WoW Women in FemTech I Kerstin Recker and Helen Grimshaw, co-founders of Peli Health
Kerstin Recker and Helen Grimshaw are the co-founders of Peli Health, a supplemental care platform extending pelvic health support beyond the clinic. Together, they bring decades of combined experience leading innovation across technology, strategy, and digital health.
Kerstin Recker is a femtech founder and advocate for equitable technology. With a background spanning Fortune 500 companies and tech start-ups in media, search, AI, and health innovation, Kerstin excels at building scalable ventures and fostering global partnerships. Her leadership is rooted in connection and systems thinking, bridging customer, organizational, and cultural boundaries to drive measurable impact. She is passionate about designing technology that uplifts women’s health and creates meaningful access to care.
Helen Grimshaw is a dynamic co-founder, strategist, and global operator with deep experience in digital advertising, AI, and healthtech. Having led large-scale product and partnership launches across sectors, she specializes in managing complex initiatives with diverse stakeholders. Helen’s commercial acumen and visionary leadership are central to Peli Health’s growth, helping transform pelvic care management into a more inclusive, tech-enabled ecosystem.
Together, Helen and Kerstin founded Peli Health with the belief that every woman deserves access to trusted, affordable, and empowering pelvic care, regardless of geography or background. The company is guided by a distinguished medical advisory board that includes Dr. Pamela Downey, PT, DPT, Clinical Specialist in Women’s Health and Adjunct Professor at the University of Miami; Dr. Lucien Alexandre, MD, PhD, Interventional Neuro-Pain Specialist and Harvard-trained neurologist; and Jessie Becker Alexander, Founder and former CEO of Alydia Health, acquired by Merck for $240M. Their combined expertise ensures Peli Health’s programs are clinically grounded, evidence-informed, and built for real-world accessibility.
Built by clinicians and women who have personally experienced pelvic health challenges, Peli Health bridges evidence-based education, expert-led programs, and accessible at-home support so women can better understand and manage pelvic floor conditions at every stage of life. The platform aggregates and curates medically approved and reviewed solutions, eliminating the need for women to spend hours searching or questioning social media information, Peli makes it easier for women to get the support they need for holistic pelvic care and support. Partnering with physical therapists, medical doctors, and device innovators, Peli Health makes high-quality, whole-body care affordable and stigma-free. By combining digital tools, expert guidance, and community connection, Peli Health empowers women to move, recover, and thrive, with confidence, clarity, and care.
Tell us a bit about your background and your projects so far.
We actually met while working together at a search and AI company, where we helped launch and deploy digital applications in partnership with global telecommunications companies across markets around the world. That experience gave us a front-row seat to how technology can scale solutions and improve people’s lives, but also how often women’s health is left out of that innovation story.
Kerstin’s background is in go-to-market strategy and marketing; Helen’s expertise lies in business development, PR, and project management. Together, we’ve spent our careers building and scaling products that connect people and systems. But we’ve also both walked the path of pelvic health challenges ourselves, experiencing firsthand how difficult it can be to access care, find accurate information, or even know where to start.
Those experiences left us asking: If the pelvic floor is essential to daily function, why do most women only hear about it after something goes wrong? Why is it discussed only postpartum—or much later, when there’s pain or leakage? The pelvic floor is a muscle group like any other, and caring for it should be part of daily self-care. That realization led to Peli Health, a platform designed to make pelvic health education and support as normal, accessible, and proactive as any other aspect of wellness.
How did you get into this industry? Has it been an easy industry to get into or have you had many challenges?
Women’s health technology, or femtech, is still an emerging space, and entering it requires both conviction and persistence. Like many founders, we’ve encountered structural and cultural barriers: women’s health has long been underfunded, under-researched, and undervalued. But for us, it’s also personal. Having experienced pelvic health challenges ourselves, we saw firsthand how fragmented and confusing the landscape is, how many women are left to navigate misinformation or silence. Those gaps became our motivation. The challenges of this industry are real, but they’re also what make the work essential. We see every barrier as an opportunity to innovate where the system has overlooked women for too long.
How long did it take you to be where you are now? What was the biggest obstacle? What are the challenges of being in your industry?
It’s taken persistence and a deep sense of purpose over the past two and a half years to get to this point. One of the biggest obstacles has been helping people understand that better care starts with awareness and education. Think about how breast health awareness began,with simple self-exams that empowered women to take early, proactive steps toward prevention. Pelvic health deserves that same level of understanding. The more we know about our bodies, the better our outcomes can be.
The challenge is that the women’s health industry remains heavily device- and intervention-driven, with limited focus on education and holistic support. Yet education has real, measurable impact—studies show a 14:1 return on investment for every dollar spent on patient education. Our work is about closing that gap: bringing credible, evidence-based guidance to women before issues escalate, and reframing pelvic health as a foundation of everyday wellbeing rather than a response to crisis.
What are your biggest achievements to date?
Our proudest achievement is building something women say finally makes them feel seen and they have a place to turn to help them better understand their bodies on their TIME!. Peli Health has become a trusted educational partner for both women and clinicians, bridging the gap between what happens in the clinic and what’s needed at home. We’re also proud of our collaborations with device innovators and physical therapists who share our commitment to whole-body wellness and are now actively recommending Peli Health to their patients. But perhaps most importantly, we’ve helped spark a movement that is destigmatizing pelvic health and redefining it as an essential part of lifelong wellbeing.
What are the projects you are currently working on?
We’re currently expanding our platform to offer more personalized care pathways and deeper clinical integrations. Our next phase includes enhancing educational resources, supporting symptom tracking, and partnering with pelvic physical therapists, OB-GYNs, women’s health clinics, and device innovators to make pelvic health programs more affordable and scalable. As the supplemental care and support layer for both clinical providers and patients, Peli Health is building the connective tissue that bridges medical guidance with daily wellness. Every initiative we pursue ties back to our north star: creating sustainable, easily accessible solutions that make real-life impact for women.
Is the #WomenInTech movement important to you and if yes, why?
Yes, because representation is how innovation becomes equitable. The #WomenInTech movement matters not only to us as founders but to every woman who has felt unseen or unheard in healthcare. But it’s more than a trend or a hashtag, it’s about building solutions that genuinely make a difference in women’s lives. Real progress happens when women help bridge the gap between patients, practitioners, and researchers to create tools that meet women where they are today. In femtech especially, the stakes are deeply personal. We’re not just creating noise; we’re creating a collective force that is moving women’s health forward.
What will be the key trends in your industry in the next five years, and where do you see them heading?
The next wave of femtech will focus on integration and personalization, linking data, behavior, and care into connected systems. AI will play a key role in personalizing pathways for women, helping identify risk, guide self-care, and streamline referrals. We’ll also see pelvic health move from niche to mainstream, understood as core to performance, longevity, and quality of life. Our hope is that in five years, pelvic health will be as normalized in conversation as heart, bone, or brain health.
What is the most important piece of advice you could give to anyone who wants to start a career in this industry?
Start with empathy, not algorithms. The best innovation in women’s health begins with listening, to women, to patients, to clinicians, to yourself. The problems are complex, but the motivation is simple: improving lives. Don’t be discouraged by how hard it can be to get traction. This is a field built by persistence, collaboration, and courage. Surround yourself with people who share your purpose, and you’ll find your path forward.
Who are three inspirational women in your respective industry you admire?
We admire Dr. Rachel Rubin for transforming how sexual health is discussed and treated, Dr. Jane Grant, DPT, for her holistic, patient-centered approach to postpartum and pelvic wellness, Dame Lesley Regan for her years of dedication towards improving better outcomes for women, and Dr. Vonda Wright for her visionary work reframing women’s aging as a chapter of power and possibility. Each of them has expanded what’s possible in women’s health through a mix of expertise, candor, and compassion.
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