The advice Jeni Mayorskaya received was brutally efficient: find a boyfriend and have a baby. Diagnosed with reproductive health disorders in her twenties, she was being asked to reorganize her life around a medical warning. The doctor had identified a problem. The proposed solution had rather neglected the patient.
- Employers buy the benefit; employees use the care.
- Guidance, clinic access and payment belong in the same conversation.
- The offering expanded from fertility into birth, postpartum and midlife care.
- Outcome claims deserve a close look at the comparison behind them.
Stork Club Reproductive Care Benefits grew from that mismatch. Its proposition was to make family-building care usable through the workplace: help people understand their choices, connect them with providers, and arrange coverage through employers. There is an appealingly unromantic insight here. Sometimes the obstacle between a person and a family is a billing process.
01 / The meeting that needed a payer
Mayorskaya began with a Silicon Valley community, bringing experts and fertility doctors into intimate discussions. People wanted answers about IVF, safety and their chances of success. Information helped. But better information revealed the next obstruction: treatment could be expensive, and traditional insurance often left it uncovered. A room full of answers could still leave everyone outside the clinic.
That discovery explains the move toward employer benefits. Stork Club's own announcements date the company to 2018, while earlier reporting places its beginnings in 2017. By 2020, investor Bowery Capital described a business serving self-insured employers, with customers including Airtable, People.ai, Lookout and Planet. The employer was both the purchaser and a party exposed to medical costs.
A $2.7 million seed round in 2020 was followed by a $30 million Series A in June 2021, led by General Catalyst, with Bowery Capital and Slow Ventures participating. The company intended to hire and develop its services. Mayorskaya told Crunchbase News that revenue had grown fivefold in the previous year, even as the pandemic disrupted fertility clinics. That was a founder-reported growth figure, without a published revenue base.
02 / A benefit has three doors
Think of the offering as three doors: understanding the care, obtaining the care, and paying for the care. Stork Club tried to connect all three. Its digital platform offered care navigation and access to specialists, alongside an employer-selected package of treatment coverage. Employees could receive guidance from a dedicated Care Partner instead of assembling every next step themselves.
The services extended across fertility diagnostics, egg and sperm preservation, natural conception, IVF, adoption and surrogacy. Pregnancy, birth, postpartum recovery and newborn support followed. Later offerings included menopause, men's reproductive health and adult gender-affirming care. Coverage depended on the employer's program; listing a service was never the same as promising every member unlimited treatment.
Personal guidance
Virtual + in-person
Covered care payments
This put Stork Club in the employer reproductive benefits market alongside alternatives such as Carrot, Maven and Progyny. Its pitch emphasized integrated benefits administration, provider selection and clinical outcomes. The business sold programs to organizations, while the employee experienced an app, human guidance and medical services. Software was the connective tissue; the product also required people, contracts and functioning clinics.
03 / Someone in the room
In March 2023, Stork Club announced managed birth doula care under employer-sponsored health plans. Doulas provide non-clinical support: information, encouragement and practical help through pregnancy, labor and recovery. The distinction matters. A doula supports the person receiving medical care; the role does not replace an obstetrician or midwife.
The company arranged vetted providers, matching and coordinated services, including virtual contact, home visits and support in the labor room. In April 2024, Fors Marsh expanded its existing partnership to cover onsite birth doulas nationwide. The announcement described more than 600 vetted doulas. For a remote-first employer, a benefit confined to one office's neighborhood would have been an unusually tidy way to miss the point.
“As a remote-first organization with a diverse talent pool, we consider access to inclusive maternity care a must-have.”Christina Daugherty, Chief People Officer, Fors Marsh · April 2024
Stork Club reported 45% fewer cesarean births and 58% fewer preterm births among participants compared with national averages. Those numbers are associations from its reported study, not proof that the program caused the differences. The 2023 announcement said the study was undergoing peer review. Its financial argument was equally explicit: better outcomes could make additional support economical for employers.
04 / Read the denominator
Fertility outcomes received a separate methodological examination. In March 2024, Milliman reviewed Stork Club's comparison of assisted reproductive technology results with national benchmarks. It found the methodology appropriate for three measures, while warning that miscarriage and multiples measures needed larger samples. The review did not audit the underlying data or endorse the company's services.
For a benefits buyer, this distinction is useful. A sound comparison method cannot establish every claim a sales presentation might attach to it. Clinic selection, patient characteristics and incomplete reporting can affect results. The sensible question is what was measured, against whom, and whether the comparison answers the decision being made.
05 / The bill crosses a border
In April 2024, Stork Club announced access in 100 countries beyond the United States and more than 8,000 providers globally. Its Direct Pay approach paid in-network providers for covered care without requiring members to prepay using benefits cards. Local-language app access and Care Partners familiar with local rules accompanied the expansion.
The practical lesson travels further than fertility care: do not confuse reimbursement with access. Employers can copy the discipline of asking who finds the provider, who fronts the money, and who resolves a stalled authorization. The approach depends on employer coverage, available providers and reliable administration. It cannot repair a missing benefit simply by explaining it more politely.
Later member reports complicate the growth story. In April and May 2025, Reddit users reported being told operations would cease on June 30; one described a transfer to Progyny. These are unverified member accounts, rather than a company announcement. They underline the same test Stork Club's original idea posed: can a person move from an offered benefit to uninterrupted care?