Our journey with Manglovo Health began not as a business, but as a shared passion for advocacy. We met in 2020 during the height of the pandemic, thanks to an Instagram story shared by a mutual friend. Mehek was leading a national team to advocate for a just Covid response in Congress, and Emi eagerly joined the opportunity to channel frustrations into mobilizing stakeholders. At just 17, Emi was the youngest member, and also the most effective in creating traction in the halls of congress; her fearlessness in standing up for community needs and ability to connect with policymakers made her an invaluable asset. Together, we tackled systemic issues like Black maternal health, public health equity, and reproductive justice—stacking up wins and building a foundation of trust and collaboration.

Our friendship deepened through late-night FaceTime sessions, biryani parties, and shared victories in coalition building. Eventually, we both left our hometown of Minneapolis for college in New York City—Mehek to NYU to study Neuroscience and Emi to Columbia to study Evolutionary Biology. Even as we pursued different paths, we remained each other’s first call for support in our respective health equity initiatives (from developing adolescent mental health interventions to distributing thousands of reproductive health supplies).

The turning point came when we realized we could combine our advocacy and scientific expertise with entrepreneurship to create sweeping change—diverging off the pre-med path with the belief we could enable millions of doctors to be better. Emi’s work as a birth doula and founder of The Body Org, a national sexual health organization, meant that she spoke to people every single day about how they wanted—needed—better birth control.

Instead of simply wondering why a better option didn’t exist, we pushed ourselves to create it. Drawing from years of research—Mehek’s experience at NYU Langone and Northwestern Medicine with NIH and ARCC grants, and Emi’s research at Columbia and the University of Minnesota, we saw an opportunity to innovate and develop a once-weekly, non-hormonal birth control for the U.S. and international markets.

What started as late-night brainstorming sessions evolved into Manglovo Health, a company driven by our shared commitment to science, community mobilization, and health equity. Since launching, we’ve hit key milestones, refined our product and strategic vision, and built a powerhouse advisory team of scientists with expertise in contraception, clinical, and regulatory processes, transforming us from scrappy first-time entrepreneurs into leaders driving innovation in reproductive health.

At Manglovo Health, we’re not content to wait around for change when our younger cousins’, sisters’, and mentees’ health and happiness on the line. We’re taking action. We’ve poured everything we love—science, advocacy, health equity, and seeing our friends thrive—into this work. Women and gender-diverse people deserve better, and we’re here to make it happen. What began as a shared passion has become our full-time purpose, and we couldn’t be more excited to transform reproductive health for the better.