Dr. Joy Cooper, co-founder of Culture Care, in this article about bringing healthcare to Black individuals. Research has shown that a doctor of the same race can help protect patients against adverse health outcomes - but the proportion of Black patients to Black doctors is still low. Both Maya Hardigan and Joy Cooper’s products allow Black women to connect with physicians, therapists, doulas, and other specialists to allow them to see a care-provider who looks like them and to receive the best health outcomes possible.
March 9, 2022: This PitchBook article highlights four female founders of femtech companies, their companies, and their predictions on the femtech industry. Maya Hardigan is excited to see the conversations and normalization around previously taboo topics like menopause and fertility but notes that challenge of working with healthcare payers to help them realize the value of women’s health partnerships and to make those solutions available. This article also includes insights from another one of Avestria’s portfolio company CEOs, Oriana Papin-Zoghbi.
February 22, 2022: “I truly believe that there is a case to be made for more equitable investment in maternal healthcare.” Maya Hardigan sat down with PitchBook to talk about her journey with Mae so far, including founding it in 2020, closing a seed round in September 2021, pulling on her background in healthcare, and looking forward to Mae’s future.
February 14, 2022: Maya Hardigan has been named one of PitchBook’s 66 Black founders and investors to watch in 2022. Maya was included due to Mae’s visibility in one of PitchBook’s verticals and/or spaces and her own influence in investing, entrepreneurship, and advocacy. Female founders received only 2% of VC funding in 2021 while Black founders received less than 1%.
January 24, 2022: As part of Real Chemistry's Real: Health Equity event, Maya Hardigan joined Reed Tuckson MD of Tuckson Health Connections LLC, Ryan Pack of Science 37 and Ariel Katz of H1 for a discussion on future-proofing health through inclusive innovation. The four covered the opportunities to build health equity, gaps to fill, and the progress to which they all have committed.
December 7, 2021: Mae has joined Scripps Research Digital Trials Center’s new research consortium, PowerMom. PowerMom aims to bring together healthcare and tech companies, advocacy groups, community health centers, and more to advance research into maternal health and help improve maternal and fetal health outcomes. Mae will be providing outreach support alongside other organizations including Microsoft, March of Dimes, WebMD, Happy Mama Healthy Baby Alliance, and African American Wellness Center for Children and Families.
October 13, 2021: $2.4 billion in funding was allocated to 55 New York healthcare innovation companies in Q3 2021 and 55% of the top 20 biggest raises went to companies with women in leadership roles. This report from NYC Health Business Leaders covers the overall funding landscape for NY’s healthcare startups, the increased visibility of female founders, CEOs, and investors, and some of the female founders leading the way, including Mae’s Maya Hardigan.
September 28, 2021: Maya Hardigan is the featured guest in this episode of the “Inception with Mike Edelhart” podcast. Mike Edelhart is the Managing Partner for Joyance Partners and of Social Starts Venture Capital. In this 15-minute podcast, Mike Edelhart and Maya Hardigan talk about why clinical research has excluded or underrepresented people of color, why and how Mae was founded, and why Mae is pursuing a reimbursement model instead of an out-of-pocket one.
September 27, 2021: A bill, nicknamed the “Momnibus” bill, aims to put into law measures that would help reduce Black women’s maternal mortality rate, which, as of 2017 - the latest year that the data was available - was six times that of white women’s. The “Momnibus” bill aims to collect more details about pregnancy-related deaths, diversify the experts looking at that information and require those experts to recommend ways to reduce this racial gap, and expand access to doulas and midwives. Altogether, this bill is focused on some of the same issues around black women’s maternal health that Mae is also addressing.
September 15, 2021: Mae is one of the five awardees of this year’s QuickFire Challenge, which is sponsored by Johnson & Johnson Innovation. Each submission to the QuickFire Challenge represented a solution to help address racial and socioeconomic disparities within DC, and the awardees were chosen based on their idea uniqueness and feasibility, potential impact on human health, thoroughness of approach, and identification of key resources and a plan to further the idea. Each awardee will receive $50,000 in grant funding and a chance to reside at JLABS @ Washington DC.
September 8, 2021: After a soft launch in January, Mae has raised $1.3M to help build out its product to help improve pre- and post-natal care for expectant Black women. In addition to Avestria, investors include Happiness Fund, MBX Capital, Rhia Ventures, the Social Starts Health and SteelSky Ventures which led this round.
January 17, 2021: FemTech Insider’s writeup highlights Mae’s soft launch. Mae is currently offering a free birthing plan tool and free 15-minute consultants with doulas. As CEO Maya Hardigan explains, Mae’s initial features include a “culturally competent care marketplace and a digital tools wraparound”. Both services are meant for fostering connections with maternal health care experts, educating expectant mothers, and protecting them from some of the leading causes of maternal morbidity and mortality.
June 27, 2019: Before founding Mae, Maya Hardigan was the Director of Clinical Innovation at Pfizer. In this interview, she discusses the role of digital health tools in clinical trials, the need for those tools to ensure patient care, data privacy, and high-quality data, and advice for approaching pharma companies about partnership opportunities. She also talks about her role as a board member of Kangu - a platform that helps fund safe births for mothers in underserved markets and that, after this interview was published, helped influence her decision to found Mae.