
Adrianne Nickerson is the co-founder and CEO of Oula, a New York maternity company that fuses midwives, OB-GYNs and technology into one hybrid clinic built to give pregnant patients a calmer, more personal, evidence-based birth experience. A Columbia biology grad with a Harvard master's in global health, she decided she could help patients more by not becoming a doctor - and instead builds the systems doctors and midwives work inside. She co-founded Oula in 2019, opened it while pregnant alongside two pregnant co-executives, and has raised tens of millions to expand care that reduces unnecessary C-sections and centers patient voices.
Materna Medical is a Mountain View, California women's health company building FDA-cleared medical devices for pelvic health across a woman's life. Its consumer product, Milli, is the first vaginal dilator that expands one millimeter at a time to treat vaginismus and painful intercourse; its clinical-stage Ellora obstetrical system is designed to pre-stretch pelvic floor muscles during labor to reduce childbirth injury. Led by CEO Tracy MacNeal, the company has raised roughly $82.6M to date.
Neil P. Ray, MD is a board-certified pediatric anesthesiologist who traded the operating room for a startup. As founder and CEO of Raydiant Oximetry, he is building Lumerah, a non-invasive fetal pulse oximeter that reads a baby's oxygen levels through the mother's abdomen, and Daisy, a surgical device to prevent postpartum hemorrhage. His goal: retire a 50-year-old fetal monitor he calls no better than a coin toss, and cut the number of unnecessary C-sections that follow from it.
Maternova is a woman-owned, woman-run social enterprise based in Providence, Rhode Island that curates, evaluates, and distributes evidence-based medical devices and diagnostics for maternal, neonatal, and reproductive health in low- and middle-income countries. Founded in 2009 as the first e-commerce marketplace for global health technologies, it connects inventors and manufacturers who lack distribution with the governments, NGOs, hospitals, and clinicians who need life-saving tools - aggregating small orders to unlock manufacturing runs and accelerate access to innovations that prevent maternal and infant deaths.
Novocuff, Inc. is a clinical-stage maternal health medical device company based in Mountain View, California, building the Novocuff Cervical Control System (CCS) - a device designed to stabilize and close the cervix, retain amniotic fluid, and extend pregnancy in cases of preterm prelabor rupture of membranes (PPROM) and cervical shortening. Founded in 2021 by Amelia Degenkolb and Donald Lee, the company raised an oversubscribed $26M Series A in 2024 (about $28M total) to fund its U.S. multicenter pivotal RETAIN trial, for which it secured FDA IDE approval in September 2025.
Raydiant Oximetry is a clinical-stage medical device company building Lumerah, a noninvasive, transabdominal fetal pulse oximeter that measures a baby's blood-oxygen levels during labor. By giving obstetricians a direct read on fetal oxygenation - rather than the coin-flip guesswork of conventional fetal heart-rate monitors - the company aims to cut unnecessary C-sections and reduce maternal and neonatal harm. It holds FDA Breakthrough Device designation and is partnered with GE HealthCare.
Oula is a modern maternity and gynecology clinic that blends midwifery with obstetrics in a single, collaborative care model. Founded in New York in 2019 and opening its first Brooklyn clinic in 2021, Oula pairs in-person visits with virtual check-ins and care navigators to deliver personalized, evidence-based pregnancy, postpartum, and women's health care. The company reports outcomes that beat NYC benchmarks across race and payer type, accepts insurance and Medicaid, and is expanding beyond New York City after raising a $28M Series B in 2024.