Historically, it’s been tough to start a business that caters specifically to women. Investors have often been reluctant to invest in a business focused on menopause, for example.
But that’s changing, with female entrepreneurs leading the charge, forming partnerships to support one another and the women they serve.
A Chat With Handful Active Wear CEO Jennifer Ferguson On Supporting Women
In this podcast, Health Coach Stasi Kasianchuk talks with CEO of Handful Active Wear Jennifer Ferguson and CEO of Gennev Jill Angelo about women, business, and the business of supporting women.
Love Handful? We do too! Listen to the podcast for a special code to save on Handful.
If you’d like to watch the video of their conversation, visit (and subscribe to) our YouTube channel.
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TRANSCRIPT
Stasi Kasianchuk, Gennev Director of Health Coaching
I am Stasi Kasianchuk. I’m the registered dietitian, nutritionist and exercise physiologist and Gennev’s Director of Health Coaching. And I am absolutely thrilled to have both Jennifer, the CEO and owner of Handful Bras and Jill, Gennev’s CEO here today. The story it’s been an evolving process, this collaboration for this webinar and podcast. And I have to say I happen, you know, working for Jill. I know about her story and starting Gennev and obviously I work for the company and when I learned about when I learned about Handful Bras and their mission and read about Jennifer on her website, I was like, I gotta get to know her. And so and what ended up happening that when we’ll talk about this today we have some collaborations with Handful as the pandemic rolled out over the past several months and saw this opportunity to really come together with other women supporting women businesses that support women. And as I talked with Jennifer and knowing Jill, I was like this, we got to get these women together. So we’re going to do that today. So welcome Jennifer to our Gennev wellness pod, podcast and webinars that we have weekly, sometimes more than once a week. And can you just introduce yourself to our audience, give us a background on you and who you are. So we know more about you and Handful.
Jennifer Ferguson, CEO and founder, Handful
My name is Jennifer Ferguson and I’m the founder and CEO of Handful, which is active wear that supports you to grab life by the handful. And I have a background, I’ve just grown up active my whole life and then have been a group fitness instructor for over 20 years. And I was frustrated with the amount of changes I needed to have in my gym bag to try and keep up with my active, versatile, on-the-go lifestyle. And so after searching in vain for a base layer that could carry me from weekend to work to work out, launched Handful over a dozen years ago. I mean, we’re coming up almost on 15 years and come to find out other women were looking for these versatile items. And then we’ve grown from our bras, which were the hero to bottoms and tops as well. So thanks for having us.
Stasi
Excellent. Great. Well, I look forward to hearing more about Handful throughout the webinar. Jill, can you, for those of our audience that don’t know about your story and starting Gennev and, and your background, can you share?
Jill Angelo, CEO and co-founder, Gennev
Yeah, for sure. First of all, Jen, welcome. It’s fun to have other women entrepreneurs who are doing things for women. It’s just always fun to come together. So it’s, it’s really awesome to have you with us today. I’m Jill Angelo. I’m the co founder of Gennev. We started back in 2016 so about four years ago. And Gennev is, you know a virtual clinic and community for women in menopause. My story is, you know, I’ve spent my entire career in the tech space. I’ve had 20 years’ experience working in technology. First for a small software company that got acquired by Microsoft and I was at Microsoft for about 15 years. And you know, coming out of that experience, my personal passion has always been on women and girls confidence specifically and their development. And I was on a sabbatical from Microsoft, met my co founder who is credited with building Neutrogena.
And she really had, I think, a clear vision around menopause and how little women were served and how much they suffer in silence. And from that, you know, we, one thing led to another and you know, we decided to start Gennev because my experience working with women and senior women at Microsoft. I was as the chief of staff to the CMO, I did a lot to nurture our senior women’s networking group. And as we, as I heard their conversations transition over time from, you know, having babies, worklife balance, you know, postpartum to, well, my body’s changing, you know, I’m really tired all the time. Or has anyone had a hot flash? Like some of these things started to come out. It was something in the workplace we had never ever addressed. And so as I met my cofounder and we started to talk about menopause we saw a real opportunity to address something for women that just isn’t being met today. And so we found it. I founded Gennev we, and it’s gone from there into into what we offer today is as full range telehealth services for women, products and community and education all around menopause.
Stasi
Excellent. Yeah, that’s a great, just gives a good background and still in the story again around women and how much we do need to support and we need companies that support women as well. Jennifer, could you share your story on how you started Handful and where, what the aspect of focusing and supporting women, where that comes from for your company?
Jennifer
I as I mentioned earlier, I wasn’t feeling like I was being properly supported by my equipment, my, my active wear. And I was tired of sacrificing fashion for function, for feel. If something was fashionable, it certainly wasn’t functional and it certainly didn’t feel good. And if something did feel good, it, it didn’t look good. And as women, you know, we deserve to have our cake and eat it too. And so Handful really is stemmed from what we call the Handful High Five, and it’s the F words. We swear by fashion, function, feel, fun, and fight against breast cancer. And so our products are versatile to be worn, as I said from weekend to work to work out and it supports us literally and figuratively.
We have an optional modesty padding, a hidden pocket that is also for the one and eight women still getting diagnosed with breast cancer. And so you can wear the pads, not wear the pads, you can stack them up, you can also stash essentials. I’ve got my handy dandy lip gloss in there. Because women want to be hands free. So we want things that are functional, that are also fashionable and also feel good and also support a bigger cause. And so I started just after searching in vain for a product that I was missing and then I grew the team. And less than a handful of years ago, we decided to go full time. And I have brought on CFO, COO from Intel. Interesting. When you’re telling a story how a lot of the big corporation you’d get your experience and then you find your passion and you get to use it there. So I get to work with Jody our, our right hand woman, Tina manages the behind the scenes shoot, the silent but deadly accounts receivable, payable, et cetera.
And then we brought on Cary Goldberg, who’s our Director of Survivor Relations and she was a late stage three over a dozen year survivor and she is double mastectomy, no reconstruction, and she wears three pads on each side and is physically measuring half an inch taller. And it’s really such a metaphor for all of us of having proper equipment that feels good. It has us open our heart literally and figuratively to the world and stand taller. And that is just so important. That Handful is 100 of that a hundred percent about support. And then we’ve grown our team from there since then and we worked with a lot of amazing independent contractors. Our internal sales woman, she is a fitness instructor. Her motto is when in doubt dance it out. And we have, we take ourselves our products seriously, but we try not to take ourselves too seriously. So we have fun color names. So we’re all about the fun and the feel and the function and also the fight against breast cancer.
Stasi
That’s awesome. And such, I like the, you know, both of your stories interesting. They have technology backgrounds there, but that there’s also this idea that women don’t, we don’t need, shouldn’t be suffering, we shouldn’t be suffering. We should be supported. And when there’s something that you, both of you saw an area, a gap that had potential to be filled with a service and then you built a company that aligns with that, with that support as the focus. The whole company is built around that. So that’s fabulous to, to see. For both of you thinking your, your career, was it there always, was there ever an idea of when you started out as a working woman that you would be the leader of companies like the ones that you are right now?
Jill
For me? No. I’ll start there. I, you know, I grew up in a pretty entrepreneurial family. I grew up on a cattle ranch in North Dakota and it was like, you know, all hands on deck all the time and we had people that worked with us as well and I thought, I never want to be responsible for someone’s paycheck. Like, that’s too much responsibility, I could never do that. I want to work for a place where I can get out in the world and I don’t have to, you know, be so concerned about everything all the time. That was kind of my feeling, just having grown up through that. And it’s interesting how you come full circle because you know, I spent 20 years in kind of corporate, a corporate space and it was awesome. I loved it, but I was ready.
I was ready to do something with a big impact. And that’s what drove me to this, not because I desired to really start my own company or to, you know, think about, you know, the, the, the PNL or, you know, hire a team and so forth. I love all those things now. But it was the mission or the this needs to change sort of thing that really moved me to start this. And and I guess, and now more than ever, I kind of draw on my roots. So I don’t know, Jennifer, how it was for you, but I certainly, this was not in my plan. But now I’m, I’m really, really glad that I’m here.
Jennifer
Well, it’s interesting. I was born and raised in Montana and we also had a ranch, I did not grow up on the cattle ranch, but there were three times more sheep than people. And so if something needed to get done and you had a pulse, you know, I actually had someone in the South, you know, they talk about opening the doors for women. And I said, Oh, well, I, I, my family, we opened doors if someone’s hands are full. And this person said to me, Oh, that’s right, and you’re from the do it yourself state. I mean, if I sat there and waited for someone to open the door for me with three times more sheep than people that I might be standing there a while, and I didn’t realize it, but I, yes, it’s always been do it yourself and figure it out.
But at the same time, I’ve always been very passionate getting to work with a team. I’ve always been a team sport person, but I was fortunate, I didn’t really grow up with the labels because there were so few of us. I played on the boys soccer team. I got to play on, on basketball, gymnastics, anything that required. So it didn’t matter what your height was, what your, your age, nationality. I mean if you could participate, jump in and play. And so I feel really fortunate. I did grow up, I was one of the first people in my crew to get a computer. I mean, it was like the size of my body, of course, my first computer. And so I think I thought, Oh, I want to be the first female president of IBM. I mean, I just thought, you know, technology was so exciting and, and I just, I grew up with raised with a can do attitude.
I wasn’t, you know, told Oh women do this and not. So I always was very driven about getting to work with a team and work hard. And so I, that was always what I thought. Of course from here to there is never a straight line. So a couple children later, I’ve always taught fitness classes and then missing products that were versatile had led me to be launching this particular company. And then getting to work with an amazing team. It definitely goes with that. If you love what you do, you don’t work a day in your life. So I definitely feel very fortunate to have amazing team I get to work with and the amazing customers as well.
Stasi
That’s awesome. Yeah. No, I think I like what you said too about having that can do attitude of this is what we can do this. And I think that that’s something that talking with a lot of women, especially during menopause, when things are changing, things are different. And when that question comes up of I’m in either I’m in a different body or I’m in the same body feeling different. Can I do the things that I used to be able to do? And I would say that’s what we, a lot of conversations on. Yes, you can and it may look differently, but how is that going to, what is it going to look like now? Because you still can do those things. So I appreciate you emphasizing that can do piece. I think more women need to hear that because we can do things.
And we need that support to do that. Exactly. Excellent. Well, with my next question for both of you, it kind of along those same lines, is why is it important to support other women? And maybe generally. And then more specifically during this time around COVID 19. It was interesting when I reached out, I think I got in contact with Syd Sydney on your team, Jennifer. And she said, you know, it’s interesting. I reached out saying, how can we support you? What can we do? And she came back and said, we’re doing the same thing. We actually have some other things in the works around this with some other women run companies. So obviously that, that train of thought came up. Why, why do you think this is important right now?
Jennifer
Oh, I mean, one of my favorite messages now more than ever important is asking for help doesn’t mean you’re giving up. It means you’re not willing to give up. And I think that’s so powerful. And I think, you know, you look at people, you don’t always know what’s going on with them. And so I really encourage us to be really clear with what we need help with, how we can help, women love to help. And I mean that’s what has us get up and do what we do every day at Handful is supporting women. And the stories we get from people, I mean just Jill talking off camera beforehand, your running group wore Handful. And if a friend was getting married and, and that’s what we do. We come together, we celebrate. And I just, there’s an analogy when you run, if you run a mountain, you’re, you’re not supposed to look at the top because you just want to lay down and take a nap and it just doesn’t seem possible.
So you give yourself a little mile markers, you go, Oh, there’s, there’s that tree and Oh, there’s that sign. I’m going to just, that’s, you know, it’s the journey and one step at a time. And definitely having that support is priceless. There’s statistics that having just one friend, how important friendships and support is better for your health than quitting smoking. Of course, that is also, but like exponentially, it makes a world of difference. And so that is really what, what we’re all about is, is providing support for women. We receive it. Cary, our Director of Survivor Relationships has this amazing motto of you make it through the fire and you reach back through to pull someone else through. And so sometimes when I go outside of the fire, you know, looking for a hand and other times we’re back pulling through. So you know, that’s, that’s just why we get up and do what we do every day.
Jill
Yeah. I love the Director of Survivor Relations. I just think that’s really it says, it says it all in her title. You know, just to add on to your points around women supporting women, especially right now in these moments. You know, we often say women are on the front lines in many ways, so they’re essential workers. That term has become a new, you know, kind of a new term right now with women in healthcare with, with workers on the front lines, anywhere, men or women. And, but in particular what we’re watching right now is obviously women going through the menopausal transition. They, you know, hormonal changes creates mood changes and anxiety and stress in and of itself. It creates challenges sleeping in and of itself. It creates changes in metabolism and eating habits in and of itself.
You pile on COVID 19, and the stress and all the things, the uncertainty that’s related to right now, it just compounds all those things. So oftentimes when you look at, you know, the resilience of a woman that is headed into menopause and hand or has, you know, just started to experience some of those symptoms and is really figuring out how to manage them so that she can kind of take control of them and preserve her quality of life. The preparation women have done for menopause in many ways kind of almost has prepared them for quarantine or for this moment I think of extreme uncertainty because those things are just amplified. So I think in any case women who are managing their menopausal symptoms the more that we can support them and also help them through this moment because we’ve got a lot of those tools. Those programs though, you know, women who work with Stasi as our Director of Health Coaching with our HealthFix membership. We’re working with women on these sorts of things every single day.
And the more that we can, you know, double down and do that with more women during this time who might be suffering from those aspects of what, you know, uncertainty and this pandemic has brought the better. You know, one additional thing that we’ve done to support women during this pandemic was to expand our services. So our physicians are all OB GYN and they have obviously incredible experience in menopause and gynecology. But many of them have primary care experience as well. So we’ve expanded our telehealth services to also address primary care concerns.
Cause we’ve had women who come to us wondering if I’m having a hot flash or is it a fever and should I be concerned. And so there’s again, a heightened sense of, you know, concern and questions and anxiety right now. And the more that we can be here to support women through that transition and to partner with companies like Handful to have collective good in our work together. That’s all goodness. And that’s, that’s what we love to do. It’s what makes what we do even more meaningful.
Stasi
Yeah. Excellent. Yeah. No, I think both, you know, both of you mentioned just really the importance of coming together and recognizing that asking for help is a strength. To your point, Jennifer of there could, there’s messaging in cultures you know, our culture sometimes that that becomes, that’s a weakness. When in fact it really is a strength to capitalize on, on leaning in on each other.
And like you said Jennifer, the reaching through the flame when you’ve gone through the flame reaching through to help someone else come through. And that’s similar in menopause, you know, whether it’s someone that’s trend is gone through the process of menopause and has insight to provide and can support other women or as we are learning from on the coaching side and our telemedicine side. Let us give you the resources to help you be successful. And there’s no shame in asking for that help. We’re here to support you and all coming together to do that. I always think I have this vision of that. Like if we all hold hands in this world, it’s just going to be a much better place. And so especially on, you know, when there are things that women have in common, having that, that support is really important.
So that’s excellent. Well, with you know, some of the things that we have done too now working together we’ve been able to you know, with Handful we have a giveaway coming up that brings on other companies. Handful has generously offered that if you use the code GENNEV, you can get 20% off of their products. What about these companies coming together and women women run, women supporting companies coming together. How do you see that supporting the industry as a whole and making a statement? You know, we usually, we see so much competition and territorial and people are in silos and we’re breaking down those silos. So I’d love to get your vision on those, on that concept.
Jennifer
Yeah. Okay if I jump in here? I actually just got off a call right before this with this amazing group. They call them Movers and Makers through Title Nine, which I don’t know if you’re familiar with that amazing company, but Title IX was a legal bill that was my parents were fighting for me. I remember the picketing to give with a girls equal gym space. And so when I grew up being from such a small town, our basketball season was a totally different season because the men’s were a certain season and we didn’t have enough gym space. So we, we played in a different season. So my best friend was this amazing basketball player and scouts could not scout her because she played during a totally different season. And so Title IX of course has changed that. And if there is a voice team, you have to have a girls team at the same time and equal space.
So this amazing company Title Nine led by this awesome CEO, founder Missy, she 30 years ago, one of the original gangsters, I say just, you know, women supporting women and being active and they have our group, they have a group of us together right now. And oftentimes our brands would compete as you’ve mentioned. And yet we’re coming together. How can we, I mean I definitely together we’re stronger, you know, the acronym TEAM: Together Everyone Achieves More. I definitely agree with that. And I think there’s a different place for all of us. And I oftentimes I’m on network panels and they say what’s it like to be a woman in business. I, I pretty much everyone I work with are women. You know, our customers are women. We’re women you know, it’s obviously about supporting women. So there’s other genders and pronouns that support women as well, but predominantly, and I do really we work with women around support and so that’s what we work with.
And so even around the whole COVID as we were mentioning, and you were all were talking about working with physicians. I mean we have physicians that wear our product, I mean life’s a sport that profession, certainly a sport about being scrubbed up and one of the nurse, you know, bra strap would fall down and the, the surgeon’s like, why aren’t you wearing Handful? And so, so it’s great to give a code for people to be introduced to, to our product. And then also for the first responders this month because that was a huge thing. You know, the first week this happened, I felt like I got whiplash. I think it was a metaphor for all of us. You know, we’re just driving down the road, we slam on the breaks, we get completely rear-ended. And so we’re all kind of not sure what to do.
And then all of a sudden I was just overwhelmed with, you know, heaven forbid a company goes under, I mean, we’ve got to go under clawing for support. We’ve got to be supporting people to the very end. And so how can we help these first responders? And so we looked at what some of the other amazing women companies were doing. This other awesome women company email. They were giving a code for their bras and then they shared how the program they use. And then we piggyback. So now we’re giving 40% off for first responders so you can get on our website and we’re and then like breast cancer survivors, we give 30% off year round. I mean, we’re just all about people that are you know, dealing with extra challenges. We just know that that high five helps people keep going when they need it the most. And so a hundred percent banding together. And the big topic on our last call that I just haven’t stopped thinking I’m going to keep thinking is, you know, what do we all stand for and how can we come together to support that in a bigger way? And how can we be more inclusive and hold hands with more people of different ages, shapes, sizes, nationalities. So that’s definitely a goal of ours and we appreciate you bringing us all together to just keep that conversation going.
Stasi
Yeah, yeah. A great thing to do. In terms of just being able to, like you said, different companies coming together, we all have a role and we can highlight each other’s strengths and pick each other up. Sorry, Jill, what were you gonna say?
Jill
Yeah, no, I, you know, and I think one thing I love about even the, the fun, the great kind of partnership and promotion we’re doing together, Jennifer this week or in this period of time around, you know, just offering discounts and support to women across our different solutions and products. We typically tend to think about partnering, you know, like for us with brands focused on the menopause space or whatever. And I think stepping back to say, what do women in general need right now? And how can we support them better?
I think from a partnership perspective, you always are able to serve more. Like, why not do the work for the consumer to see other supportive products and/ or services that she’s going to need versus her having to go out and quote unquote shop for it or do her own research. When we come together because we have like-minded missions and we have different aspects of what we do, whether it overlaps or even if it doesn’t in our products and our services, I think it’s just so, so women are have enough to do already. So the more that we can again come together to give her a curated set of mission driven women. So, you know, you feel good about doing business with them in the first place as a consumer. But second of all, she didn’t have to go out and research all that or she’s also feeling supported in whatever benefits or discounts you’re providing her.
I just, I that’s just the right way to do things. I think as well, you know, coming from the corporate space where in an era where women really, we all had to, there weren’t as many of us or you know, it wasn’t the kind of climate where women lifted each other up because the way performance reviews were done or whatever. That’s an era that’s starting to evolve and change. I think, especially as entrepreneurs, you know what it’s like to be alone and to build your business alone and you don’t wish that on anybody. And so you start to really bind together because I kind of get what some of the struggles or some of the things you had to go through Jennifer, to start your business and to get it to where it is backed by a mission that you have. And it’s just such a community is so important no matter what change you’re going through. And as we even build businesses, as business owners, I think the coming together, while it’s good for the consumer it’s really good for us too because it gives us just a sounding board and like-minded group of people that get us that we can share the challenges with as with as well as the successes. And if we all win together, that’s a really amazing feeling too.
Jennifer
Yes. I, I heard a thing once that something which all practice my whole life is to be the most enlightened you wish upon others what you wish upon yourself. And it’s so amazing to get to celebrate the wins and sometimes it’s not you getting the win, but how great to to reach out and celebrate each other. And I think if we can take each other’s wins upon us as our own win and you know, there is really devastating compare-and-despair that’s out there, especially, you know, on the, in the social media world. And you know, just wish it was more of a high five celebrating each other rather than like, Oh man, I know she did that and how come not me? It’s like, well, high five she did that even though I haven’t done that, I might not ever do that. So I really try to come from that. I feel like I can come from that place of celebrating others as if it were my own win, I’m just better for all of us. So it’s, it’s great to get partners with likeminded support.
Stasi
Yeah. And I think that’s something too that can be hard for women in menopause when I’m working with them is that they are compare, they’re either comparing to their self from before or other women and that that experience is unique. So how can we help focus on, you know, changing that conversation to celebrating the wins of other people and celebrating our wins. We have wins too. Even if they’re not, they don’t look exactly like someone else. How can we celebrate our own wins? And then together collectively, that positive energy, that forward mode, that forward movement. Is is good for everyone as a whole.
Jill
Yeah. It’s just like what you see on the news right now when they wheel a COVID patient who was really ill out of the intensive care unit and everyone comes around and celebrates them, they’re all feeling obviously great for that patient. But they’re also celebrating the work they had to do together to, to keep them healthy and get them back to health. I just think that that is just, you know, it’s, it’s unfortunate that it takes moments of challenge and sadness and difficulty to bring out the best of human beings in our collective nature to want to be together, celebrate each other, you know, but you see so many examples of it right now, which is super motivating. So if there’s a silver lining that’s, that’s one, that’s a big one right now.
Jennifer
Yeah. Well, and you mentioned earlier though, it’s kind of like your friend getting married. I mean, you were celebrating, you know, so I do think it is an important reminder, especially as entrepreneurs like any, anyone, you know, we always feel like the inbox is exploding. And there’s so much to do, but it’s so important to stop and celebrate what you have accomplished. And, and yeah, I think bringing people together to do that is exponentially powerful. And I just love that we’re, we’re talking about menopause. I love that we live in a day and age where we can, we talk about things. I’m the youngest of four, so I’m always saying like, now when did you guys go through it and when did Mom go through it? And just trying to give myself an idea. And I just, I feel so grateful that we live in an era where we can talk about those things because I do think to all your point, the support and the resource, I need to just have to figure all this out in private is, yeah, no, we, we’ve all got too many other bigger, better things to deal with that if people like your company and our company can hand them resources so that they