Women take the stage in digital health: 5 leaders to watch!

By Grace Moen and Indu Subaiya

As we gear up for the 7th Annual Fall Conference Health 2.0 has been struck by the number of women-led companies changing the face of digital health captivated by who these women are. For one they’re younger than ever before and they’re also attacking health care problems with far ranging backgrounds, many outside of health care. And they have global ambitions.  Here are 5 women CEOs to pay attention to, most of whom you can catch on the mainstage of Health 2.0 next month.

Akhila Satish - Cyber Doctor

As one of the first clinical practice tools to build a simple, elegant workflow enabling patient-physician communication and patient-centered decision making, CyberDoctor is breaking new ground in improving patient awareness, adherence, and outcomes. CyberDoctor first presented on the Health 2.0 stage at Health 2.0 Europe 2012 in Berlin and welcomes CEO Akhila Satish back in 2013 as a Rising Star at the 7th Annual Fall Conference to unveil CyberDoctor’s brand new app, PatientPartner.

Julia Winn, BetterFit Technologies

BetterFit Technologies was originally presented at the Annual Fall Conference in 2012 as a platform for using NLP on over 100,000 free text comments from women’s health forums allowing women to compare their birth control side effects.  Recent Harvard graduate Julia Winn joined the inaugural Health:Refactored event in May 2013 to demo a two-way text messaging system for enhanced patient-physician communication. At the Seventh Annual Fall Conference in Silicon Valley Julia will shine light on yet another exciting iteration to the BetterFit product which is sure to impress.

Chiara Bell, CareTicker  

CareTicker’s suite of tracking apps includes KnockedUp, an app for pregnant women covering the spectrum of the pre- and post-natal experience. Expecting mothers can access suggested checklists, OBGYNs in their area, new-mom resources, and the app will even notify the care team and loved ones when she goes into labor. CareTicker’s CEO, Chiara Bell launched her first company, Enurgi, at the 2008 San Francisco Fall Conference before selling to Univita. She has worn several hats on stage at Health 2.0, including and certainly not limited to presenting CareTicker at the 2011 and 2012 Fall Conferences, discussing her multiple start-up ventures at Spring Fling 2012 Matchpoint Boston, and moderating the session, The Well Woman: Reproductive Health in the 21st Century at the 2012 Fall Conference.

Hind Hobeika, Instabeat

Hind Hobeika is a swimmer, an engineer and the CEO of Instabeat which has developed the first heart rate monitor specifically for swimmers. Formally known as Butterfleye, this waterproof goggle attachment device got off the ground thanks to an indiegogo campaign and gained further traction after demoing at the 2012 Fall Conference. In less than a year Hind has made huge strides in product development and returns to the Health 2.0 stage in 2013 all the way from Lebanon as a Rising Star to present the latest iteration of rebranded Instabeat.

Christine Robins, BodyMedia

Christine Robins’ background is with Philips toothbrushes but between multiple product demos from armbands with Jenny Craig, Sprint, and The Biggest Loser to disposable patches, Christine has grown BodyMedia from tracking devices to a full quantified self movement.  Back in April of this year Jawbone made big news by acquiring BodyMedia and this Fall Christine will join Health 2.0 to discuss her experience in an onstage interview with Sara Reistad-Long during the session 3 CEO’s.

In celebration of XX in Health week, we salute these leading ladies of digital health and look forward to new developments on their journeys as entrepreneurs.

Pay it Forward

by Liz Seegert

What happens when two highly successful, dedicated, smart public health nurses get together? I'm incredibly fortunate that they become mentors and role models who personify the term "outstanding women healthcare leaders." Meet Diana Mason, PhD, RN, FAAN and Barbara Glickstein, MPH, MS, RN, co-directors of The Center for Health, Media and Policy at Hunter College in New York City. 

These incredibly accomplished health professionals lead an organization that uses approaches ranging from traditional academic research and policy analysis to creative writing and multimedia to pinpoint important public health issues under-represented by policy stakeholders or in mainstream media. The goal is to advance the conversation about health and health policy. Many of these issues affect the health of underserved populations – like children in low-income communities, or women veterans, or the elderly. As a Senior Fellow there, I report on the health and aging in the U.S, the role of technology, and social determinants of health.  Projects by other Senior Fellows have explored such diverse topics as drug policy, childhood obesity, HIV among African-American women, and narrative writing for nurses.

There isn't enough space to adequately describe all of Diana and Barbara's professional accomplishments. Leadership positions in nursing, media, and education. Numerous awards. Board members of compatible well-known non profit organizations. Educators. Innovators. As importantly, they are genuinely nice people, who take real interest in my career –encouraging me to stretch a journalist, opening doors and providing support every step of the way. We all need mentors and role models. I wish everyone could find such an ideal match. 

I don't work in a traditional office environment, so sometimes finding the right people to offer encouragement or feedback has been challenging. Connecting with these amazing women makes me be a better health reporter. My writing is has improved, my knowledge is deeper, and my professional network has grown. 

Pure chance led me to the Center’s website. It was my “aha” moment. After our first meeting, I knew that this connection was meant to be. 

Did these two remarkable, accomplished women need the headaches that come with running a non-profit, or the paperwork and bureaucracy that are byproducts of this effort? Their dedication to public health, to moving the conversation along, to addressing some very real, but not very “media-sexy” health issues is what energizes them.  

Health care needs more leaders like Diana and Barbara. They are outstanding professionals and leaders in every sense. They advise, they mentor, they write, they produce, they teach, and put themselves out there through HealthStyles, their weekly syndicated public radio program. Mostly, they put the best interests of people – the public, their students, the Senior Fellows – first. They lead by example, regardless of the myriad obligations awaiting them. Like any good leaders, they're never too busy to pay it forward. 

 Liz Seegert is a freelance health journalist based in New York, and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Health, Media & Policy. She writes about aging, women's health, policy, and socio-cultural health issues. You can email her [email protected].

Disrupting Healthcare Starts With You

This post was contributed by Danielle Cass (@daniellecass), an innovation evangelist at Kaiser Permanente, for XX in Health Week 2013, a week-long celebration of gender diversity in healthcare.

Danielle Cass with her family. 

This is the story of how I hacked my life and career last year to get closer to the frontlines of health care innovation – and my family. 

That experience – and talking to other women leaders in health care – made me realize that disrupting health care starts with your own life and career.

This is also the story of how you can reinvent your own path in order to fix what’s broken in health care or fix imbalance between your work and life.

My story starts at home: I grew up surrounded by health care pioneers whose work saved and improved the lives of hundreds of people. My mom is a family physician who in the 1980s opened the nation's first health center for women. My dad is a urologist who brought mobile lithotripsy to the U.S. in the 1980s. (That's a non-invasive way to smash kidney stones without surgery.) My sister is a lead Gynecologist Oncologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and UCLA focused on finding a marker for ovarian and cervical cancers so they can be detected and treated earlier. 

One year ago I was Kaiser Permanente’s National Director of PR Strategic Planning and Partnerships. I was in Washington DC twice a month organizing big news events and meetings at KP's gorgeous new Center for Total Health on Capitol Hill with The White House, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Secretary Sebelius' team and the innovation team at the Center for Medicaid & Medicare Services. 

I was doing really exciting stuff and raising the visibility of Kaiser Permanente's integrated care model and award-winning innovation and research -- BUT I was missing out on key moments in my family's life. 

I missed my son's stand-up saxophone solo at The Berkeley Jazz School because I was in DC for an Institute for Healthcare Improvement event I organized at our Center for Total Health.  I missed my daughter's school play and most of her soccer games because I was in DC. 

Then I had an epiphany after attending two amazing health care innovation events in a row: The XX Retreat and the Kaiser Permanente Innovation Retreat. 

At The XX Retreat, I was moved to tears by speaker Nupur Srivastava as she described her work to treat jaundice in newborns in India. She told the audience how the technology was available to mothers whose babies were dying of jaundice but how one mother said it was cheaper to have another child rather than seek treatment. 

At Kaiser Permanente Innovation Retreat, I listened rapt as teams of KP doctors, nurses, IT experts and designers described their innovation projects that were being awarded for netting big impact in clinical care. 

As I sat in the audience, I decided that while it was important work, for me personally at that point in my life, it didn't matter whether I landed more stories about Kaiser Permanente in the New York Times and POLITICO and generated two million impressions on Twitter. 

I wanted to help clinicians improve the lives of their patients. AND I wanted to do it while working just 45 hours a week right here in the Bay Area. 

That night in my hotel room I sketched out my dream job at Kaiser Permanente. I would be an Innovation Evangelist helping our care providers share and spread their innovative projects throughout the Kaiser Permanente universe of 17,000 doctors, 49,000 nurses, 175,000 employees and 9 million members. 

The next morning while still at the KP Innovation Retreat, I pitched the job idea to the Vice President of Innovation & Advanced Technology, she said yes immediately, and I was hired the next month. 

Ironically, I was scared to tell my parents about it. They are immigrants to this country and always pushed my three sisters and me to work hard, achieve more and climb up the ladder, rather than taking our foot off the gas pedal to explore a side path. 

But to my surprise, they were thrilled for me and very proud and supportive. 

In the last year on the new job, I've chaperoned my kids’ school field trips and camping trips, attended their music performances and sports games, and gone on more dates with my husband because I didn’t feel guilty about leaving the kids due to constant work travel. And my husband finally let me get a dog because I wasn’t traveling for work and could help take care of it. 

Most importantly: I've already made some impact in helping clinicians spread their innovations – like a roving mobile telemedicine robot that Intensive Care Unit doctors use to beam in from home for evening rounds in the ICU. This innovation has led to fewer night emergencies and increased patient and patient family satisfaction. 

And a program that makes better use of Kaiser Permanente members’ time while they wait in lines at our flu shot clinics. Roving workers go through the wait lines and use iPads to review members’ personal health prompts in their medical record to schedule overdue health tests and screenings like mammograms and other cancer tests. During the first 12-day pilot at the KP Redwood City flu clinic, more than 900 cancer screenings and health tests were scheduled while members waited in line for flu shots. 

So here is my message: disrupting health care and leading others starts with YOU and your own life. 

This approach is far more common than you realize. For validation, I asked some women health care leaders whom I admire. 

“The best jobs I’ve had were the ones I thought up for myself and then ‘sold’ to other people,” said Susan Dentzer, former PBS NewsHour health correspondent and editor-in-chief of Health Affairs who is now Senior Policy Adviser to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “These were not the jobs that existed previously or got advertised. I thought up the role of on-air health correspondent at the PBS NewsHour then persuaded the Kaiser Family Foundation (and later RWJF) to provide the funding to support the unit.” 

Dentzer’s current position as senior policy adviser at RWJF did not previously exist but instead spawned from conversations she had with the CEO, Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, to shape something that accommodated Dentzer’s skills and interests and the foundation's needs. 

Best of all: the job gives Dentzer more flexibility to cope with the equally busy schedules of her husband and their three children, ages 13, 16 and 19. 

Vocera Chief Medical Officer M. Bridget Duffy, M.D., was driven to invent new roles for herself after witnessing as an Internal Medicine doctor too many dehumanizing interactions between doctors, patients, patients’ families and technology. 

“For the last 20 years of my career in medicine, I have created non-traditional roles where I was empowered to innovate and drive change around the human experience of care. It was out of pain and frustration and my desire to fix the status quo of what I saw as broken in health care,” said Duffy, who helps Vocera  empower healthcare organizations through integrated, intelligent communication solutions that improve outcomes and the patient and staff experience. “The common thread between all the innovative roles and titles I’ve created is my passion to humanize the delivery of medical technology.” 

So if you don’t already have your dream job, or if you are frustrated by something you see as broken in health care, or if you’ve been at the office so much that your family no longer recognizes you, here are tips on how to hack your life and career. 

Bridget Duffy advises: 

1. Find your posse. Create a tribe. Find a community of disrupters who have challenged the status quo and will support you on your journey.
2. Have courage to fix what you know to be broken even when everyone is against you and don’t be afraid to fail.
3. Find the powerbase in the organization where you work, and get tucked in with them. Make sure you have people in the foxhole with you.
4. Don’t be afraid to ask for the craziest new position and for the way in which you want to work.  You should be able to bring your full self to work, not have to check your soul at the door, to change healthcare for the better. Lastly, while trying to heal medicine, you should not kill yourself in the process!
5. Don’t stay too long in the wrong organization.  Life is short.  Pick an organization that is aligned with your vision and your values and where you can add value in minutes not in years. 

Susan Dentzer advises: 

1. Establish a track record in a field or with an employer who is open to talking about what you'd like to do and how it might mesh with the needs and desires of the enterprise.
2. Pick an employer large enough and innovative enough that you want to work there, then establish a track record there in some capacity. 
3.  Even if it isn't your "dream" job; get good and get noticed having a unique skill set doing something you really love. Then just keep selling your talents to the right people to create your dream position. 
4. Start your own business, either as a consultant or entrepreneur. Too many women do not consider this possibility and it's a shame, because if you can build a successful business and sell it one day, it is a way to create wealth also.
5. Embrace this saying: "The shoe that fits one pinches another:" Sometimes you definitely have to shop for a new pair of career shoes. And sometimes your foot is unique enough in size that you have to be your own shoe designer and cobbler -- your own Christian Louboutin or Steven Weitzman or even Aerosoles if you prefer! 

My advice:

1. Take advantage of resources already around you. Look for existing groups in your organization that support women advancing their careers. For example, Kaiser Permanente has two internal business resource groups focused on fostering women to lead in health care: Kaiser Permanente Women in Technology and Kaiser Permanente Women Embracing Life and Leadership.
2. Find a mentor. Luckily at Kaiser Permanente we have KPMentoring.org that pairs our employees with fellow mentors and mentoring programs. But you can discover your own mentor by getting involved with groups like XX in Health (xxinhealth.org), the Lean In Foundation (leanin.org), or just reach out to a woman leader whom you admire and ask her for a quick coffee by her office or a 15-minute phone chat.
3. After you’ve completed Step 1 & 2, sketch out your dream job, then brainstorm with your friends, colleagues and mentor on who to pitch and where to network to make it real. 
4. If you get rejected, wait a few months and try again. The health care industry is changing so fast right now that new technologies, digital health tools and care models are emerging every day. If the landscape isn’t ripe today for your dream job, it might be six months from now.

Are We Doing Enough to Give Women Choice about Staying in the Workforce?

This post was contributed by Bianca Frogner, an XX in Health ambassador located in Washington, DC, for XX in Health Week 2013, a week-long celebration of gender diversity in healthcare. Bianca is an assistant professor of health economics at The George Washington University who studies the impact of health IT on the US health system.

 XX in Health Week is a great opportunity to celebrate and reflect on how far women have come in leadership roles in health.

Early on a generation of women fought for the right to “have it all.” Now a generation of women are striving for, achieving, and challenging the mantra of “having it all”. In the future, I hope for a generation of women who will be living, expanding, and evolving the definition of “having it all” to mean that they can fulfill any and all their dreams whenever and however they want. In other words, I hope the future of “having it all” will not be measured by a woman’s ability to achieve the highest title as well as mom of the year. Rather I hope that women will define “having it all” as having the opportunity to pursue careers they want without barriers, spending time with family in whatever way bring her happiness without judgment, and setting aside time for self-care and personal growth without guilt.

This future vision may result in larger proportions of women making choices that earlier generations may consider cringe-worthy such as highly educated women deciding to be stay at home moms, or women choosing to never have children. But to me, these choices are okay as long as women made these choices on their own volition, not because potentially modifiable circumstances forced them to do so. Would a woman’s choice change with, for example, more generous maternity and paternity leaves as well as pay, better infertility treatment benefits , flexible work schedules, better day care options, convenient breast feeding facilities, or supportive and understanding bosses and co-workers with realistic expectations? If the answer is yes to any of these, then we need to stop and reconsider women are making career choices based on her preferences rather than circumstances. As a society, we need to have more open and honest conversations especially in the policy arena about the resources and support we provide women, and how the absence of these resources we may prevent American women from being as productive as their counterparts in other industrialized countries.

Given the large number of women working in the health care industry as clinicians, administrators, and researchers, I would hope that the industry can emerge as exemplary in its policies and opportunities in order to capitalize on a woman’s intellect, experience, and innovative thinking to improve the current health care environment.  Women are mothers communicating with pediatricians, daughters coordinating the care for their parents, wives encouraging their husbands to get a physical, and if time permits, self-caregivers. Women have long been working with and in the health care system; we need to capitalize on this dual role and mobilize their thoughts and opinions to improve the health system. A woman does not need to be CEO of a company, President of a University, or a Chairman of the Board to make improvements, though their voices may be loudest under current constructs. But rather, we need to create pathways for women at any stage of her career or her personal endeavors to have a voice in improving health care. We need to find ways to let women lead the charge in ways that fit their preferences. We need to encourage women leadership in health in small and big ways, and we can start by setting in motion real policy improvements that allow women to be all that they can and want to be.

Women in Medical Management: Women Physicians Are Uniquely Qualified to Lead Our Healthcare System

This post was contributed by Linda Brodsky, MD, for XX in Health Week 2013, a week-long celebration of gender diversity in healthcare. Dr. Brodsky is the founder of Women MD Resources, an organization dedicated to “helping women physicians get the jobs they want, the pay they deserve, and not become prisoners of their careers.” Follow her on Twitter @lindabrodskymd‎.

 Most women do not become physicians willing to trade in their white coats or scrubs for a business suit and heels.  Most are not thinking that they want to work at a governmental agency or manage a large group of physicians.  Medical school does not prepare physicians for the many alternative career opportunities that an MD degree opens up.

The lock-step 7-12 year program from white coat ceremony to farewell to residency dinner assiduously avoids models of participation in our healthcare system which don’t involve direct patient care.  And during this time, the call to serve directly is so strong, and the representation of “administrators” is negatively portrayed, most physicians don’t consider a career in “administration,” which is a form of medical leadership.

“Medical leadership” typically evokes the image of the president of the American Medical Association, the Dean of a Medical School or the chair of the department of medicine.   Women have  made few inroads into these rigidly controlled positions.  But we are entering uncertain and tumultuous times.  The best time to advance and make the most of new opportunities.

New, more accessible positions of medical leadership are emerging out of the necessities of running a rapidly morphing healthcare system.  New structures and new functions require unique skills and experiences.  These positions fall into the broad category of “medical management”–from hospital president to chief medical officer, from managed care coordinator to industry consultant.

With over 10,000 members, the American College of Physician Executives creates a forum for physicians to take on the leadership roles in medical management.  Their newly published book by consultant, author and entrepreneur Deborah M. Shlian, MD, MBA spotlights women physicians in medical management.  A must read for everyone:  Lessons Learned: Stories from Women in Medical Management

Through story telling of 26 women “managers”, the world of medical management for women physicians is nicely laid out.  The “how to rise” to positions  in government, hospitals, large provider groups, managed care organizations, industry, academia, and entrepreneurship.  Some have pursued additional degrees (MBA, MPH, PhD), although this is not a requirement for all.  But thinking out of the box is.

Why are women not just qualified, but uniquely qualified to lead our healthcare system?   We are taught from early childhood to get along with others, to create win-win situations, and to handle multiple people and their many problems all at once.  Creating “family” harmony without losing sight of the individual’s needs are well instilled in women starting from a very early age.  Time to make use of the things we were taught to do as little girls and instead of bemoaning the things that we weren’t taught because we weren’t little boys.  We can instead use these qualities and apply them to leadership in management positions.

Shlian’s book is an excellent way to familiarize yourself with an alternative career path for women physicians.  No matter the stage of your career, keep your options open, keep your mind open.  Pursue your interests.  Learn how other women have transitioned from bedside to board room.

A Momentary Glimpse

This post was written by Linda Li, an XX in Health summer associate. Linda is a second year medical student at the University of Michigan.

In July 2011, I made the decision to defer matriculation to medical school for a year. While I was hoping to relax in Philadelphia before entering a lifelong journey in medical training, what I got instead was one of the most emotionally tiring and challenging years of my life.

You see, 3 months after I decided to defer medical school, my aunt was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. She was immediately hospitalized and spent most of the remaining year and a half of her life prevailing through aggressive chemotherapy sessions and a slew of medical complications. My uncle, a self-employed contractor with a long daily commute into D.C., spent every moment he wasn't working by my aunt’s hospital bed, but he was also determined to minimize the disruptions my aunt’s sudden illness caused in their children’s lives. That's where I enter the story.

Two days after my aunt was diagnosed with leukemia, I packed a suitcase and jumped on a bus headed to her home in Virginia. There, I served as a full-time, substitute mom for my 5 and 7-year-old cousins. I picked them up from school, helped them with their homework, practiced piano with them, took them to Tae Kwon Do classes, tried to convince them to shower for less than an hour, figured out what dinner foods they would actually eat, learned how to graciously lose in every game of chess, made scrapbooks with them, and tucked them in by 9 pm.

When I wasn’t running after my cousins or shopping at Gymboree, I worked remotely as a research associate. I was lucky to have a supervisor who supported my decision to leave the office and trusted my abilities to work independently, but even so, I quickly learned the urgency behind making every moment count and the need to make sacrifices. Project deadlines sometimes resulted in sleepless nights filled with literature reviews and manuscript revisions, and touching base with my supervisor occasionally meant weekend trips back to the office in Philadelphia.  

That year, I learned an incredible amount about empathy, health, loss, and sacrifice.  I became more motivated than ever to enter medicine, but I also became more terrified as well. Would I ever, in my career, have that much time to dedicate to my family again? Was this really just a rare year of flexibility, freedom, and control?

I admit that even as a medical student, I’ve been relatively oblivious to the dearth of female leadership in healthcare. I had no idea, for example, that less than 20% of hospital CEOs are women until I joined XX in Health. I’ve been lucky to be surrounded by strong female figures throughout my life; for instance, the presidents of both my undergraduate and graduate universities have been well-respected women, and so is the CEO of the healthcare system I’m currently training in. My oblivion to the lack of female leadership is also partially due to the great support women receive in medical school. Our school’s AMWA chapter has a strong presence, and at almost every career panel there is a female physician who serves as evidence that one can have a family and still enter that specific specialty.

But here’s something I never picked up on until I really evaluated the atmosphere for female leadership in medicine— The question I ask myself as I think about my career has never really been “How can I be the change agent and leader I want to be in this specialty or field?” because I'm too preoccupied asking, “Can I even enter this field?”

This question is not uniquely asked by female students. My peers and I, regardless of gender, all grapple with the lifestyle questions that come with our potential career and specialty choices. Yet, in medicine especially, this still seems to hit women harder than men.

The AAMC reports that less than 35% of physicians and surgeons are women, and as of 2010, <15% of active physicians are women in 9 out of 36 specialties. It isn’t just that fewer women are entering these specialties, either —of all 36 specialties, only orthopedic surgery has <15% of women entering its residency programs.  The problem is even more alarming when looking at leadership positions held by females. In 2011, 12% of medical school deans were women; the figure reported in 2006 was identical.

I echo many people when I say that women have the potential to make critical contributions to the healthcare industry as leaders. Women are collaborative, empathetic, driven to make a difference, and have experiences that provide them with a unique intuition into the system. For example, women are essentially the healthcare decision-makers of the home: 85% of women choose their children’s doctors, and 84% are chiefly responsible for taking their children to appointments.

So when I consider why there so few active women physicians and even fewer leaders, even when almost half of medical school graduates today are women, it is somewhat ironic to recognize that one potential answer is because women do play such a pivotal role in healthcare. The devotion women have to being caretakers and nurturers may actually be pulling them away from becoming leaders in the field that they are so well suited for. This should not happen. Women’s experiences in these roles should be qualifying them, not preventing them, for leadership positions, and choosing a career devoted to  taking care of others should not have to conflict with a devotion to nurturing one’s own family. 

While internal barriers like a lack of self-confidence are important to recognize, in healthcare there remains a huge need for making the workplace environment more accommodating for women. I’m only a medical student, so my insights on working in the healthcare industry are limited, but what I did learn during my “year off” was the importance of flexibility, control, and (relative) predictability. As I advance in my career and the healthcare industry transforms, I hope that we can build systems and create a culture that promote these and allow for women (and men) to thrive professionally and personally. 

Both women and men can uniquely contribute to the advancement of the healthcare industry, so why shouldn’t we share the responsibilities as healthcare decision-makers in both the home and workplace?

My Big Fat Feminist Pregnancy

Anushay Hossain

This post was written by Anushay Hossain, a Bangladeshi blogger and journalist based in Washington, DC. She launched Anushay's Point in 2009 and spent a decade as a feminist policy analyst on Capitol Hill before becoming a full-time writer and editor in 2013.  

When I first found out I was pregnant one of the first questions everybody asked was when I was going to write this post, the sequel to the one I wrote about my wedding.

I would have written this piece sooner, but I was too busy in my first trimester being sick. If there is a bathroom, I have been sick in it. You could say I was experiencing my own version of sick and the city- literally.

While most women are quick to bask in the joy of their pregnancy, finding out about mine was strangely frightening.

Not only did I never want to get married, I also never wanted kids. The two desires, or lack there of, were definitely connected for me. When I was a little girl playing with my dolls, I always pretended they were other people’s kids. As an adult I lumped getting pregnant in the same category as getting married, and slapped a big fat “no thank you” on both options.

Of course everything changed when I met my husband. Because when you meet the right partner, when you meet your match you stumble onto the discovery that you actually do want many of the things you thought you did not.

What has been feminist about my pregnancy? For starters, being in control of my fertility and being able to decide the timing of it. Because such a large part of my job focuses on US foreign policy on global reproductive health and rights, the importance of women being able to access birth control, of women being in control of their reproduction has just been magnified ten-fold for me in my own pregnancy.

I think about women and girls, currently about 200 million according to experts, who wish to either delay or prevent pregnancy but lack access to contraceptives,all the time. I think about women in Bangladesh giving birth on the floor of their homes with no skilled birth attendant, no pre or post-natal care.

Being able to determine the number and spacing of children for women is key to our empowerment. If we lack decision-making power over our bodies, we pretty much lose control over everything else in our lives.

As my husband and I make daily decisions centered around our growing family, these links could not be more glaringly clear to me. It frightens me to think of how many women have this choice taken away from them.

I spend a lot of my big fat feminist pregnancy also thinking about maternity leave and child care, and how the majority of women do not have either. I cannot tell you how much of my twenties I spent yapping away on why I did not want to have kids because I wanted to have a career, and how many women I have seen disappear from their jobs because they had children. I blamed children for taking away women’s careers.

Of course now being thirty-one years old and pregnant, I realize it is not the women or the babies that are to blame. It is our societies. Lack of maternity leave, lack of paid maternity leave, absence of paternity leave, not being able to make your work hours more flexible, not being able to afford child care, not having insurance coverage, the list goes on and on and on.

Society not only does not support childbirth, women are actually punished for having children. We lose out on promotions and jobs all the time because we have kids.

Since announcing my pregnancy, I cannot tell you how many friends and readers have shared their nightmare stories of how they had to leave their jobs after giving birth, how their bosses would not let them adjust work hours etc. And America has one of the worst records in this regard. It is insane to think about how women are systematically punished instead of being rewarded for raising the next generation of the human race.

A "This What a Feminist Looks Like" Onesie Was the First Purchase I Made for My Baby.

Aside from these worries and concerns, I spend a lot of time with my hands on my growing belly. The experience of pregnancy, of literally watching my body change in front of my eyes, making more room for my baby, has been simultaneously scary and beautiful. I wonder why women do not talk about pregnancy all the time! It is so fascinating. I am fascinated by the whole process. I cannot believe how many women go through pregnancy alone or married, in partnerships or not.

Sometimes I feel bad for my husband that he has to watch my pregnancy instead of being able to experience it. Often he will ask me what it feels like to have a baby inside of me, if I think about it during the day. I do not always know what to tell him. How do you answer the question, “what does pregnancy feel like?” I say my stomach feels firm and I picture the baby like the images we have seen in the ultrasounds. I tell him I am just as curious as he is. I am just fatter.

The majority of the emotions I experience are so overwhelming though, I cannot even articulate them. In a good way, I think maybe a large part of the pregnancy is meant to stay between the mother and the baby, like our little secret.

As the trimesters progress and the books and blogs keep getting read, what I think about more and more is the day I will get to meet my baby. I just cannot wait. That is what I think about more than anything.

And you can be sure the first thing I will hand my child will be her feminist onesie, the first thing I bought during my big fat feminist pregnancy.

XX in Health | Investing Early in Leadership

Hamsika

This post was contributed by Hamsika Chandrasekar, a recent MIT graduate, for XX in Health Week 2013, a week-long celebration of gender diversity in healthcare. Hamsika  is about to begin her first year as a Stanford medical student.

I was incredibly overwhelmed when I first arrived at MIT, inundated with classes, meeting new people, and discovering student life. I stumbled through my first semester, focusing primarily on school and trying to find a niche in the MIT undergrad community. Through a friend, I heard about a student organization called Camp Kesem (CK), a student group that organizes a free, annual, one-week summer camp for kids of cancer patients.

I was immediately drawn to CK – because I loved kids, because I had always wanted a summer camp experience, and most of all, because I felt like it took a holistic, family-focused, and creative approach to health care – focusing not just on patients (i.e., the parent/s with cancer) but also the patient’s family (i.e., the kids).

The week of Camp Kesem is essentially like any other camp. There are rotations – arts and crafts, drama, sports, and nature, camp songs, s’mores, a campfire, and nighttime activities. The unique aspect of CK stems from a ceremony called Empowerment, where all of Camp comes together around the campfire and campers have the opportunity to share personal stories, the majority of which are centered around their parents’ respective battles with cancer. The stories are raw, heart-warming, poignant, humbling, and unforgettable. Touched by these stories, I stepped up to take more leadership in the MIT chapter of CK, first as a fundraising coordinator during 2010-2011 and then as a two-time co-chair, during 2011-2012 and 2012-2013.

Camp Kesem

Looking back now, as a recent MIT graduate, I can see how much Camp Kesem has impacted the way I view life, and in particular, how I view diversity and leadership. I did not consider this until recently, but gender diversity has been an inherent part of my CK experience. We had 9 males and 8 females on our coordinator board this past year, and the value of this balanced gender distribution was incredible. Our coordinator team frequently had energetic discussions, diverse perspectives, and always, a sense of proud teamwork and tangible responsibility to provide a high quality experience for our campers and camper families. We worked together to raise nearly $85,000 for this year’s camp session, host numerous on- and off-campus fundraisers, bring a Boston Globe reporter to camp, enroll nearly 110 campers, recruit over 60 counselors, and plan activities for all 170 people during the week of camp. CK has hands-down been the best thing I have been involved in at MIT – not only from a community service standpoint but also from the perspective of personal growth, diversity appreciation, and leadership.

Female leadership in particular has played a significant role in the development of CK MIT. Since its inception in 2006, solely female co-chairs have run CK MIT, and in fact, the organization will welcome its first male co-chair during the upcoming 2013-2014 school year. This is unique and worth mentioning because not every health-oriented initiative has such a female-dominated history. Looking at statistics posted on xxinhealth.org alone, it is evident that very few companies have female CEOs, women in healthcare continue to earn less than their male counterparts, and rarely are women in roles that enable them to be key decision makers.

This is exactly why XX in Health – and other similar initiatives –are important. I strongly believe it is important to generate discussion about women in the workplace, to create equal opportunities, and recognize individuals’ talents – regardless of gender. As I learned through CK, goals can be surpassed and an amazing sense of community can be created through diversity and teamwork. Moreover, gender played no role in determining whether an individual would be a great leader for CK. If this is true for a one-week summer camp, it can certainly be true in the healthcare field.