North Star Leaders Podcast

Lindsay Pedersen

The world needs what only your business can bring, and as a leader, it's your job to deliver. But where do you focus? Where do you direct your time, your team, your budget, and your emotional energy?

We're learning this together on the North Star Leaders Podcast. In this podcast, I talk to purpose-driven leaders about the choices that they make to create audacious economic value while also realizing their distinctive purpose. I'm Lindsay Pedersen, brand strategist, author of Forging an Ironclad Brand, and host of the North Star Leaders Podcast.

Let's get to it. Today, I am really happy to be joined by Jennifer Heil. Jen is an Olympic athlete turned entrepreneur and is currently CEO and founder of Rya Health, a women's health tech platform bridging sports science into the healthcare environment.

Jen, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. So good to see you.

What is your favorite thing, Jen, about what you do?

Jenn Heil

Oh, gosh, what a great question. I love creation. So I always come really strong on vision.

And so it's just like, I see things as they are going to be. And I just love the process of building a team and bringing it to life. And also, you know, you can imagine the perfect thing, but you also have to make it fit with the context.

And I just love fitting those two together.

Lindsay Pedersen

And you can see around corners. I suppose that's kind of like skiing, right? Like you have to be around corners or have a feeling for what's happening that you can't quite literally see it.

Jenn Heil

Yeah, you have to feel your way, but you also have amazing peripheral vision. And so you can see things without seeing. I mean, when I was nine, I wanted to become an Olympian.

I just had to go and find a sport. So like, this is kind of the trajectory I put myself on. Like, let's figure out what that's going to look like and then get there.

Lindsay Pedersen

Well, one of the things we talk about a lot on this podcast is, as leaders, how do we take care of our physical and mental selves to show up well as leaders? And I was really struck by something you did fairly early in your skiing career. You took a year off to rebuild your body, and you got a lot of criticism for that because it was treating a chronic injury or state rather than an acute injury.

Tell me about that decision to take that year to nurture rather than to compete.

Jenn Heil

Yeah, so I mean, it was an interesting decision because no one had ever really done that before, which, you know, I was very young at the time. I was 19 years old. I had already competed in my first Olympics.

I had chronic shin splints. I was a great technical skier, but I didn't have the foundational base to be competing at that level in such a high impact sport. And so the reality is I didn't have the tools to deal with, you know, traveling around the world and having 18 competitions a year.

And so culturally, it was a no-no to step out. You know, I was criticized in the national media. Everyone told me I'd never come back again.

But I was burnt out emotionally and mentally because I had so much physical pain. And, you know, I wanted to stand on top of the podium. I had just missed the podium.

And I was like, I'm not going to get to where I want to go doing the same thing. It was just that simple. And so, yeah, I don't know.

I'm very stubborn once I make a decision. And it was literally the best decision I've ever made in my life that year.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. But nobody had modeled that path for you. Like you came up with that path yourself at age 19 in the face of really significant social pressure to do something else that's remarkable.

Jenn Heil

I mean, it was just so obvious. I mean, I had the bittersweet experience of finishing fourth by one one hundredth of a point in my Olympics at 18. And so that's the smallest margin possible.

And so you just realize it's a sport where it's less than 30 seconds. At that point, I'd been training my whole life for it. And it's gone like that.

So the question was, what do I need rather than what is everyone going to tell me to do? And sport culture and all culture is so strong. You just kind of get on the path and you don't realize you can carve a new one.

But yeah, that heartbreak made me realize that, no, I'm actually going to be in charge here.

Lindsay Pedersen

It's so interesting that it's heartbreak, actually, that's so motivating. Sometimes it's like the power of contrast. Something really negative is actually what really gives you the gumption to do something super hard.

Jenn Heil

Yeah. I mean, I think that's just the story of life, right? We respond and we grow not to what feels good, but where the pain is.

That's been so consistent across my whole life.

Lindsay Pedersen

And how did you surround yourself with a team that would be of like mind with a goal that was sort of countercultural?

Jenn Heil

Well, the environment was actually pretty chaotic up until that point. And so we weren't as a national ski team focused on excellence and getting the best out of everyone. It was very much, you know, we have a little bit of resources we're going to sprinkle around and good luck.

And that's just not creating an environment for success for anyone. As a young athlete, I had very different needs from the reigning Olympic champion. As I said, I didn't have the physical capacity and I didn't have enough resources to help me build that in the gym and in the offseason.

So, I mean, I was lucky. You know, we always get lucky around, you know, some of these circumstances, but I had a coach at the time who saw my potential, who was equally frustrated at the system, who introduced me to an outside resource, a businessman living in Montreal. And it wasn't about ego, you know, which sport so often is.

It was really like, how do we support you to be your best? And yet together, I had enough shelter from, you know, the system at large to make this decision and to create a world-class plan. They brought in a new way of thinking as well and just supported that differently.

Lindsay Pedersen

It's interesting, this tension that you bring up between the interest of the short term and the interest of the long term. And this is a theme that also repeatedly comes up on this show, which is just this ubiquitous tension between the need of the short term and the need of the long term. You mentioned that in sport, in the short term, you can reactively treat an injury for performance, but long term, it's just not going to sustain.

And in your case, and this is rare in elite sports, you were proactive and built your strength up before a big acute injury might occur. So what is it that gave you that at age 19, the courage to do the thing that's so hard in the short term, but more sustainable in the long term, which I'm sure now as a CEO, you also are flexing this muscle. Where do you get that courage?

Jenn Heil

Yeah, you know, I mean, there was like a moment that stood out to me and it was standing at the start line of my first Olympic Games. And I just didn't feel equipped. You know, I was standing on a world stage.

I had only been on the national team. That was my second season. Everything was happening really fast.

And, you know, people said I could challenge for a medal that day, but it wasn't joyful. It wasn't fun because there was so much stress and so much anxiety, and I just didn't feel ready. And it really was a reaction to wanting to stand in the next start gate, knowing I had no regrets, knowing I was in control of that moment.

I mean, I had been living and dreaming for that moment. And to not be able to meet it at your full capacity, that was the heartbreak. And so it was a really easy decision to know that standing at the start line, knowing I had done everything in my control, that I had focused on excellence, that was the new goalpost.

It wasn't becoming an Olympian. It wasn't even winning an Olympic gold medal. I knew that if I did these other things, then I could contend for the Olympic medal.

And so I changed what success looked like ultimately. For yourself, you defined that. Yeah, no, no, no one's going to tell you, you know, stand at the start line and be satisfied.

They have outcomes that they want you to win an Olympic gold, right?

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah, for sure. That's their interest.

Jenn Heil

And it is ultimately mine. We're aligned there. But in terms of being healthy, being well, being mentally, physically, emotionally strong, and like maximizing those pieces, that my interests are more aligned to that.

And we traditionally in sport and even to this day, don't do a great job of keeping our athletes mentally and emotionally well.

Lindsay Pedersen

Well, that takes us to Rya Health. Tell my listeners about the business that you're building with Rya Health and the insight behind starting it.

Jenn Heil

Yeah, well, it's really simple. We want to scale Olympic level care teams for all women. And, you know, what that means is you have an integrated team, a digital team, who can provide knowledge and access to resources based off of your data and your needs.

And that's a huge problem for all women today, because the data doesn't exist. There is knowledge out there, but it's hard to access. You know, most doctors aren't trained around women's health.

So we're bringing the very best experts who are leaders in their field and applying, you know, the leading knowledge in health. So experts that you can't traditionally get access to nutrition, physio, mental health, performance health, and then we create AI agents with those experts. So that actually allows us to scale the experts, which has never been able to be done before.

And then on the other side, we create AI model, like a very contextually rich model of your health. And we put the two together. So it's like calling a world class expert, asking a question about your health, and they already know your background, your challenges, your issues, and can get right to solving your problem.

What we heard from so many women is like, you know, I don't want to go to my family doctor, because they're not trained in women's health. So it's a waste of my time. And then I can't get into the experts.

I don't know who I should be talking to. So we're really trying to replace that challenge of long wait times or being dismissed or not getting the information you need, because it hasn't been widely distributed for women through the traditional health system.

Lindsay Pedersen

It's inaccessible otherwise.

Jenn Heil

Yeah, yeah. It's like, it exists in, you know, very ensilaged pieces, but most of us can't get there. And, you know, I think most women have an experience of being dismissed, because of this confusion between actually having any data, the doctors knowing, you know, what symptoms are specific to women versus men, misdiagnosing.

You know, I recently went to the doctor because I had a lot of fatigue, which is not something I'm used to experiencing. And the doctor said, welcome to your 40s. I had just turned 40.

And she was like, you know, this is your future. And I had like, a lot of inflammation, which I thought was rapid weight gain. And she was like, yeah, this is what it is.

And I was like, so I went home, I found myself a doctor to do actual like hormonal and digestive system testing. And I had a parasite at the highest concentration that required two weeks of antibiotics. And I was back to myself.

And I had been suffering for like, six months. And so my story is not unique, you know, this very common experience for women. And so we're trying to get to this new paradigm of precision level knowledge based on women's physiology and their unique needs.

Lindsay Pedersen

Is the traditional physician didn't do what the next practitioner did, which was take your, I guess, what was this a functional medicine doctor or what kind of practitioner took the full picture of your body?

Jenn Heil

Yeah, I mean, I was like begging for my hormones to be tested. And it was no, it was like, well, you know, this is a natural process. It doesn't really matter where you are in the process.

It matters massively where you are in, you know, the perimenopause menopause phase and tailoring it to your body and your needs. This is the challenge of this phase of life because it's so unique to each and every one of us. We all have very different experience through it.

So I actually went to a functional medicine doctor who did, you know, the at home lab testing. Thankfully, I could afford it. It is a big investment, but I was that unwell at the time and I knew something was wrong.

And so, yeah, the lab results immediately were conclusive that this and the parasite directly causes fatigue. But my bigger issue is that there was no willingness to work with me. And that's common.

And it's a tough moment to be in primary care medicine because the models are failing us. You know, doctors have to see so many patients. They have such little time with each patient.

They haven't been educated on women's health because it hasn't been filtered through the system. And so we're stepping up to fill that gap. And it's nobody's fault, but it requires a new paradigm.

You know, we can't just fix a broken system. I truly think that we need to create a new paradigm. And that's what we're trying to do at Rya.

Lindsay Pedersen

Oh, my God. I'm just kind of like frustrated for you at the gaslighting of that situation, which, as you say, it's not as though it's caused by ill will at all. It's a systemic thing.

It's not a personal thing. It's not from lack of wanting to help. It's from a system that doesn't incentivize going deep like that.

Jenn Heil

Exactly. And, you know, I'm lucky I was trained to advocate for my health. I was trained to be taught that, you know, it's not just about getting by with your health that really is optimizing your health.

And that's how I grew up since a teenager because of being in the sports system. So, you know, the way I look at health is I have three buckets, my mental, physical, emotional health, and I'm trying to keep those buckets full. You know, there's times where they're incredibly depleted, whether I'm busy or I have a parasite or whatever that is.

But my goal is always how do I fill that bucket back up and how do I try and keep those buckets full? And I don't think that's the way we're taught to manage our health. It's kind of like, let's run as far as we can until we hit a wall and then deal with it.

And so, you know, it does require a new relationship with our own health and a sense of empowerment to know that, A, you're entitled to this and B, you can achieve it. And that's really, you know, a big goal of what we have at Rya is bringing this Olympic level care team to each woman.

Lindsay Pedersen

And who is the sweet spot customer for Rya? And then also, and maybe it's related, what motivated them to say yes to this? Like, what was the thing that finally instigated that?

Yeah, I'm going to do it.

Jenn Heil

So, yeah, we're focused on supporting women 40 to 55. So going through the perimenopause menopause phase, health management becomes incredibly important, you know, and holistic health management becomes important. So what happens during this phase as hormones changes, you're at risk of metabolic health that changes.

So then, you know, you have to adapt your nutrition, your eating, you can be doing everything right, but you're still seeing these changes. Bone health becomes an issue, cardiovascular health becomes an issue, sleep is a challenge for many women in this phase. And then we see the highest rates of, you know, depression and anxiety in any population is women in this phase of life health needs.

And so we're there to kind of provide that wraparound integrated care. So it could be as simple as like, something feels off, and you want extra information, it could be asking for a nutrition plan, or a plan around strength and conditioning. So we have these world leaders in all of these fields, who are there to support you to help you, again, fill those buckets.

And then if you do have an acute need or a sickness, or you're managing a disease, then we can provide, again, that wraparound care in that context. So it doesn't really matter what your context is, we're there to help elevate your recovery, or just your general well-being.

Lindsay Pedersen

And is it B2C or B2B? Is this something that I could just buy? Or is this through an employer?

How does this work?

Jenn Heil

Yeah, well, so as I said, we're trying to do a new paradigm. We're really being innovative here. And so that takes a long time to fit into an existing system.

So we're starting with direct-to-consumer. So we're an app, we're a monthly subscription fee. For us, it's really important that it's accessible.

So we have a free version, and then our base fee is $8 per month. Yeah. So the goal is, like, really to democratize this idea of concierge medicine.

Love. And then eventually, as we grow, we will work through employers and insurance and those pieces. But we really want to be able to get out there quickly and fill this need.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. That short-term, long-term tension we were talking about earlier as an athlete, when do you feel that as a leader of, oh, I have to make a decision right now that's either going to favor the short-term or the long-term? How do I litigate this decision?

Jenn Heil

Yeah, it's super interesting. So I almost feel like there's two parts to my job. One is long-term strategic thinking.

And my co-founder and I are very complementary in terms of vision versus executing today. And we support each other in that back-to-forth. So we really do naturally cover kind of that whole spectrum.

But yeah, you know, there's a time where you're planning for the future, you have your strategy, I think that needs to come first. And then there's a time to execute for today and kind of stop trying to optimize and just execute. And so that's the tension.

But I don't know what my best advice is there other than like, you have to hold both. And it's really, for me, as you learn and get out there and new signals, how you incorporate that into both, how do I respond to the moment to make this work? But how do I not lose where we're going over time, right?

Like how do I not sell out that vision? Or how do I not get blinded by today's reality? Because I really, truly believe that AI is going to change our relationship with our own health.

And we're in that transformation right now. We have a chance to know ourselves better. We have a chance to be connected to ourselves in a new way because of this precision level knowledge and expertise.

And so we do have to hold both true because we're going through that transformation now. And we know eventually, we want to be the new norm. And people will be so used to having their information at their fingertips.

And they'll be so sick of telling their doctors their medical histories that want them to be like, look here, take my AI model. So we're trying to balance those two. It's never perfect.

It's always about readjustment and taking the information in.

Lindsay Pedersen

Well, and it sounds like structurally, you have set yourself up for these questions by having a co-founder who is at a natural level, complementing you so that the duo of the two of you together are kind of spanning those two fences of the short term and the long term. So that is a way to deal with it is through the founder structure and just kind of like your natural interests and skills to not just hire another long term thinker or to co-found with another person who's more of a visionary. Like that's the strategy that you're using.

Jenn Heil

Totally. And I learned that. I mean, I went to Stanford to do a one year MBA.

And I think I naively was like, I'm going to fill all my gaps. I want to be well rounded. I want to fill all those gaps.

And then you get there and you're like, wow, there's just people who naturally are really great in these other places. Why would I not double down on what I'm good at? So that was a pretty big wake up call, you know, a typical perfectionistic athlete approach, whereas to lead in an organization and to build an effective team, it really is diversifying the set of skills and being complementary to one another.

So yeah, I was lucky that I met my co-founder, who's 33, but started Stanford at 14.

Lindsay Pedersen

Whoa.

Jenn Heil

Yeah. So it's really exciting. And his superpower is just simplification of everything.

What a great superpower. Or strategy. Yeah.

So it's a lot of fun to put our two strengths together.

Lindsay Pedersen

I love how you're like, I have a year in graduate school. I'm going to fill all my gaps. Like, that's a really good graduate school, but there's no graduate school.

And I mean, your larger point I really love, which is, it's actually kind of inefficient to be a gap filler. It's more efficient to be a superpower enhancer than to just like address the things where you're weaker. You can spend your whole life on that.

It's like whack-a-mole. Totally.

Jenn Heil

I think it's a maturity thing, too. It's this ability to accept and let go of those things, and other people in there stand in their superpowers. So yeah, it was pretty evident pretty quickly when I was with such high performers that it was a weight on.

I think there's a statistic that says to be your most effective in the workplace, you should spend like 70% of your time in your superpowers and try and give away everything else. I love a number like that.

Lindsay Pedersen

70%, not 80%. It's incredibly high. That's right.

But it's really high, but you're still letting 30% be, you're not like, it's not like exotic. Yeah, there's things you have to do.

Jenn Heil

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's, I love that.

When I think about spending 70% of my time where I'm naturally at my best, it's just like, oh. You know, you feel relief.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah, and energy. It's energy be getting, right? Exactly.

Which is such a huge thing for being an effective leader, too, is doing things that actually fill you up. Totally. What are you most excited about with Raya right now?

Like, what's giving you that spark for building this business right now? What's really thrilling about it?

Jenn Heil

Yeah, I mean, there's two pieces. The first piece, conceptually, is I'm just so excited to bring these resources and this reality to women, a privilege I have had since I was 17 years old as an elite athlete. And it's never been doable before because experts are scarce, right?

There are never enough and the very best, you can't scale them at an affordable rate. And so it's possible for the first time, which gets super excited. And then the other part is we have a fully built product.

We haven't launched yet, but we're doing a lot of focus groups and a lot of engagement with the women and to just be releasing it to the wild and to actually be filling a need and, you know, working hard that our product is a great experience that people want to use and engage with. Like, that's a pretty cool experience.

Lindsay Pedersen

Oh, my God. So cool. And it's interesting because it's like you've been in this very rarefied world where you have had access since you were a teenager to these insights that have been wildly valuable in your life.

And suddenly we're at a moment where not just Olympic athletes can have access to this kind of thing like that. So what an inflection point.

Jenn Heil

Right. I mean, another example. So I retired out of sport and had children very soon afterwards.

So I had a double transition and I went into a lot of the same challenges that women have in postpartum. And again, I looked for answers. I had a very large diastasis recti, so a split of my abdominal wall.

And I was going to the places that people told me to go to, but none of it was working. And again, because of my belief system that you can be well and you can be whole. I spent two years looking for solutions where I found a practitioner who did an ultrasound on my abdominal wall and was like, you have no connection, like you need surgery.

And they're like, we try not to recommend surgery, but you need surgery. And I got my life back. Like I remember waking up in the recovery room and I was like, oh, that's what it feels like to have a supported core.

Lindsay Pedersen

Oh, my gosh.

Jenn Heil

My backbone could stand up straight. And so you just think about all these women who there are solutions out there, but they can't get them at the time of need. And just the mindset shift of like, I can be whole, I should be whole.

And these solutions exist.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. And you yourself have experienced the before and after of the solutions with the surgery, with treating with antibiotics, the parasite that you had, probably countless other moments like that. And now the people like me can, I'm like, I'm going to start, I'm going to become a customer right after we hang up.

I love it. I love it. This has been such a wonderful conversation.

Are you game for a few rapid fire questions as we close?

Jenn Heil

Yeah, let's do it.

Lindsay Pedersen

Okay. Sort of one-word answers. Your second favorite sport after skiing?

Jenn Heil

Surfing.

Lindsay Pedersen

That was an easy one. What is the last fiction book that you enjoyed?

Jenn Heil

You asked me for what I read and enjoyed, but I'm reading The Red-Haired Woman.

Lindsay Pedersen

Oh, I don't know this one. Okay.

Jenn Heil

He's a Pulitzer Prize winning author and he writes about the Middle East. And the last book I read on his was Snow because I went skiing in Turkey and it was of that region. So yeah, he's less and more going, but Pulitzer Prize winning author.

Lindsay Pedersen

Okay. I'm going to add that to the show notes for listeners. Okay.

Your favorite indulgent food? Oh, chocolate.

Jenn Heil

I mean, brownies, chocolate, chocolate, anything. Chocolate ice cream. I mean, slice it and dice it however you need to.

Lindsay Pedersen

Chocolate bars, chocolate pasta, chocolate, everything. Okay. What time do you usually wake up in the morning?

Jenn Heil

About six o'clock, but I am not a morning person. It's painful.

Lindsay Pedersen

That's an elite athlete's discipline for you people. Okay. What other languages do you speak or wish you could speak?

Jenn Heil

Je parle en français aussi. I speak French as well.

Lindsay Pedersen

That was beautiful.

That was beautiful. Thank you so much, Jen. This has been such a nice conversation.

Where can people find out more about you, about Rya Health online?

Jenn Heil

Yeah. So rayahealth.ai, you can go and join our wait list. If you want more information on me, you can just look me up.

There's lots of stuff out there with bad haircuts and awkward. But yeah. Go check it out.

Lindsay Pedersen

Awesome. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening to this episode of North Star Leaders.

Make sure you don't miss an episode by subscribing on your favorite podcast app. If you know of a North Star Leader whose insights would be valuable for this community, please message me on ironcladbrandstrategy.com. Also on that website are show notes, transcripts, and a way to sign up for our monthly newsletter.

I hope you join us again for another episode of North Star Leaders.