Aoifinn Devitt: Find out how our next guest drew on her insights from financial services to develop a corporate-level wellness solution to deliver mindfulness and avert burnout. I’m Aoifinn Devitt, and welcome to the 50 Faces Focus Podcast, a podcast committed to revealing the richness and diversity of founders and entrepreneurs by focusing on people and their stories. I’m joined today by Laura Sage, who is CEO at Chill Anywhere and co-founder of the Lynn Sage Breast Cancer Foundation. She has previously held a series of advisory and business development roles at different financial institutions, including hedge funds. Welcome, Laura. Thanks for joining me today.
Laura Sage: Oh, it’s such a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, let’s start first by talking about your background and career trajectory, first into the finance area, because you were ultimately global head of investment relations and business development for a hedge fund. Can you talk to us about how you ended up in that role?
Laura Sage: Sure. So I went to business school in Chicago at Kellogg, actually went to business school at night, and I always wanted to be financially independent and always enjoyed the markets. So I decided to focus on becoming an investment advisor and originally worked in a high net worth capacity. And when I got my degree, I was recruited and ended up going to work for JP Morgan. I worked for several different investment banks in either high net worth advisory roles or ultimately in middle market roles, which was really helping smaller hedge funds, and then decided to pivot and looked for a role where I could use my skills in more of a sales capacity on the institutional side. And that’s how I ended up working for a hedge fund that was based in Chicago and London.
Aoifinn Devitt: And of course, the role of business development is always a very challenging one, particularly in the hedge fund arena where you have to almost take on an education role in terms of working with investors. What did you enjoy most about that role, and what would you say were the keys to success in it?
Laura Sage: So you hit on exactly one of the things that I liked the most, which was it wasn’t just a sales role. I had an opportunity to be in the role of an educator. And I found that to be really interesting. Whether I was in the investment advisory role or working for the hedge fund, it was really enjoyable to me to teach our investors about the different types of markets that we were participating in and to share the stories of the companies that we were investing in. So I thought that that was very rewarding. I also really enjoyed the people that I worked with, in particular on the hedge fund side. Hedge funds in general are meritocracies. And the people that I worked with were very smart, so that was rewarding. And I also was able to travel a lot, and I had always enjoyed travel, and in particular international travel. So working at a hedge fund when you’re the spokesperson oftentimes, or going to visit investors that are in places like Asia or Europe, I enjoyed that as well.
Aoifinn Devitt: Did you find it a physically demanding role, all that travel?
Laura Sage: Yes, I was traveling just about 100,000 miles a year for close to a decade. And while I really did enjoy the travel, it is physically demanding. Traveling to, for instance, Japan for a day of work meetings and then returning to the US is physically exhausting. But I did find it rewarding, and it’s been 6 years, so I was younger then.
Aoifinn Devitt: And then on paper, the pivot to Chill Anywhere looks like a complete pivot, but I’m expecting that you’re going to tell me you gained a lot of the insights into the need for that, the gap in the market, perhaps from that high-paced investment career you were leading. So can you tell us about the gap in the market perhaps that led to your desire to launch Chill?
Laura Sage: Well, I will say that probably the stresses of traveling 100,000 miles a year, working at a hedge fund while I was also leading a nonprofit organization certainly made me realize there was a need for mental well-being that I did not think the marketplace currently had. And in particular, the idea of preventative healthcare or prophylactic healthcare for mental well-being, I didn’t see in the space. Certainly people were familiar and I was familiar with the concept of meditation, But most of the stigma that I had around meditation was that it was a little bit hippie-dippie and not necessarily focused on productivity. And so to me, the idea of mindfulness had a little bit of a branding problem as well as a bit of a distribution problem. And as I learned more about mindfulness and meditation and mental well-being exercises and they helped me, I thought that there were other people that were in similar roles to mine that would really benefit from learning more about these exercises.
Aoifinn Devitt: And of course, we will have links to a lot of the CHILL material in our show notes for this. But can you talk about how it evolved? So initially, I think you thought it was going to be in studio and online, and then with the pandemic, a pivot was necessary.
Laura Sage: Yes, definitely. So we opened CHILL in 2017 as a physical studio. The analogy I often use is people are often familiar with SoulCycle or CorePower Yoga. Those are studios that you would go to, to exercise your body. So CHILL was created as a physical studio and a place where people could go to exercise their mind. Our mission in 2017, and still today, is to help people live less stressed and more mindful lives. And that would manifest in a physical studio with 7-day-a-week classes. The classes would be either 30-minute mindfulness classes or hour-long classes that were part yoga and part meditation. It would also manifest in a massage section. We called it No Need to Get Naked Massage. That would look similar to what you might see at an airport but more elevated. And we also had a highly curated selection of retail products, always aligned with our mission to help people live less stressed, more mindful lives. And we did have to pivot when the pandemic hit Chicago, which is where our studio is located. We had to close our doors, and we ultimately did not open our doors. We do still have second-floor office space, and that’s where we create all of the content for our app, which is called Chill Anywhere. But now we’re completely focused on the business community and not as much on the direct consumer. So it’s been a pretty big change for us, but rewarding one. And we continue to make great content and continue to build relationships. You know, if we’re able to build a relationship with a business, the customers that we work with have thousands of employees. So we’re still able to speak to the consumer, but more from a B2B2C perspective.
Aoifinn Devitt: And what have you seen in terms of the evolution of awareness around employee wellness? From an employer’s standpoint. The pandemic really shone a light on that. How have you seen employers become more responsive?
Laura Sage: So it’s a great question, and the answer is we have seen an evolution. In 2017, when we opened our doors, employers were maybe somewhat aware that mental well-being and physical well-being were aligned, but it was definitely not a focus. If there is a silver lining in terms of the pandemic, I would say it’s that it has helped to raise the awareness and importance of mental well-being and to help people better understand that if they’re not mentally well, it’s going to translate into a lot of different things along with physical health being challenged. It’s also going to jeopardize productivity and culture. So I do see that businesses notice that. Also, stigma continues to be chipped away at. And in particular, you can see that with the younger generation. Younger, newer employees are demanding mental well-being services in a way that my generation had never seen. So companies are at a minimum getting smarter on the space. And we do see more employers dedicating budget to mental well-being services. And that can be something that that’s lower acuity solutions such as Chill, right? Employees can use Chill independently. They don’t need to let their employer know they’re doing it. It can be a very preventative approach, or some businesses are also committing money to much higher acuity solutions such as therapy. So it’s definitely happening. What I’m a little bit concerned about is employers are starting to get worried about an imminent recession.. And I do see companies that we’ve been in dialogue with perhaps be a little bit more reluctant to commit as much budget as they have been speaking about. So time will tell how that works out.
Aoifinn Devitt: It’s so ironic because of course it’s just at those crunch times that perhaps these services are needed more than ever to ensure stability and well-being. So very interesting in terms of timing. Let’s hope for the best that they will see the long view on that. And what about some testimonials that you’ve heard in terms of how this affects productivity, engagement, desire to perhaps stay in a role. Have you heard back from your clients about that?
Laura Sage: Yes, so we always ask for feedback. It’s really important to us, not in terms of just justifying our existence, but also in terms of we take feedback and then we create custom contents for our clients. So based on feedback, we might change the duration of the content that we deliver or the subject matters. In terms of testimonials. We know that what we’re delivering works, and there’s plenty of scientific evidence and tons of testimonials to suggest that. The issue is getting employees to do it. There’s a saying that we use, which is that it works if you work it. And this is not just about CHILLZ content, by the way. I would argue this is any type of mindfulness, meditation, mental well-being exercises. It’s scientifically shown to help employees with their mental well-being, which helps with their productivity, which helps with their physical well-being, which lowers insurance claims and leads to more loyal employees. So what we’re always working on and always working with our business partners on is how to continue to get employees and humans in general to go back to the practice. But we know that people love it. And we take a lot of pride in getting feedback and getting net promoter scores, and they’re very positive.
Aoifinn Devitt: Oh, it is wonderful. And the way it’s delivered is also just so enriching as well. So congratulations on all the content you’ve created. I want to go back a little bit in your career to talk about the nonprofit focused on breast cancer research, because of course the Lynn Sage Foundation has a facility at Northwestern, which is a wonderful addition to that institution there. Can you talk about your involvement in that and how it has grown?
Laura Sage: Absolutely. So I am one of the co-founders of the Lynn Sage Breast Cancer Foundation. And as you noted, the breast center is named after my mom, Lynn Sage. But in fact, we don’t even support that anymore. What we fund now is exclusively breast cancer researchers and their education. And we fund doctors at Northwestern, but we also fund doctors at the University of Chicago as well as Rush University.. And a lot of our focus has been on funding doctors earlier in their careers when it’s really difficult to get larger grants from places like the Defense Department and the National Institutes of Health. And this is a very special project to me, but funding doctors earlier, giving them funding for 2 years, we give $100,000 a year for 2 years, which is enough for them to hopefully have some success and collect some data and leverage that data to get these larger grants. And we’ve seen quite a bit of success. So it’s very rewarding. Another project that we do is we fund what we call Lynn Sage Fellows. These are doctors that are at Northwestern and they will likely go out to either rural communities or smaller communities where there might not be people that specialize in breast health, and they will now have this knowledge to help their community. And that’s also very rewarding. Boarding project that we work on.
Aoifinn Devitt: That seems like it would go a long way, that, that $100,000 grant over 2 years. How do you decide who gets it?
Laura Sage: We have a committee of PhDs and MDs that help us make those decisions. We are very lucky we have 2 MDs that are on our board that chair what’s called our grant committee. In fact, what usually ends up happening is we reach out to the medical institutions We give them a sense of projects that we might have an interest in funding and different parameters, and then they present us with the best candidates that they have within their own communities.
Aoifinn Devitt: And what excites you about some of the advances that have happened in breast cancer research? It certainly seems to get a lot of high-profile coverage among— of all women’s health issues, I’d say it was one of the ones that dominates. What advances excite you in terms of treatment and maybe more personalized treatment that’s available now?
Laura Sage: Well, you’ve got— exactly hit on it. In the cancer space, first of all, 1 in 8 women will get diagnosed with breast cancer. And there is a big misconception that if you don’t have breast cancer in your family history, that your likelihood of getting breast cancer is diminished. But in fact, most of the people that get diagnosed with breast cancer have no family history. Of course, if you do have a family history, then your likelihood is much higher. Going back to preventative medicine, there are some higher screening mechanisms or even prophylactic treatments that are available. But in terms of what gets me most excited, it is this idea of specialization. 20, 30 years ago, somebody got diagnosed with breast cancer and you would think that one breast cancer was the exact same as any other. And in fact, that’s not the case. It’s not the case with cancers in general. The more precisely you can be diagnosed, there are myriad of different treatments that can work for one type of breast cancer that won’t work for another. That’s really important because right now what we’re trying to do is change the trajectory of a breast cancer diagnosis from it being a death sentence to it being something that people can live and thrive with. I really do believe that to be the case. In many instances today, whereas when my mother was diagnosed, her prognosis wasn’t good. She ended up passing away at 39, but a lot of other women and some men also didn’t have an element of optimism that is out there right now.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, thank you so much for the work you’re doing in that respect. Extremely important. And as I said, having had personal experience of visiting that breast cancer center, it was wonderful to look at that name and know about you, know that I know you, and that this work is ongoing. So just wanted to move to the question of diversity because that is a strong focus of our podcast, and clearly showcasing and highlighting women’s health is an important piece of diversity and inclusion. I want to talk about your experience of diversity in the investment industry, given that was where you spent a lot of your earlier career. What would you say you saw in terms of the state of diversity and inclusion then, and how did it improve at the time you, you left the industry?
Laura Sage: That’s a great question. And I had been thinking about something quite similar. We at CHILL work with a group of women in technology at one of the largest insurance providers. And I was speaking to that group last week and reflecting on basically exactly this question. Regrettably, when I was working at investment banks, it was still fairly unusual for there to be women in the space, or we were a major minority. And frankly, when I left the banks, we still were a minority. You could see more women starting to enter the space, but there was no JPMorgan Women in Finance when I was at JPMorgan, for instance. Now, I’m still friends with a woman who was part of my training program. She was based in Hong Kong and now lives in Singapore, and she sent me a screen grab of who we had as mentors. This was a couple decades ago at this point. And interestingly, they did match me up with two women. I looked them up on LinkedIn. None of us are in finance today. So I don’t know if that’s a testament to our experiences collectively, but the long-winded way to answer your question is, at the time, I’d say it was difficult to be a woman. I would not say that we were encouraged to align and share stories and mentor. And I hope, but I can’t speak from experience, that things have improved. But it was a pretty tough neighborhood when I worked for investment banks as a woman.
Aoifinn Devitt: It’s exactly, I think, what others have experienced too. But as just to touch on a theme you mentioned earlier, I do hope that some of these initiatives, networking, support groups, mentor groups, don’t go by the wayside if business takes a downturn. Because unfortunately, just like wellness programs, they do tend to be considered dispensable. And unfortunately, I think they’re anything but.
Laura Sage: I completely agree with you, and I would do whatever I could in any community that I’m a part of to mentor other women, be supportive of them, and share my experiences in the hopes that they can learn from them.
Aoifinn Devitt: And let’s talk now about, you your experience as a founder and maybe go back to some personal reflections. What would you say were some of the high and low points either of your founder’s career or prior to that?
Laura Sage: Well, I am very candid about being a founder and an entrepreneur being a bit overrated. I think it’s a lot of responsibility, which I relish, but a friend of mine called it volatile the other day. This was a man who I know who’s also in the entrepreneurial space. There are really high highs and there are really low lows, and it doesn’t pay as well unless you have a home run as working in finance does. So I will tell you, this is completely wholeheartedly, I have had an opportunity to work with some of the most incredible, creative, smart, and generous humans because of starting Chill. And these are people that have skill sets vastly different than my own, which is a huge lesson that I’ve learned as being an entrepreneur, is to not hire people identical to yourself, but actually to find people that have diversity in terms of thoughts, in terms of profiles, and in terms of skill sets. So highs have been remarkable, but it’s been very emotionally challenging.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, thank you for your candor there. I think let’s not sugarcoat it. And I’m sure there are exhilarating moments, but it definitely comes with like a bit of a grind. Some of those setbacks and challenges you’re alluding to there, were there any lessons learned in terms of saying, well, I’ll never do that again, or I’ll have to make sure the next founder that I mentor is given a heads up about this?
Laura Sage: Well, one piece of experience which I’ve already alluded to is hire people with different skill sets than your own. It’s been remarkably helpful for us And people really like to shine. I will always recommend trying to hire people for roles that they enjoy doing. Clearly, when you’re in an entrepreneurial space, we do a lot of different things, and every single thing that each of my team members does, maybe they don’t relish. But I really do try to have the guts and the belly of what they’re doing being things that they enjoy. It’s led to having really sticky, good, collaborative community, which is great. Another thing that— I don’t know if this is quite a life lesson, but what I’ve learned in the entrepreneurial space, which is quite contrary to the hedge fund world, is that perfection is the enemy of progress. And if we need to do everything meticulously perfect, we would be paralyzed. So we do try to advance projects, in particular tech projects, that maybe everything isn’t ideal, but it will get us to the next stage. I was just on a conference call with our tech team right before you and I spoke, and we’re talking about a new form of our app being released, and it won’t look perfect in landscape mode for every single shot, and we’re going to release it anyway, and then we’re going to work on fixing it in landscape mode once that’s been done.
Aoifinn Devitt: Really interesting advice there, and I completely agree, especially when you’re There’s an element of when you’re an entrepreneur that one has to live hand to mouth to a degree because that’s the way business works. And if things don’t work, you have to pivot. You don’t have the luxury of waiting for years for them to work out. So I like that advice. You spoke about mentors, sponsors, sometimes maybe their absence in a financial career at critical times. Did you have any mentors or sponsors, whether through your financial career, your nonprofit work, or now as an entrepreneur that you learned particular from?
Laura Sage: I did have one mentor in the financial space, and it was really nice to have him as an advocate, and we are still in touch. So I would say that’s been helpful. I didn’t have as many mentors as I would have liked, but in the entrepreneurial space, I have a remarkable collection of advisors, and people have been exceptionally generous to me. In terms of their time and their resources and their advice. So not quite mentor roles, but let’s say pro bono advisor roles, in my experience in CHILL has been very abundant and very constructive for me personally, as well as for the business. And I don’t know if that’s common in the entrepreneurial space. I think it probably is more common than in the world of finance. But I also think that people get really engaged because they care so much about our mission and they like to be aligned with a mission-based business.
Aoifinn Devitt: And when you think about any words of advice or creed or motto that you live by, is there anything you can share there?
Laura Sage: Well, we alluded to the idea of perfection being the enemy of progress. Another motto that we’ve really stuck to since the beginning of opening CHILL, and this has permeated everything from the design aspect of our studio to the types of offerings that we currently have is the concept of less is more. We just can’t be everything to everybody. So we do try to stay very focused and aligned to our mission at all times. And I think that is a really good life motto as well.
Aoifinn Devitt: And my final question is around any advice you might have for your younger self, given you’ve, you’ve had so many different phases of your career. Is there anything you know now that you maybe wish that young students entering finance knew then?
Laura Sage: That’s an interesting question. I have to remind my older self and wish I had learned this lesson younger. But I think that, as I’ll say, this tends to be the case for a lot of women. We’re really hard on ourselves. And so I always advise people, including myself, to treat yourself the way that you treat somebody that you love very much. That might be a daughter. That might be, in my case, my sisters. It could be a best friend. But don’t beat yourself up. Don’t speak to yourself in a way that you wouldn’t talk to somebody that you care about. That’s my advice to my younger self.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, thank you so much, Laura. It’s very appropriate that we ended on a note of self-care because what CHILL has done in terms of reminding us of the importance of self-care and just the whole look and feel of the brand is so soothing. And you mentioned that less is more. Well, even a small amount, a short video, which we will feature on our website and link to in these notes, it does a little part to get us feeling a little bit better in ourselves and a little bit ready to face the world and some of its volatility, as you mentioned. So thank you for the tremendous contribution you’re making there, as well as in the important area of breast cancer research. It’s been a pleasure to chat here and hear your insights.
Laura Sage: Thank you so much. It’s really been a pleasure to get to know you better. I appreciate the opportunity. And thank you.
Aoifinn Devitt: I’m Aoifinn Devitt. Thank you for listening to the 50 Faces podcast. If you liked what you heard and would like to tune in to hear more inspiring investors on their personal journeys, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice, and all views are personal and should not be attributed to the organizations and affiliations of the host or any guest.
Aoifinn Devitt: Find out how our next guest drew on her insights from financial services to develop a corporate-level wellness solution to deliver mindfulness and avert burnout. I’m Aoifinn Devitt, and welcome to the 50 Faces Focus Podcast, a podcast committed to revealing the richness and diversity of founders and entrepreneurs by focusing on people and their stories. I’m joined today by Laura Sage, who is CEO at Chill Anywhere and co-founder of the Lynn Sage Breast Cancer Foundation. She has previously held a series of advisory and business development roles at different financial institutions, including hedge funds. Welcome, Laura. Thanks for joining me today.
Laura Sage: Oh, it’s such a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, let’s start first by talking about your background and career trajectory, first into the finance area, because you were ultimately global head of investment relations and business development for a hedge fund. Can you talk to us about how you ended up in that role?
Laura Sage: Sure. So I went to business school in Chicago at Kellogg, actually went to business school at night, and I always wanted to be financially independent and always enjoyed the markets. So I decided to focus on becoming an investment advisor and originally worked in a high net worth capacity. And when I got my degree, I was recruited and ended up going to work for JP Morgan. I worked for several different investment banks in either high net worth advisory roles or ultimately in middle market roles, which was really helping smaller hedge funds, and then decided to pivot and looked for a role where I could use my skills in more of a sales capacity on the institutional side. And that’s how I ended up working for a hedge fund that was based in Chicago and London.
Aoifinn Devitt: And of course, the role of business development is always a very challenging one, particularly in the hedge fund arena where you have to almost take on an education role in terms of working with investors. What did you enjoy most about that role, and what would you say were the keys to success in it?
Laura Sage: So you hit on exactly one of the things that I liked the most, which was it wasn’t just a sales role. I had an opportunity to be in the role of an educator. And I found that to be really interesting. Whether I was in the investment advisory role or working for the hedge fund, it was really enjoyable to me to teach our investors about the different types of markets that we were participating in and to share the stories of the companies that we were investing in. So I thought that that was very rewarding. I also really enjoyed the people that I worked with, in particular on the hedge fund side. Hedge funds in general are meritocracies. And the people that I worked with were very smart, so that was rewarding. And I also was able to travel a lot, and I had always enjoyed travel, and in particular international travel. So working at a hedge fund when you’re the spokesperson oftentimes, or going to visit investors that are in places like Asia or Europe, I enjoyed that as well.
Aoifinn Devitt: Did you find it a physically demanding role, all that travel?
Laura Sage: Yes, I was traveling just about 100,000 miles a year for close to a decade. And while I really did enjoy the travel, it is physically demanding. Traveling to, for instance, Japan for a day of work meetings and then returning to the US is physically exhausting. But I did find it rewarding, and it’s been 6 years, so I was younger then.
Aoifinn Devitt: And then on paper, the pivot to Chill Anywhere looks like a complete pivot, but I’m expecting that you’re going to tell me you gained a lot of the insights into the need for that, the gap in the market, perhaps from that high-paced investment career you were leading. So can you tell us about the gap in the market perhaps that led to your desire to launch Chill?
Laura Sage: Well, I will say that probably the stresses of traveling 100,000 miles a year, working at a hedge fund while I was also leading a nonprofit organization certainly made me realize there was a need for mental well-being that I did not think the marketplace currently had. And in particular, the idea of preventative healthcare or prophylactic healthcare for mental well-being, I didn’t see in the space. Certainly people were familiar and I was familiar with the concept of meditation, But most of the stigma that I had around meditation was that it was a little bit hippie-dippie and not necessarily focused on productivity. And so to me, the idea of mindfulness had a little bit of a branding problem as well as a bit of a distribution problem. And as I learned more about mindfulness and meditation and mental well-being exercises and they helped me, I thought that there were other people that were in similar roles to mine that would really benefit from learning more about these exercises.
Aoifinn Devitt: And of course, we will have links to a lot of the CHILL material in our show notes for this. But can you talk about how it evolved? So initially, I think you thought it was going to be in studio and online, and then with the pandemic, a pivot was necessary.
Laura Sage: Yes, definitely. So we opened CHILL in 2017 as a physical studio. The analogy I often use is people are often familiar with SoulCycle or CorePower Yoga. Those are studios that you would go to, to exercise your body. So CHILL was created as a physical studio and a place where people could go to exercise their mind. Our mission in 2017, and still today, is to help people live less stressed and more mindful lives. And that would manifest in a physical studio with 7-day-a-week classes. The classes would be either 30-minute mindfulness classes or hour-long classes that were part yoga and part meditation. It would also manifest in a massage section. We called it No Need to Get Naked Massage. That would look similar to what you might see at an airport but more elevated. And we also had a highly curated selection of retail products, always aligned with our mission to help people live less stressed, more mindful lives. And we did have to pivot when the pandemic hit Chicago, which is where our studio is located. We had to close our doors, and we ultimately did not open our doors. We do still have second-floor office space, and that’s where we create all of the content for our app, which is called Chill Anywhere. But now we’re completely focused on the business community and not as much on the direct consumer. So it’s been a pretty big change for us, but rewarding one. And we continue to make great content and continue to build relationships. You know, if we’re able to build a relationship with a business, the customers that we work with have thousands of employees. So we’re still able to speak to the consumer, but more from a B2B2C perspective.
Aoifinn Devitt: And what have you seen in terms of the evolution of awareness around employee wellness? From an employer’s standpoint. The pandemic really shone a light on that. How have you seen employers become more responsive?
Laura Sage: So it’s a great question, and the answer is we have seen an evolution. In 2017, when we opened our doors, employers were maybe somewhat aware that mental well-being and physical well-being were aligned, but it was definitely not a focus. If there is a silver lining in terms of the pandemic, I would say it’s that it has helped to raise the awareness and importance of mental well-being and to help people better understand that if they’re not mentally well, it’s going to translate into a lot of different things along with physical health being challenged. It’s also going to jeopardize productivity and culture. So I do see that businesses notice that. Also, stigma continues to be chipped away at. And in particular, you can see that with the younger generation. Younger, newer employees are demanding mental well-being services in a way that my generation had never seen. So companies are at a minimum getting smarter on the space. And we do see more employers dedicating budget to mental well-being services. And that can be something that that’s lower acuity solutions such as Chill, right? Employees can use Chill independently. They don’t need to let their employer know they’re doing it. It can be a very preventative approach, or some businesses are also committing money to much higher acuity solutions such as therapy. So it’s definitely happening. What I’m a little bit concerned about is employers are starting to get worried about an imminent recession.. And I do see companies that we’ve been in dialogue with perhaps be a little bit more reluctant to commit as much budget as they have been speaking about. So time will tell how that works out.
Aoifinn Devitt: It’s so ironic because of course it’s just at those crunch times that perhaps these services are needed more than ever to ensure stability and well-being. So very interesting in terms of timing. Let’s hope for the best that they will see the long view on that. And what about some testimonials that you’ve heard in terms of how this affects productivity, engagement, desire to perhaps stay in a role. Have you heard back from your clients about that?
Laura Sage: Yes, so we always ask for feedback. It’s really important to us, not in terms of just justifying our existence, but also in terms of we take feedback and then we create custom contents for our clients. So based on feedback, we might change the duration of the content that we deliver or the subject matters. In terms of testimonials. We know that what we’re delivering works, and there’s plenty of scientific evidence and tons of testimonials to suggest that. The issue is getting employees to do it. There’s a saying that we use, which is that it works if you work it. And this is not just about CHILLZ content, by the way. I would argue this is any type of mindfulness, meditation, mental well-being exercises. It’s scientifically shown to help employees with their mental well-being, which helps with their productivity, which helps with their physical well-being, which lowers insurance claims and leads to more loyal employees. So what we’re always working on and always working with our business partners on is how to continue to get employees and humans in general to go back to the practice. But we know that people love it. And we take a lot of pride in getting feedback and getting net promoter scores, and they’re very positive.
Aoifinn Devitt: Oh, it is wonderful. And the way it’s delivered is also just so enriching as well. So congratulations on all the content you’ve created. I want to go back a little bit in your career to talk about the nonprofit focused on breast cancer research, because of course the Lynn Sage Foundation has a facility at Northwestern, which is a wonderful addition to that institution there. Can you talk about your involvement in that and how it has grown?
Laura Sage: Absolutely. So I am one of the co-founders of the Lynn Sage Breast Cancer Foundation. And as you noted, the breast center is named after my mom, Lynn Sage. But in fact, we don’t even support that anymore. What we fund now is exclusively breast cancer researchers and their education. And we fund doctors at Northwestern, but we also fund doctors at the University of Chicago as well as Rush University.. And a lot of our focus has been on funding doctors earlier in their careers when it’s really difficult to get larger grants from places like the Defense Department and the National Institutes of Health. And this is a very special project to me, but funding doctors earlier, giving them funding for 2 years, we give $100,000 a year for 2 years, which is enough for them to hopefully have some success and collect some data and leverage that data to get these larger grants. And we’ve seen quite a bit of success. So it’s very rewarding. Another project that we do is we fund what we call Lynn Sage Fellows. These are doctors that are at Northwestern and they will likely go out to either rural communities or smaller communities where there might not be people that specialize in breast health, and they will now have this knowledge to help their community. And that’s also very rewarding. Boarding project that we work on.
Aoifinn Devitt: That seems like it would go a long way, that, that $100,000 grant over 2 years. How do you decide who gets it?
Laura Sage: We have a committee of PhDs and MDs that help us make those decisions. We are very lucky we have 2 MDs that are on our board that chair what’s called our grant committee. In fact, what usually ends up happening is we reach out to the medical institutions We give them a sense of projects that we might have an interest in funding and different parameters, and then they present us with the best candidates that they have within their own communities.
Aoifinn Devitt: And what excites you about some of the advances that have happened in breast cancer research? It certainly seems to get a lot of high-profile coverage among— of all women’s health issues, I’d say it was one of the ones that dominates. What advances excite you in terms of treatment and maybe more personalized treatment that’s available now?
Laura Sage: Well, you’ve got— exactly hit on it. In the cancer space, first of all, 1 in 8 women will get diagnosed with breast cancer. And there is a big misconception that if you don’t have breast cancer in your family history, that your likelihood of getting breast cancer is diminished. But in fact, most of the people that get diagnosed with breast cancer have no family history. Of course, if you do have a family history, then your likelihood is much higher. Going back to preventative medicine, there are some higher screening mechanisms or even prophylactic treatments that are available. But in terms of what gets me most excited, it is this idea of specialization. 20, 30 years ago, somebody got diagnosed with breast cancer and you would think that one breast cancer was the exact same as any other. And in fact, that’s not the case. It’s not the case with cancers in general. The more precisely you can be diagnosed, there are myriad of different treatments that can work for one type of breast cancer that won’t work for another. That’s really important because right now what we’re trying to do is change the trajectory of a breast cancer diagnosis from it being a death sentence to it being something that people can live and thrive with. I really do believe that to be the case. In many instances today, whereas when my mother was diagnosed, her prognosis wasn’t good. She ended up passing away at 39, but a lot of other women and some men also didn’t have an element of optimism that is out there right now.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, thank you so much for the work you’re doing in that respect. Extremely important. And as I said, having had personal experience of visiting that breast cancer center, it was wonderful to look at that name and know about you, know that I know you, and that this work is ongoing. So just wanted to move to the question of diversity because that is a strong focus of our podcast, and clearly showcasing and highlighting women’s health is an important piece of diversity and inclusion. I want to talk about your experience of diversity in the investment industry, given that was where you spent a lot of your earlier career. What would you say you saw in terms of the state of diversity and inclusion then, and how did it improve at the time you, you left the industry?
Laura Sage: That’s a great question. And I had been thinking about something quite similar. We at CHILL work with a group of women in technology at one of the largest insurance providers. And I was speaking to that group last week and reflecting on basically exactly this question. Regrettably, when I was working at investment banks, it was still fairly unusual for there to be women in the space, or we were a major minority. And frankly, when I left the banks, we still were a minority. You could see more women starting to enter the space, but there was no JPMorgan Women in Finance when I was at JPMorgan, for instance. Now, I’m still friends with a woman who was part of my training program. She was based in Hong Kong and now lives in Singapore, and she sent me a screen grab of who we had as mentors. This was a couple decades ago at this point. And interestingly, they did match me up with two women. I looked them up on LinkedIn. None of us are in finance today. So I don’t know if that’s a testament to our experiences collectively, but the long-winded way to answer your question is, at the time, I’d say it was difficult to be a woman. I would not say that we were encouraged to align and share stories and mentor. And I hope, but I can’t speak from experience, that things have improved. But it was a pretty tough neighborhood when I worked for investment banks as a woman.
Aoifinn Devitt: It’s exactly, I think, what others have experienced too. But as just to touch on a theme you mentioned earlier, I do hope that some of these initiatives, networking, support groups, mentor groups, don’t go by the wayside if business takes a downturn. Because unfortunately, just like wellness programs, they do tend to be considered dispensable. And unfortunately, I think they’re anything but.
Laura Sage: I completely agree with you, and I would do whatever I could in any community that I’m a part of to mentor other women, be supportive of them, and share my experiences in the hopes that they can learn from them.
Aoifinn Devitt: And let’s talk now about, you your experience as a founder and maybe go back to some personal reflections. What would you say were some of the high and low points either of your founder’s career or prior to that?
Laura Sage: Well, I am very candid about being a founder and an entrepreneur being a bit overrated. I think it’s a lot of responsibility, which I relish, but a friend of mine called it volatile the other day. This was a man who I know who’s also in the entrepreneurial space. There are really high highs and there are really low lows, and it doesn’t pay as well unless you have a home run as working in finance does. So I will tell you, this is completely wholeheartedly, I have had an opportunity to work with some of the most incredible, creative, smart, and generous humans because of starting Chill. And these are people that have skill sets vastly different than my own, which is a huge lesson that I’ve learned as being an entrepreneur, is to not hire people identical to yourself, but actually to find people that have diversity in terms of thoughts, in terms of profiles, and in terms of skill sets. So highs have been remarkable, but it’s been very emotionally challenging.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, thank you for your candor there. I think let’s not sugarcoat it. And I’m sure there are exhilarating moments, but it definitely comes with like a bit of a grind. Some of those setbacks and challenges you’re alluding to there, were there any lessons learned in terms of saying, well, I’ll never do that again, or I’ll have to make sure the next founder that I mentor is given a heads up about this?
Laura Sage: Well, one piece of experience which I’ve already alluded to is hire people with different skill sets than your own. It’s been remarkably helpful for us And people really like to shine. I will always recommend trying to hire people for roles that they enjoy doing. Clearly, when you’re in an entrepreneurial space, we do a lot of different things, and every single thing that each of my team members does, maybe they don’t relish. But I really do try to have the guts and the belly of what they’re doing being things that they enjoy. It’s led to having really sticky, good, collaborative community, which is great. Another thing that— I don’t know if this is quite a life lesson, but what I’ve learned in the entrepreneurial space, which is quite contrary to the hedge fund world, is that perfection is the enemy of progress. And if we need to do everything meticulously perfect, we would be paralyzed. So we do try to advance projects, in particular tech projects, that maybe everything isn’t ideal, but it will get us to the next stage. I was just on a conference call with our tech team right before you and I spoke, and we’re talking about a new form of our app being released, and it won’t look perfect in landscape mode for every single shot, and we’re going to release it anyway, and then we’re going to work on fixing it in landscape mode once that’s been done.
Aoifinn Devitt: Really interesting advice there, and I completely agree, especially when you’re There’s an element of when you’re an entrepreneur that one has to live hand to mouth to a degree because that’s the way business works. And if things don’t work, you have to pivot. You don’t have the luxury of waiting for years for them to work out. So I like that advice. You spoke about mentors, sponsors, sometimes maybe their absence in a financial career at critical times. Did you have any mentors or sponsors, whether through your financial career, your nonprofit work, or now as an entrepreneur that you learned particular from?
Laura Sage: I did have one mentor in the financial space, and it was really nice to have him as an advocate, and we are still in touch. So I would say that’s been helpful. I didn’t have as many mentors as I would have liked, but in the entrepreneurial space, I have a remarkable collection of advisors, and people have been exceptionally generous to me. In terms of their time and their resources and their advice. So not quite mentor roles, but let’s say pro bono advisor roles, in my experience in CHILL has been very abundant and very constructive for me personally, as well as for the business. And I don’t know if that’s common in the entrepreneurial space. I think it probably is more common than in the world of finance. But I also think that people get really engaged because they care so much about our mission and they like to be aligned with a mission-based business.
Aoifinn Devitt: And when you think about any words of advice or creed or motto that you live by, is there anything you can share there?
Laura Sage: Well, we alluded to the idea of perfection being the enemy of progress. Another motto that we’ve really stuck to since the beginning of opening CHILL, and this has permeated everything from the design aspect of our studio to the types of offerings that we currently have is the concept of less is more. We just can’t be everything to everybody. So we do try to stay very focused and aligned to our mission at all times. And I think that is a really good life motto as well.
Aoifinn Devitt: And my final question is around any advice you might have for your younger self, given you’ve, you’ve had so many different phases of your career. Is there anything you know now that you maybe wish that young students entering finance knew then?
Laura Sage: That’s an interesting question. I have to remind my older self and wish I had learned this lesson younger. But I think that, as I’ll say, this tends to be the case for a lot of women. We’re really hard on ourselves. And so I always advise people, including myself, to treat yourself the way that you treat somebody that you love very much. That might be a daughter. That might be, in my case, my sisters. It could be a best friend. But don’t beat yourself up. Don’t speak to yourself in a way that you wouldn’t talk to somebody that you care about. That’s my advice to my younger self.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, thank you so much, Laura. It’s very appropriate that we ended on a note of self-care because what CHILL has done in terms of reminding us of the importance of self-care and just the whole look and feel of the brand is so soothing. And you mentioned that less is more. Well, even a small amount, a short video, which we will feature on our website and link to in these notes, it does a little part to get us feeling a little bit better in ourselves and a little bit ready to face the world and some of its volatility, as you mentioned. So thank you for the tremendous contribution you’re making there, as well as in the important area of breast cancer research. It’s been a pleasure to chat here and hear your insights.
Laura Sage: Thank you so much. It’s really been a pleasure to get to know you better. I appreciate the opportunity. And thank you.
Aoifinn Devitt: I’m Aoifinn Devitt. Thank you for listening to the 50 Faces podcast. If you liked what you heard and would like to tune in to hear more inspiring investors on their personal journeys, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice, and all views are personal and should not be attributed to the organizations and affiliations of the host or any guest.
