Movers & Shakers: Madison Campbell of Leda Health

Welcome to The Room Podcast. My name is Madison McIlwain and I'm a partner for seed stage investments at DefyVC.

And I'm Claudia Laurie, a co-founder of Pryve. We're a founder and funder who are in the room where it happens. If you're a first-time founder or an emerging venture capitalist, we're glad you found us. We share inspiring, authentic, and insightful stories from founders, funders, and operators who have been in the room and provide tactical feedback on their early aha moments and learnings along the way. Before we dive into this week's episode, we have a short message from our partners.

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Welcome back to The Room.

I'm excited for today's conversation, which is the opening conversation of our 4-part miniseries, Movers and Shakers, where we sit down with early-stage entrepreneurs and influencers to hear their stories. Today, we sit down with Madison Campbell, co-founder and CEO of Leda Health, a health and wellness startup turning the conversation around sexual assault into actionable change. Leda's mission is to give voice to the voiceless and to provide the care and resources needed for a full recovery. Leda is a company created for survivors by survivors to better the many systemic shortcomings surrounding sexual assault services. Today, we chat about her mission and vision for the future of healthcare and wellness. Let's open the door.

Hi, Madison McIlwain. I feel like a little bit like I'm talking to myself, but welcome to the room.

Thank you, Madison. I am very excited to be in the room.

We're excited to have you here. So starting a little bit at the beginning of your own personal story, uh, you grew up in Pennsylvania where ultimately you went to college in the Northeast for epidemiology. Honestly, when I saw that, my immediate question was, did you predict the COVID-19 pandemic?

I was really into other types of viruses. So the virus that I was most fascinated with was Epstein-Barr virus, which is commonly known as mononucleosis. And had you have asked me back in college about a crazy pandemic, I think I would have thought it was something we would have already known, a mutation of the flu or a virus that is inside of us all that would incubate and be bad. But I did not expect something that we didn't already know. I think I became very fascinated with things that we had known were going to be a problem and they would just become more of a problem with outside environmental factors. I don't think anybody could have predicted this new thing coming about that did not— that was not what we were taught. Like, we were taught to look at the things that are predictable and assume that they're going to go awry, like antibiotic resistance and viruses and things like that. Look at the things that you know and see what human nature ends up doing to substantiate that. COVID-19 was not something that we were told to predict. Yeah.

Yeah.

That is an interesting analog for when you look for what you're supposed to look for, do you see the thing that's coming next? And Not gonna say that people should have predicted the COVID-19 pandemic, but that applies to what you're asked to do as a founder is look towards what maybe other people aren't gonna see coming around the corner.

And it, it's really hard because I think as a founder too, you have to look at some historical data whatsoever, right? This previously happened, it didn't work. Here's the problem, here's what I can do to solve it. When you don't have that historical knowledge, it can also really be difficult for you. Say a founder who doesn't do their research, they say, hey, there was a company like this 50 years ago, this is what happened to it. Right. And you're like, holy shit. Like, I totally missed that. That's historical knowledge that is not going to really help you in trying to also create a new company as well. So I think that that was the big thing. I think we were so focused on all these different things in the world of these crises that would have come up, but we didn't even look at like the 1917 flu pandemic or the plague or whatever and say, hey, like this could actually happen again. And that's the interesting thing. I think the same applies to startups too.

This is a very different career path to go down than what you have ultimately ended up doing. You're not still studying viruses in a lab. You've become a founder of a mental health and wellness startup, and you're gonna tell us more about that in a second. But curious about this kind of archetype of a founder, did you ever think you were gonna become a founder?

I don't think I knew what that word meant because it wasn't taught to me growing up and it wasn't taught to me in college. It did take like a women in business class to satisfy some requirement that I had. But entrepreneurship, it was not a career option for me. It didn't seem like a career option. I still remember like in high school taking those, find the career you're going to be in life, like little tests like that they'd make you take and it gives you like this random couple answers, but entrepreneur or founder is not really one of them. That's not something that you can aspire to be when you're at least growing up in a very conservative area. And so I had no idea that this would be the path it just makes sense because I had all the goals that I wanted to accomplish in the world and being a founder was the only path to actually make those happen. So it makes sense, but I never knew about that word. I never knew that was actually a career path.

[Speaker:MADISON McILWAIN] Many of other, our other guests similarly are like, yeah, it makes sense now, but talk to me when I was 15 or 18 or 21 and I just had no clue. So it's awesome to be able to get that mix of founders who are like, yeah, I always knew I was going to be a founder since I was 4 versus those who really went into it because they had an insight and they had a passion for what they were solving for. And on that train of thought, today you are the co-founder and CEO of Leda Health. Tell us about Leda and what your mission is.

Yeah, so we have this big mission of which one of the biggest things is ending sexual assault, which is this huge thing.

And I think when we first started, we were like, okay, how do you end this horrible cultural phenomenon that is plaguing not only our nation, but just the international community?

And it was one of those things that we thought, how to approach it. And we only figured out 2 years in how you can actually look at the system of it. Because when you first start, you're like, "I'm going to take an ice chip to a small little problem and I'm going to try to fix it." And this might have network effects of trying to do it at this very small level. And then I think it takes you multiple years to realize that you can't just take an ice chip to one small element of it in order to have these big network effects in order to get to the mission of what you want to accomplish, which for us is like, really trying to abolish sexual assault or harassment, et cetera, et cetera. It's about looking at the system as a whole and then replacing the system. Because if the system worked, then we wouldn't be sitting here. I wouldn't be sitting here on this podcast talking about how we end it because it would've already been ended.

And so I think that's the interesting thing about Leda is Leda truly started in this way of, I'm just going to do one thing.

And it ended up being this much larger thing because we started to realize that in order to fix this one problem, you had to fix a bunch of insular The really, like, tricky thing with sexual assault is that it's really at the intersection of so many, so many sensitive things and so many different institutions that oftentimes someone who's experienced sexual assault won't really know what to do, right? If you get assaulted in the street by, like, someone hitting you with a car or, like, hitting you with a baseball bat, like, you'll call the police and you'll hope for the best. But I mean, with sexual assault, it's deeply personal. There's a lot of emotions there. There's a lot of shame associated with it wrongly. And so I've heard anecdotes where someone's like, objectively terrible happened, and yet there is this kind of block around going to your university and telling someone or going to other authorities to report the issue. And so how do you work with the various stakeholders like the criminal justice system, schools, universities, survivors to provide this comprehensive care?

I was just having a conversation about that this morning with my team, which is, of course, we want to work with institutions that opt into understanding that this is a problem. But the sheer reality is a lot of people do not believe it is a problem, especially the people in the middle. So usually there's two ends of the spectrum that, for instance, we do really good at, which is survivors or like students, and then people all the way at the top. So presidents, board members, trustees, et cetera, et cetera. The problem is the people in the middle, right? These are the— when you talk about like the police officers, you're in some random county, you're a police officer, your incentive structure to do the right thing or to get more money to do this, to that, is probably not that high, right? What is your incentive? You're going to move up that much in the world if you treat a woman and you don't ask her what she was wearing after a sexual assault? Most likely not. And so in terms of stakeholders, I think our biggest thing is we have to work with the people that are already at a point of understanding that this is a problem and they have to do something with it. And then try to actually neutralize the people in the middle that don't really care and don't really acknowledge that it's a problem in the first place. And those people are ever-present. They're the biggest problem that we have to deal with.

And they're kind of our blockers, right?

What prompted you to go after this space?

I'm a survivor myself, and I think that's something that— it helps me go, but it's not the only reason why I go. I think it's one of those things where You just look around in the world and you say, who's doing something about this? And I wasn't happy with the people that were doing work in this space. I was just like, I don't think they're doing enough. And so there's a bunch of different things you can do. You can say, hey, I'm not doing enough and now I'm going to— I'm just going to talk about it and complain about it and not do anything about it. And then from my point of view, I was always the type of person where it's okay, I see the world is not doing enough in this space. I'm just going to have to do the work myself. Sorry, it's gonna have to be how it is.

Totally. And that's a powerful thing to have in addressing the problem. Just a quick question. I feel there's so much wrong with how sexual assault is handled today, but there is a, like, a lot of conversation, like what you were referring to, like people talking about it at board meetings. What do you think is missing most in the conversation around sexual assault?

Bias towards action. When you're a CEO, your job is to actually create actionable things that have actionable results that you can see the output of a specific product. And I think the biggest problem in sexual assault or DEI or harassment or insert horrible thing in society is the fact that we have spent so much time talking about it and so much time ticking boxes. Oh, we're going to make everyone do an educational program. Oh, we're going to do this event. Oh, we're going to donate to Planned Parenthood. Oh my God, so great that you're donating to Planned Parenthood, but literally what else are you doing for your employees? What else are you doing for the people in your constituency? And so that's my biggest problem. I think that's the biggest problem in all these conversations is we can have conversations, we can talk for an hour about how it's so bad, but there's nothing actionable that is taken after that conversation.

[Speaker:MADISON McILWAIN] And it definitely seems like Lita is taking that action and is working towards making the talk actually something that is realized. Walk us through like how LIDA is taking action.

Yeah, we look at institutions have been having those conversations, right? So military, universities, employers, and we approach them to basically say, hey, we've seen what you've been doing, right? Here are the recommendations you've had for your constituency. And now we're going to come in and actually look at the recommendations and the problems that you have and solve them with, you know, some level of product and technology. And so for us, when we look at it, we see, one, that 90% of sexual assault survivors suffer from PTSD, which is a large amount. So that's a huge mental health problem. And so when we look at, for instance, just that statistic, then our goal should be to get those people mental health treatment. It's very simple. If they acknowledge that statistic as being true and factual, then their job as an institution should be to solve that problem. Same with medical care after a sexual assault. Employers don't want to— or institutions in general don't want to deal with all the medical problems problems that can come after sexual assault, for instance, or even in church. Fertility problems with STDs that go unchecked, increased hospital stays, all the mental health stuff, right? All that kind of stuff needs to be addressed. Unplanned pregnancies as well. And so we address those issues by doing essentially medical triage as well. So that means Plan B, that means STD testing, that means ST— PEP and PrEP for HIV prevention if something happens to you. So all of that kind of into one delivered to an individual. And so that's how we think about it. We think about it in two sectors where we say, hey, these are the recommendations from your organization. This is what your constituency wants. And then we actually have a product to do that.

If you had told me that I could go into a CVS and pick up a sexual assault testing kit or a rape kit, as more commonly called, I would have said yes. My gut reaction would be that definitely exists. If I have just had a sexual assault experience myself, a friend should be able to go pick up this testing kit for me. And I was floored to learn that is not the case, that today you can only get tested or have any sort of DNA collection or any sort of real care by going to the ER and going to the hospital.

Yeah. And that's the, that's the really disappointing part because You're just not ready. And of course, there are people that have the chutzpah to be able to pick themselves off of wherever they are and go to the hospital and understand where a hospital is and get transportation and then sit in the waiting room and then say, hey, I was sexually assaulted and all this kind of stuff that takes a lot of energy, of which I did not have and of which all of the friends that I know did not have that energy. And I think I, of course, during this period of time, have met people who have gone through the traditional process, and even that traditional process has been very humiliating for them. It's been disempowering for them. And every single person I know who's got a rape kit done has never gotten it tested.

Which is only part of the problem, because then there's numbers showing that when people do actually try to get it tested, there's huge backlogs and there isn't access to labs, and you can't actually get that information. Whether you wanna persecute or not. And so I think what you've built with Leda is really a matter of access to start, and then ultimately healing.

So I think it's an information problem. To say to a survivor that they aren't allowed or they shouldn't have access to their own results, regardless of what they would like to do about it, I think that's a societal problem. We should not only empower people that want to take justice into their own hands in the criminal justice system, to receive those results. We should also be empowering people who want to seek alternative forms of justice to receive those results or not even seek justice. Maybe they just want those results. Why shouldn't we give people access to information about their own body?

It's a big question and a very good question to be asking. And I think the simple answer is we should. If I'm a survivor listening to this episode today, what can I do and how can I be involved with Leda?

Yeah, so you can go to leda.co, so L-E-D-A.co, and then we have a bunch of resources for you. And so if you're in California, Texas, or in Florida, you can receive our resources. Outside of those states, we have access to mental health for all 50 states, as well as we have an exam location map. So if you are actually trying to find a hospital, you can find one via our website that we've painfully scraped all of the data of actual hospitals that provide these resources. Which can be something that is super, super scary for people to try to figure out.

That's amazing. We'll also link that in our bio here for this episode. But what I think this is touching on, Madison, is the presence Leda has both offline and online. You have physical testing kits that you're beginning to provide to survivors in their geolocations, but you also have a wealth of resources, both tactical, like where can I go post-assault, or long-term, how can I receive care and healing for this experience? You yourself are active on the internet, specifically on Twitter. And I think that's been a really interesting platform for you to get to amplify your personal story and the mission of Leda. What is your perspective on tech Twitter?

Tech Twitter is very interesting to me. I wasn't really online, like tweeting until last year. So I've really only been online for a year. And it's interesting to me in terms of how I was able to grow my follower accounts and my network and things like that. But I have to say that tech Twitter is generally supportive of the mission of everything that we do. But you can see truly between when I tweet just about the world in general or shitposting or something like that, the amount of likes I get on that versus the amount of likes I get when I actually talk about the work that we're doing. And so generally people are very supportive. In private, but find it very difficult to be supportive, I see, around this topic publicly. And so that's been the most interesting thing to me where it's, man, if I like ran a VC fund or if I did this or did that and I didn't have to post about sexual assault, or if I didn't have this mission behind me, I'd probably have a lot more people. But because I do have this mission and because it's a lot of the content that I talk about, I'm probably not growing at an insane amount either because of the fact that I'm talking about a subject that most of tech Twitter is, is very scared to talk about.

Yep. I think that is the unfortunate thing, and this is just a perspective of mine around the conversation from a few years ago categorized as MeToo movement, and then the microcurrents that's impacted our ecosystem of technology more broadly since is I think it's made a lot of people scared. They don't want to get quote MeToo'd. Which to me, I've heard it said, and I think that's unfortunate, that is the takeaway from these past 4 years of conversation. What is your thoughts on that?

Yeah, people are— I've even had conversations with like men who are like, yo, afraid to go on a date now without a contract. We need a contract before we go out on a date, or before I, before I kiss somebody, or if I do this. And I'm like, Jesus, man, like no one is gonna come after you. In the middle of the night and say, hey, like, you did this to me without it actually being something that was wrong. And the thing with survivors too is like most of the time it's women and most of the time we have a huge amount of empathy. And the first thing that we think about is, oh my God, we don't want to ruin someone's life. We're not thinking about— and of course there'll be people that go in and say, hey, I'm going to ruin someone's life, but they're always going to be there. That's like the less than 1% of human beings in the world that are psychopaths. Okay, whatever. But like the majority of people have been living their life normally, are just trying to get through every day, do not want to ruin someone's life, and something dramatically bad happened to them that they felt like they had to finally talk about. But yeah, men are, you know, I've seen very, oh, I'm scared of getting MeToo'd, I'm scared of going on dates, I'm afraid of touching somebody for the first time. Those, you can tell the difference between a man like that and like a man who is actually a good human being who never once mentions that. It's just weird. Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's a red flag if they start mentioning that.

I think what I'm, I'm left wondering though, just taking a step back as we're all women in the room in these conversations, getting to continue to guide this conversation forward is like, what did we not effectively communicate as a part of the initial movement that has created a fear bias here? Perhaps it's just out of our control, but I would posit that we framed it in a way that has elicited fear. In men rather than opportunity for action or opportunity to continue to uplift. Not just speaking about sexual assault, but more just like broadly opportunity, equality in the workplace, equal opportunity more. And so I'm just left wondering what is our role as young women who are coming up in our careers looking towards another 15, 20, 30 years in this industry that we can say, hey, you don't have to fear that I'm gonna me too you. But I'm asking for the equal opportunity that everyone else in this room automatically gets.

Yeah, good question. I think it scared men for us to come out in droves and finally say enough is enough. Like, it scared men for us to protest and to put on the quote unquote pink hats and actually stand up for what we believe in. And I think what scared them was not necessarily our messaging, but the fact that we all came together as one singular being and said, nope, this isn't happening. And so the messaging now has to— we have to almost stroke the egos of these people. I know we do a lot of ego stroking here at Leda. We have to because we have to talk to a lot of people that need their ego stroked and need to be told, oh my God, it's going to be okay. Insert 50-year-old man with a comb-over. You're going to be okay, dude. It's fine. But you just— I think what What scared them is the fact that they realized they couldn't get away with what had been reality. And now we have to go back and say, okay, yes, true, this is not going to be a reality anymore. But also, it doesn't have to be you because you literally only have to do one thing, which is be a good person. That's it. It's actually pretty simple. It's pretty, pretty simple.

I don't think we're the only people making this rally cry. I think the generation of Gen Z is doing this. That's kind of a How do you say Gen Z without saying the generation of Gen Z? Feels like weird to decouple those two phrases, but it's repetitive. With Gen Z, this is just status quo. We're just not gonna accept this crap anymore. And I think we're all— I don't know, Madison, do you identify as a Gen Z?

I just turned 26. I was born in 1995. I feel like I'm a Gen Z in a way, but I also feel like a millennial depending on like my movie taste.

I know a lot of pop culture references that Gen Z people don't know.

So I'm like, where— I'm straddling it. I'm definitely straddling it.

I think we're all cuspers on this call for sure.

Yeah. Claudia and I are '96 babies.

With you in that like weird gray zone of yes, I understand what TikTok is, but I also understand like Britney in 2002 and how awesome that was.

I had a deck yesterday for my team. It was Y— I had, it was like Y2K vibes and my partner was literally like, were you alive in Y2K?

I was like, oh my God.

It's like vaguely I was 4. I don't know.

Yeah. Yeah. No, whatever. Let's not age ourselves. Let's not age ourselves. We are Y2K. I have a bucket hat, so we're good.

Cheers to that.

We're vibing with that. I think overall though, the next generation, whatever we're gonna call it, whether it's us or not, they have different expectations for what care and health looks like. And I'm curious how Leda and you are thinking about what the future of healthcare is gonna look like. As this community of individuals is coming up and demanding care that looks more reflective of what every other experience in their life is, which is seamless, quick, easy.

I think healthcare is going to have to completely shift in order to talk to this generation because the generation will not feel adequate enough with what our, our parents were used to. Or how we, we grew up going to pediatricians and all this kind of stuff, like in all the paperwork and the forms and the horrible appointment setting months in advance. I don't think our generation, which is so instant gratification, is going to feel like that's enough for them. And so I feel like the new healthcare for Gen Z is going to have to look like instant gratification. It's going to have to look like something that is immediate. And something that shows the true colors of what our generation has been pleading for, which is someone to believe in us. And that goes with sexual assault, but it also goes with healthcare in general, where we are truly pleading to say, hey, we have been asking for this for so long, why don't we deserve it? And if you think that we don't deserve it, boomers, we're just going to have to build it ourselves.

I've had like a few doctor's appointments recently, and it's been some time since I had like scheduled like a dentist appointment. And for some reason I thought it was going to be incredibly easy. There should be an app. You should be able to schedule time and then reschedule it, and then it should be like you walk in and you don't need to fill out any forms. And I was like definitely taken back 10, 15 years of, oh, this experience was truly like what it was when I was going to the pediatrician when I was 5 years old and my mom would have to fill out 20 forms and then I would have to like book an appointment 3 weeks in advance. And it was almost like striking to me of, oh yeah, this isn't— there isn't an app for this. I'm curious, what kind of trends and experiences do you think are going to be redefining how we experience healthcare over the next few years?

I think it's going to have to be with some level of immediacy, like you're saying. I think we're going to have to see a mobile application that you can insert your age, you can insert a few, you know, things about yourself, and then it's going to say, hey, Claudia, we realized you haven't gotten your first Pap smear yet. Most women get their first Pap smears by the age of 21, 22. Why don't we fix this for you? Hey, what insurance do you have? Oh, you have this insurance? Okay, so this is what it's going to look like. This is how much it's going to cost. This is exactly what's going to happen when you go to a doctor's appointment. And I like to think about this. I'm the type of person who before I go to a restaurant, I look at the menu because I'm very— yeah, I'm that person. I can never go to a restaurant without looking at a menu first because it's just overwhelming and anxiety-inducing for me. I think a lot of the medical system is being told you have to go to a restaurant and not look at the menu and assume you're gonna find something you like and assume it's also going to be cost-effective. And I don't think that we can do that for this generation. I think the generation is going to be a generation where we have to say, hey, this is what's gonna happen. This is what you're supposed to do. This is what to expect. Here's how you get there. And let us know if you have any problems and we're here.

[Speaker:MADISON McILWAIN] That is the best analogy for the future of healthcare I've heard in a long time. I love that. Madison McIlwain: Thinking about the ways in which consumer expectations are shifting, we've talked about how Leda is providing real-time care and support immediately after an assault. You're also providing long-term mental health. And I think that is a conversation that has also really exploded in the past 10 years of how digital community can be providing tangible and tactical care for those who struggle with this illness of mental health, whether it be anxiety, depression, PTSD, ASD, and so forth. And I, I think we've seen a little bit of Gen 1 mental health with Headspace, Calm. Now we're seeing some newer companies, like I'm hearing Cerebral said a lot, and I don't know what else would maybe be in this Gen 2 bucket. I'd be curious, Madison, what you think, but what do you think the Headspace and Calms of the world did well, and where do you think the next bucket of mental health companies that are digital first, that can come in.

I mean, like Talkspace is another one.

I recently tried out Talkspace, but I had a horrible user experience.

I didn't fill out the right forms that I was supposed to fill out before getting an appointment with them. And then their appointments were 3 weeks in advance still. And so I think what they ended up doing as a good thing was they initially created the platform that, that allowed some sort of digital expansion into healthcare. You can go onto a Talkspace and you can pick a therapist and you can, in theory, find a— talk to that therapist for a certain amount of money. That is decently transparent, although when you try to cancel, they'd ask you 500 different reasons about why you're canceling. And so you can technically do all those things on a lot of these applications. And that's where I call it Gen 1 applications. You can do the basic things, And I think where Gen 2 or Gen 3 or whatever has to come in is not just create the basic bar of humanity, which we should be doing for people, which is allow them to see a doctor, allow them to see a therapist, but allow that experience to, to be so seamless and be so amazing that they don't feel like they're seeing a doctor or feel like they're seeing a therapist. Totally.

It's like the same thing with any product development, even outside of the healthcare industry. What is like table stakes functionality to exist? And then like, how do you actually make a delightful product and how do you create something that people love to use and will continue doing so? So I think there's probably that analogy to just the maturity of the healthcare market and health tech market.

What's next for you, Madison? You got a lot going on with Leda Health, a lot of great ideas about how we can make the whole world better. What's next for you?

Yeah, I'm thinking about exactly what we talked about today, which is not about about how you make the system a tiny bit better and how you make these small user experiences make the consumer not feel absolutely horrible, but actually, like you're saying, Claudia, how do you make a product that's super delightful? And it can be super delightful for something like trauma, but it could also be something super delightful for something like getting a dental appointment, like you said. And so I think that's where I really want to sit and spend a lot of my time, which is how do you make these experiences not feel like going to the doctor. It should not feel like that. It should feel like when you book a hair appointment or you book a, you know, a trip and you're traveling and you have this excitement and you know exactly what's going to happen and you have that sense of adventure and you don't feel scared about it. That's what I want to focus on. And truthfully speaking, I don't think that you can focus on that in a void. I think it's going to have to be highly collaborative. And I also think that it's going to take me time to sit and think with myself about what does that mean to me? What does that user experience mean? Because also when you're in the crux of building a company like Leda, it is incredibly hard to step out of the day to actually think about how do you build this much larger thing.

[Speaker:MADISON McILWAIN] That is the, uh, like hero problem of the startup founder. How do you see the forest from the trees when the trees in front of you are on fire? For sure. We're so excited to see where Leda does go, and it's been awesome to hear about your passion and thoughts on the overall space and how it can be disrupted.

We'd love to ask you our hero question.

Who is a woman that has had a profound impact on you and your career?

Yeah, there's constantly women that I am meeting who have had a profound impact in the way that I do things.

So many women that it would take me too long to talk about all of them.

Madison McIlwain being one of them, not, not, not myself, as we like to say, but there's specifically a woman that came to mind. In mind when I read this question, which was a woman by the name of Allison Turcos. And she is a sexual assault survivor and an activist who has put her personal brand out there to basically hold accountable institutions that don't want to be held accountable. And I respect her so much for that. She's suing Lyft for sexual assault that happened at Lyft, which was just really fucked up how they handled that situation, as well as she's held institutions accountable happened over the Cuomo thing in New York by personally putting it out there and personally saying, hey, I'm going to stand up for tons of survivors that have these stories. And so I view her as an inspiration because as much as I like to say I'm the type of person who can go out there and say whatever and do whatever, I am still scared. I'm still scared about, oh, what is this investor going to think about me if I tweet this, if I do this, if I do this? And having people like that in my life and looking up to them is really amazing because this is somebody who every single day wakes up and does exactly what he set out to do and really doesn't think about the fact that who cares if someone doesn't like her because he's doing the right thing. So I'm very inspired by her and I want to try to live my life more like that. I think it's just going to take more money, lots more money.

Thank you so much, Madison McIlwain, for sharing vulnerably about your own story and the reasons why you are solving for this massive problem in our society, as well as doing it with a smile on your face. So appreciate you and all that you shared here today with our listeners.

Thank you so much, guys.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Room Podcast. We hope you enjoyed today's conversation. We hope to see you next Tuesday at 10 AM Eastern, 7 AM Pacific, for another miniseries episode of Movers and Shakers. Please like, subscribe, subscribe, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Clubhouse. We would love to hear from you. In the meantime, we'll see you next week in the room for another inspiring conversation.

See you later.

All opinions expressed by Claudia Madison and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of The5EC. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.