Jennifer Heil’s RYA Health: The Game-Changing Solution Every Woman Needs for Better Healthcare Access!

Campbell Clarke, a Strategy and History student at McGill University, contributed to this story.

A coveted region for aspiring entrepreneurs, California’s Silicon Valley is recognized for its leading venture capital firms, angel investors, tech giants and startups, fostering a dynamic ecosystem of risk-taking, innovation and disruption. It is against this promising backdrop that former Olympic ski champion Jennifer Heil has set her sights on revolutionizing women’s health.

It was an absolute pleasure to sit down and catch up with Heil, who completed his BCom at McGill University and joined us on our Hot Cities of the World tour to South Africa during his student days. Born in Spruce Grove, Alberta, Heil is best known for her athletic achievements as a freestyle skier. After competing in the 2002 Winter Olympics at just 18 years old, she won Canada’s first gold medal at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, and went on to win a silver medal at the Winter Olympics. 2010 in Vancouver, Canada. . After his skiing career concluded in 2011, becoming the first person to win every major title in freestyle skiing and earning a Guinness World Record for the most gold medals won in a world freestyle skiing championship free, Heil decided to put his determination into challenging the status quo and achieving grassroots change.

In 2007, he co-founded B2ten, a privately funded charity that has made a significant contribution to sport in Canada by employing business principles to fund and develop elite Canadian athletes so they can achieve success on the Olympic stage.

Most recently, she served as vice president of sports development for viaSport British Columbia, which included leading the development of a sustainable, participant-focused sports system. She even led the design of British Columbia’s Safe Sport Program, one of the most comprehensive child protection programs in the country, which generated more than $7.5 million in additional investments.

Since becoming a mother of two young children, Heil has continued to create change. In 2021, she pursued her entrepreneurial ambitions by enrolling in the Stanford Master of Science in Management program at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Like many successful entrepreneurs, the idea for Heil’s new company came from her personal experience.

“I struggled to hold my second son who weighed eight pounds, despite having been one of the strongest women in the world, because he had a two-inch split in his abdominal wall,” she says. “I knew what good care was as an elite athlete, but when I was alone I couldn’t find the solutions I needed for two years. It took a lot of effort and attention seeking to find help. “You shouldn’t have to be an Olympic athlete to find the care you need.”

Determined to prevent other women from encountering the same problems, Heil joined Stanford’s Startup Garage, an acclaimed experiential learning course that challenges students to design and test business concepts that address real-world needs, and was where she met to his co-founder.

“We realized we needed to build our minimum viable product around postpartum because there is a huge unmet demand and need for that phase of life,” Heil says. “Women typically have 14 doctor’s appointments while pregnant, and may have one postpartum, despite the massive changes in physiology and risks associated with that period.”

In fact, a Danish study found that women are diagnosed on average four years later than men for a wide range of diseases.

“Data on women is largely missing in the development of the medical system, as they have been largely excluded from clinical trials,” she says. “Symptoms manifest differently due to the difference in physiologies, and that has not been taken into account in clinical practice, meaning that women’s needs and symptoms are often ignored.”

By fusing Heil’s unique skill set in applied health management and integrated care with his co-founder’s expertise in data and informatics, the pair created RYA Health, a health technology startup that leverages real-time data and artificial intelligence to accelerate women’s access to health services. RYA Health will officially launch this autumn.

“We want to provide value to the user so they can receive care faster and arm all stakeholders associated with the health system to make better decisions from this data,” he says.

A challenging start

The former athlete’s journey in Silicon Valley has not been easy at all. In a 60-person program at Stanford, he found himself among only nine women, three of whom were mothers. As he built his business, he had to overcome significant challenges stemming from gender role expectations and the demands of motherhood.

“The main difference was that moms had to do everything with a greater sense of urgency and we had to say no to many more things,” she says. “Thankfully, all the parents were amazing and willing to take on the extreme challenges of running a home under these circumstances. “It wasn’t an easy year for anyone’s spouse, male or female.”

Heil and his co-founder have faced a number of challenges amid Silicon Valley’s ever-evolving landscape. Despite this, he remains optimistic about the potential opportunities these obstacles bring.

“I would rather build a company today than two years ago, when capital might have been more accessible,” Heil says. “At that time, no one was looking for sustainable income and everything was focused on growth at the expense of strong fundamentals. There is evidence to show that the best companies emerge from times when capital is tighter, and as an entrepreneur, I am excited by the prospect of building a better company rather than chasing unsustainable growth, even if it is more challenging in the future. Short term.”

Whether on the slopes, driving change in the nonprofit sector, or transforming women’s health at the center of technology, Heil remains tirelessly committed to her personal purpose: helping shape a positive, inclusive and visionary reality. future.

Follow me in Twitter either LinkedIn. Verify some of my other works here.