You use an interesting method of testing the device. Can you tell us about that?

“The Syngina! It’s actually an industry standard for tampon manufacturers. You put a condom between the two ends of a glass beaker, and you pump warm water into it at the right pressure to create a made-up vaginal environment,” she explains. “Everybody who makes a tampon has to have this, but anyone else who's working on vaginal therapeutics can do it in reverse.

“We can actually measure how much drug we're releasing and how much leakage is still there that we didn't absorb. In order to de-risk everything we're doing, we've spent a lot of time trying to figure out exactly how to incorporate it, because we'll change the scaffold for every different drug. We'll run that through the Syngina so that we can make sure we've de-risked before we go to any sort of in-human trial.”

With so much need, what stands in the way?

She doesn’t hesitate. “Funding. And then funding.”

“Our funding needs are obviously bigger, and the challenge of finding people who are willing to invest in a space that they may not understand the need for. Just being in the drug device area, there are people who invest in devices, but not drugs. There are people who do drugs, but not devices. There are very few people who do both.”

Another issue, she notes, is that women’s health remains clouded by wellness products that lack regulatory rigour and make it harder for serious science to stand out.

Then, there’s also a cultural headwind. “We cannot get Google Ads because we’re a vaginal drug delivery platform,” she says. “Men can advertise almost anything. Women’s health products get blocked because of a single word.” A steady stream of ED advertising contrasts sharply with the restrictions placed on treatments for conditions affecting every woman.

The irony, she adds, is that she found a workaround by writing so extensively about vaginal drug delivery on LinkedIn that Calla Lily now appears organically in search results. “Not the original plan,” she admits, “but it works.”

The discomfort extends beyond algorithms. Some investors, she notes, still need to “ask their wives” whether a product like this is needed. “I always want to say, ‘Is your wife an investment professional?’ But if someone has personally experienced fertility challenges, they understand immediately.”

The long-standing taboo around reproductive health is something she navigates strategically. “We don’t go for shock factor – no vaginal jewellery, no cupcakes shaped like anatomy. If I can’t sit next to my dad while showing our pitch deck, it’s probably not the right direction. You can push people so far they shut down.”

What does success look like over the next few years?

“I would love to see our product in patients’ hands,” she says. “That's not going to happen through us. That's going to happen through strategic licensing agreements with bigger pharmaceutical companies. We don't have those logistics, but I would like to know that that's gone into somebody's hand for at least one indication.”

Her ambitions stretch into global health. “There’s evidence vaginal progesterone could help prevent conditions like preeclampsia. Imagine being able to deliver this affordably in low-resource settings. Half a million babies die from complications related to prematurity each year. Wouldn't it be great if we could have a successful product in the fertility market that could take advantage of the profits there and turn around and do something else in other areas, where we're addressing real public health concerns? That’s the dream.”