Women's Health Mavericks _ Wendy Lund: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Women's Health Mavericks _ Wendy Lund: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Abby Mercado:
Hi, I'm Abby Mercado, Co-founder and CEO of Rescripted, former VC investor and ever entrepreneur, fierce advocate for women, and mom of IVF twins. Welcome to Women's Health Mavericks, a podcast dedicated to shining a light on the people who are moving the needle when it comes to women's health and wellness. From inspiring entrepreneurs and innovators to leaders of big brands defining culture to movers and shakers of biosciences companies dedicated to treating women. We'll introduce you to the people, the ideas, and the businesses that are changing the face of women's health in America and across the globe. With these changemakers on our side, the future of women's health is bright. Now let's get into it.

Abby Mercado:
Good morning, Women's Health Mavericks listeners. Today, I'm so excited to introduce you to Wendy Lund, the Chief Client Officer at Health at WPP. Wendy, an endometriosis sufferer, was drawn to the healthcare industry early in her career when she went to work for Planned Parenthood. Now leading health at WPP, she since dedicated her career to getting the word out to patients about health and wellness solutions. WPP is the world's largest advertising agency, and Health at WPP is a group of companies that offer solutions for healthcare clients looking to achieve their messaging and reach goals. Women specifically are under-recognized for their pain. Our pain is underdiagnosed, under-discussed, and just plain underwhelming when it comes to treatment. Wendy is an absolute force who can speak to a variety of different women's health issues, and I wanted to get her take on how we shape and disperse better narratives about the female experience outside of the doctor's office, including that of pain. Well, welcome. I have Wendy Lunn, who is the Chief Client Officer at Health at WPP. Hey, Wendy! Thanks so much for joining us this morning.

Wendy Lund:
I am so happy to be here today. I love the work you guys are doing, so I'm excited for the conversation.

Abby Mercado:
Absolutely. You have been an advocate, an activist, and advisor in the women's health industry for most of your career, so would love to know kind of how you got here, where you are now. Just give us a little bit about your history, Wendy.

Wendy Lund:
So it's funny, like you bring the words of advisor, advocate, activist. I think it kind of started in the opposite direction. So, in college, I had majored in history and women's studies. But like we're talking about women's studies during the Wild, Wild West. It was crazy town. You know, one of the facts I fell into was that women were paid like $0.55 to the dollar. So, of course, I went like marching all over the place with my sign and graduation. And then I fell right into sort of tabling for Planned Parenthood right out of college or birth control, different neighborhoods all over New York City. So those were like kind of more of my activism days. I was like in people's faces and definitely had a very strong point of view about a lot of different things as it relates to women. But I really feel like my inflection point was becoming the head of marketing at Planned Parenthood, where I had the opportunity to advocate for women on a whole bunch of different women's health issues. You name it, we focused on it, you know, really focusing on our affiliates as well, and education, awareness, prevention, treatment, education, as I said. And then through the years, when I wanted to agency side, I got to play a role like pink three, you know, certainly advising companies as we brought products and treatments to market and probably have worked on every birth control product known to womankind, excited for the future in terms of some of the new stuff happening. So yeah, it's definitely been my passion and my love. And I really, really care that 51% of our population is not really getting the kind of medical care that they deserve and need. And so I will keep fighting until there's no reason to fight anymore, which is probably not going to happen in my lifetime.

Abby Mercado:
Until we're all equal, for sure. How have you seen just being in the earlier days of Planned Parenthood? I'm just curious, have you seen the organization change? And I would love your viewpoint on the good work that Planned Parenthood is doing today.

Wendy Lund:
Yeah, I mean, it's just an awesome organization, and so committed to it even 20 years later after I left the organization as an employee; I think a lot has changed, but a lot has stayed the same. I think when you look at women, they have changed a lot. Women are definitely much more vocal. They see things their way. They want to kind of fight for things their way and expect to see things happen their way. But certainly, some of the setbacks we've seen over the past year and even before that have been discouraging and very disappointing and upsetting for many, many, many women, thousands and thousands of women, not just myself. I think the Dobbs decision almost a year ago, this day last Friday, you know, your vote Friday tomorrow, the 24th, was just such a shock to so many women I had been saying for years that I thought Roe was at risk, and I was so devastated that it was. Others think, you know, not too negative, but to go down the path of the fact that so many things in women's health have kind of stayed the same. I'm sure you can see this on the fertility side, and we see this on different conditions like endometriosis, PCOS, other areas where things just are starting to progress, and I'm feeling good movement over the last year and a half, two years, but certainly seeing the same sort of issues lack of treatment, lack of information, lack of awareness that have existed since my days of Planned Parenthood. So definitely need that change.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah, I think that, as Wendy noted, tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of the Dobbs decision, which I remember where I was when I heard the news. Do you remember Wendy, where you were?

Wendy Lund:
I do remember, I absolutely remember, I just remember kind of sitting over the weekend like crying the entire weekend and then kind of waking up Monday morning and saying, hundreds of thousands of women are not going to go down on this. And we have to really figure out, and I think people are figuring out, led by Planned Parenthood and other great groups, where we go from here.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah, that's such a shame. But I kind of share the negativity that I think in the, somewhere in there, I'm optimistic, and we'd love to get into kind of the role of marketing. So, you've always worked in marketing throughout your career. Let's talk a little bit about that role, why it's important, why getting the word out is important, and why, you know, telling stories and sharing words in a smart way. I would love to just hear you talk a little bit about that and how critical it is.

Wendy Lund:
So, I'm so glad you brought that up. So, I'm a self-taught marketer, so I did not have a master's degree in marketing or business. My master's degree is in women's history, which I believe really taught me how to tell stories. Like history is the great storyteller, and so I've applied that to my entire career. I believe words matter. So when I see words on a page, I'm always looking for, are we really telling the story the right way, or people going to relate to that word? Do they understand what we mean by that word? And I think that's in many ways the central point of marketing, of being a good marketer, which is to really understand who you're talking to and what you're talking to them about, and then telling the story the right way. My career has veered very deeply into communications, as you know, and I spent a lot of my career in communications. I truly, truly love the sport of marketing. I think it is so cool watching people come off of Cannes this week and seeing WPP and kind of awards we're winning and the kind of business that's being recognized. Dove is one of those campaigns that I just can't get enough of. So, you know, this is like my sport, this is my athleticism. Like just competing in the marketing space and understanding how to use different channels and tools and ways of speaking to people. And I think at the end of the day, it's all about people. So like really figuring out what the mindsets are, the people we're speaking to and what they care about, and how to best connect with them and activate them.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah, you mentioned Cannes. So, you know, Cannes was this past week, and so much news coming out of the event. And I think certain people have shared certain learnings on LinkedIn, and, you know, in various conversations that I've had and podcasts that I've listened to, I would love to hear, like, what were WPP's kind of key takeaways and specifically with regards to health, if possible.

Wendy Lund:
Well, more to come on this as we're putting together some thoughts and insights that we're going to be sharing more broadly. So, I'm going to share them with you when we get them, and happy to talk further. I think, you know, for me, being, working in the healthcare space my whole career, it's the inspiration behind these campaigns. And what I love about working in the healthcare marketing space is just seeing the purpose of what people do and what companies do permeate through everything. We want a goal for the Most Beautiful Sound, which was a program we just launched three weeks ago with Asco, which is the largest cancer organization in the world. And it's all about hearing the sound of cancer cells being destroyed, which has been created for the first time ever. We did the work in the area of breast cancer and in lung cancer, and what I love about the fact that it was in breast cancer, going back to women, is that breast cancer is still the number one cancer killer of women in the world, yet it's very under-recognized and discussed because I think people think, okay, we're moving on, we're on to other cancers, and we have to keep focused on that. So, winning this award to be recognized for the creativity and the partnership with Asco, which is such a joy to be able to witness. And I have to say, I sat in the comfort of my living room, just kind of like watching and liking and commenting and hearing what other people had to say. So I'm excited to see the roundups next week when people come back from Cannes, and they get to hear much more about it, and you will be the first person to know some of those insights and outcomes. I was happy to see a lot of our healthcare work be recognized that you probably know better than anyone that putting healthcare awards up is very challenging because so many of the regulations we need to follow totally, and love the ingenuity behind so many of the campaigns. One of the ones you'll appreciate I have to tell you about was one in Argentina, ... Gray, and it was all, it was called postponement day, and basically, in response to the fact that so many women are postponing their mammograms, they basically called off like Breast Cancer Awareness Day, and they postponed it and basically used that as a way to get women to go in and get their mammograms. And it won so many awards both at Cannes and at Clio, it's a great campaign that, what I love about Cannes and Clio is that a lot of these awards emanate from countries. Last year, there was an amazing campaign that ran out of the Middle East, and this year, in Argentina, and there was another one in Honduras about emergency contraception. I love this because, like, we could take this over here in the US and UK and other places and blow these campaigns up.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah, I love it. You mentioned something that I wanted to dig into a little bit more, just how it might be more like healthcare card. It's highly regulated. I would love to have you speak to some of the challenges, specifically being a healthcare marketer and helping some of these highly regulated industries, like the pharmaceutical industry, just get the word out. What are the challenges there, and how would you overcome them and just in your career?

Wendy Lund:
Well, certainly, probably one of the biggest challenges is having creative talent be able to embrace and engage with regulatory guidance, right? Because creative people are just so amazing, and they've got so many great ideas. And the last thing you want is a creative to basically say, no, no, no, no, no. We want to be able to say yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. So, I think that is probably one of the biggest opportunities and challenges that we face in our space. And we've put a huge energy into attracting creatives into the healthcare space, and I'm excited to say we have just the most amazing group of creatives on our specific agencies across our network. I think a lot of it, you know, think relationships go such a long way in the healthcare space and having the relationships with the people in house, you know, the regulators, the lawyers, the medical team, of course, our clients, the marketing group, etc., showing how some of these things have been done a little bit before so we can build on them and make them even better. And being patient is really important. The kind of work we're doing now versus 15, 20 years ago is beyond transformed, and using our learnings from COVID and other types of things where we were like in the thick of healthcare crisis and what we can and can't do to kind of overcome some of these barriers. So I am one of the people that just says like, never give up. We're going to do this. Let's find a way. Let's be authentic. Authenticity is so critical. So when people start cutting out language and saying, you can't say this, you can't say that, and you're like, but this is how people talk, right?

Abby Mercado:
Yeah.

Wendy Lund:
It's finding ways to kind of get there. And, you know, I have found over the course of my many years that most people have good intent. It's just a matter of figuring out how to get there.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah. Absolutely. Awesome. Well, so a quick, fun one. So you mentioned you have a master's in women's history. I have a bachelor's in history. That was my major in college. Absolutely. And there's just so much magic and telling stories, and that really resonated with me. Who is your favorite woman in history who has been an activist and an activist?

Wendy Lund:
There's so many of them.

Abby Mercado:
I know, I know, I told you it's a tough one.

Wendy Lund:
Who is my favorite woman in history? Who do I think about? I don't know. I mean, there's people like Rosa Parks who come to mind, people that have changed the course of history and the course of women. And then there's lesser known people who are just out there fighting the fight for women every single day. I look at people even going back to Planned Parenthood's roots of Faye Wattleton, who fought so hard before I was there, abortion, and other areas who fought for birth control in the 60s. So there's so many great women out there, some of them have faces and names and been all these places, and then there's others who are behind the scenes making it happen. Like, everyone deserves credit, so I can't like pull one out over the other, but there's so many amazing people. And I think, you know, if I look today at what's happening across the US, there's so many influencers, there's so many people that are celebrities who have such an incredible voice too, to help us overcome some of the challenges we face right now.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah. Awesome. So, I would love to get a little bit personal. So, you know, just kind of going back to creatives on your team and on marketing teams and working at agencies and whatnot, and often people want to pay it forward, like where I feel like we see that a lot. Like at Rescripted, every woman that worked at the Rescripted has a condition. It's crazy. Whether PCOS or endometriosis or, you know, infertility or something else, heavy menstrual bleeding, whatever it is, somebody has had something going on. We all do, it seems like, and, you know, it seems like in today's working world, you spend so many hours of work, and you want to be doing something meaningful, and so we've certainly seen that on our team and in the women's health industry. And so we'd love to get personal, and I know that you have endometriosis. So we'd love to hear about your experience and just having endometriosis and some of the things that you might want to change with your fellow brethren who also have endo.

Wendy Lund:
Yeah. So, the best day of my life probably was the day my period ended. Besides, when I had my kids, of course, because endometriosis is really debilitating. Now, I had ended up having an emergency c-section when I had my first child, and the doctor, like, scraped like every bit of endometriosis avenue, he didn't know I had it. So the joke used to be like turned my period into a comma because I always thought, and I'm sure a lot of women feel this way when you have endometriosis, that it's normal to feel those kind of cramps like you don't have any other context of what other cramps should be.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah.

Wendy Lund:
So I was always kind of surprised that, like, my friends were like, oh yeah, my period, and I'm fine. I was like doubled over, horrible headache, wanted to just lay in bed, would lay there for like two days, and I would get myself go to work, you know, blah, blah, blah. I think the worst thing, and I think what's changing right now, is this whole idea of suffering in silence. I think the fact that you all can talk about the various conditions that exist in the workplace and not feeling embarrassed, I mean, we're starting to see, like the surgeons, the surgeon, I should say, menopause, where women can not hide behind the curtain and actually talk about the shock that they're having hot flashes or just not feeling well or gaining weight. These are things that are so taboo, which is just so shocking to even have to say. So I would say those years where it was filled with endometriosis, then I had a child, then it went away, then it kind of grew back. It was sort of just the silence. I was always very embarrassed by it, and I didn't want to be judged by it because of the workplace, and even working in women-centric environments like I was in, you know, I just never wanted to be judged. I think the world is a little different now.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah.

Wendy Lund:
So that's a good thing to say.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah, I know that 1 in 10 women has endometriosis. And you're right, like, it's really difficult to describe. And because we have spent so many years not talking about this, you don't know what your normal is supposed to be. That's what we've seen a lot with our community. They just don't know. And so many people in our community have endo, so we talk a lot about it, and describing that normal is challenging. But I think if we can get women to ask more questions and if we can arm them with the information, we can enable them to advocate for themselves.

Wendy Lund:
And I think also this is hopefully going to get better. But, you know, the gaslighting of women in the medical community, like I found when I was complaining about. So I went to Planned Parenthood when I was very young, got my first set of birth control, had these cramps. They said, you probably have endometriosis, but we can't really do anything to diagnose or test without kind of opening you up. So then when I was having my first child, I said, the doctor I'm seeing, and he's like, oh, my parent tells everyone that. I was like, oh, okay, but these are pretty big cramps. So he dismissed me and dismissed them, and then when we went in and had the section, he was like, oh my God, I cannot believe you had, you got pregnant.

Abby Mercado:
And I keep keying in on the word scraping. I keep going back to like scraping. The fact that your doctor scraped something in your body like that is shocking.

Wendy Lund:
Keep in mind my son is, like, just turned 30, so.

Abby Mercado:
Sure, sure.

Wendy Lund:
But the thing that I'm always challenged by is why has this not changed that much. You know, why aren't we not seeing the kind of progress we've made? So I think one of the things I would just love to see is when a woman actually talks about a symptom, taking it seriously and doing something, which I see a lot more nowadays. I think there are certain communities where they're still seeing this gaslighting in a pretty big way, and I still think even like with fertility, right? Questioning yourself, do I have problems? Do I not have problems, blah blah blah, you know, said we shouldn't have to question ourselves. One of the beauties of women is we're so instinctual, and we're so gut oriented. If you feel in your gut that there's something not right, there's probably something not right.

Abby Mercado:
Totally. We're women.

Wendy Lund:
We know that. Yeah, we know, you know, we know.

Abby Mercado:
Absolutely. Yeah. And I currently have a herniated disc, which is really painful. And I feel like I've been just going through this and trying to find the right doctor and failing at finding the right doctor a few times is, like, very really inspired me when it comes to the women's health industry. But the one thing that I would love to see carry over is, I mean, we talk about the pain gap. The doctors who have helped treat my herniated disc have been very focused on the level of pain that I'm experiencing and I would love to see that in women's health.

Wendy Lund:
Yeah.

Abby Mercado:
Let's talk more about pain. What is your level of pain? 1 to 10. Like, let's start quantifying this because it's really difficult to say okay, I'm doubled over. Like, what is that? Is that ten out of ten, okay? If so, let's talk and let's go over and let's make her feel better.

Wendy Lund:
Yeah. Well, that's interesting you say that because last week on WPP, we did a session led by a number of my colleagues on Health on Her Terms, and a big part of that was led by the research that had just come out of CMI. CMI is part of WPP and the world's largest health media buying company, so they have constantly have data coming out. And they actually pointed to exactly what you're saying, that pain is underdiagnosed, under-discussed, and just underwhelming when it comes to the, you know, it doesn't help that we've had so many scandals on the treatment side where people just don't know where to turn to for their pain, or they're not even being recognized for their pain. And women specifically are under-recognized for their pain.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah, absolutely. It's true. We've experienced it, I've experienced it. So, kind of in sticking with the kind of negative. And, of course, we'll move into positive comments, but I'd love to hear about the most striking health and wellness statistic that you're just really dedicated to fighting.

Wendy Lund:
It's by far the black maternal health rate in this country. It makes me so sad when I see these statistics come up and hear these stories. We had a Black Maternal Health Awareness Week. We did a lot of work with our agencies, and then right before that, one of our agencies called Tank Worldwide, they're very, very, very creative agency. They did a whole program around a woman who was a doctor. She was an infectious disease doctor, constantly treating her own patients. She had a baby, she wasn't feeling well, went back to the hospital no less than eight times, and she ended up passing away. This was post having a child. And these stories are just not told enough, and they're not taken seriously enough. I'm glad to see that, you know, our federal government and our state government are spending more and more time trying to reverse this awful trend. We have the worst maternal mortality rate in the entire world, developed country. I mean, what does that say? It's just ridiculous. And then, with the overturn of Roe, we're going to see more maternal health issues, and we're going to see more issues around access to birth, all things along those lines. So this is a really big topic for policymakers to get their arms around and immediately take action on.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah, absolutely.

Wendy Lund:
Because there is no, absolutely no need. And if you talk to someone who has suffered from hemorrhaging or maternal issues, like right after they have babies, and I'm sure you've heard the same thing, again, they know something's not right, and they can't put their finger on it, and they'll be talking with like medical staff in the room, saying something doesn't feel right. My body doesn't feel right. And they'll be like likening it to like, oh, that's the way your body feels after you have a baby. And this one woman that I know, she was having a baby at a very, very nice hospital in the South, and she started to feel this way, and her mother was a nurse, and all of a sudden, her mother heard her talking like this and said, something's not right, and she started to bleed out on the table. And her mother saved her life, thank God because she was a nurse, but what if her mother wasn't there, right?

Abby Mercado:
Yeah.

Wendy Lund:
And she had been talking for a couple of hours about how she wasn't feeling right.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah.

Wendy Lund:
So that is a travesty. This whole maternal, this black maternal health rate in the US, and then that has to be turned around.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah. You know, the Rescripted story we started with infertility and pregnancy loss. We moved to trying to conceive, and most recently, we're like broadly women's health. So we're reaching a really exciting Gen Z demographic. And we'd love them, like they're so excited about, they're obsessed with their health and wellness. And they know that women's health is a 360 experience. And so our plan has always been to, okay, we're going to nail the millennial population. We're going to nail the Gen Z's. And then we don't want to leave behind our infertility and pregnancy loss community because they're so loyal to us. And many of us know that it can be triggering to talk about pregnancy with people who have experienced fertility or fertility issues, who are currently going through IVF, etc. And so we've always said to ourselves, like, okay, we're going to bypass this. We're going to go to perimenopause and menopause. Like there's a lot happening in that space, but I think that the stats are just so bleak right now. And everything that you described surrounding the maternal health crisis that it truly is enough to make us want to go into pregnancy, postpartum. And for me, a company like ours, we don't need any more top ten lists about strollers that we should buy as long. We need to actually be talking about pre-eclampsia, which I had. My co-founder also had a postpartum hemorrhage. So it's, and obviously, postpartum depression. We need to actually be talking about women's issues. We all love babies. They're wonderful, beautiful. That's what pregnancy is all about, but how is the woman feeling, like what should we be looking out for? Like there hasn't been a good way to get the word out. It's all about awareness and advocacy. So, you know, I hope that we can get to a place together as an industry, just building awareness that we can turn the ship around a little bit and really get. And you're right, like getting public health officials involved, of course, is so important, but it really is about reaching the consumer and making sure they're educated for us and know that you guys are playing a big role in that, too.

Wendy Lund:
Yeah, totally. I mean, I love what you guys are doing. I love your pivot. It's very well-needed. We just did some research, as I mentioned, called health on her terms, and I was just so shocked by the results because it showed that Gen Z women are actually taking worse care of themselves than Gen X and baby boomer women. Yeah.

Abby Mercado:
Really?

Wendy Lund:
Really, really concerning and.

Abby Mercado:
What was the report again?

Wendy Lund:
It was called Health on Her Terms.

Abby Mercado:
Okay. This is what you guys did. Oh, my goodness.

Wendy Lund:
Yeah.

Abby Mercado:
Take a look at this.

Wendy Lund:
But I think what was most concerning was sort of where they're getting information. So, I think we all make an assumption that Gen Z women are getting everything off the internet. Like 10% were getting information off the internet and like socially and through influencers. So that seems to go to the positive. The flip there is that for social channels and for influencers specifically, there's a huge opportunity there because they can really approach women like with the right information and being authentic and realistic and telling their stories and saying it's okay to talk about these things because, you know, to me, 70% of the problem is stigma, and these things shouldn't be stigmatized. If you go outside the US, these are not stigmatized issues. People laugh when they hear me talk about these things. They're like, seriously, that's the issue. Like, of course, we talk about that here.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah.

Wendy Lund:
So I think there's a lot of work to be done and that we should never, ever think that just because women are very savvy online and they're very savvy with their voices, that they're necessarily getting the care that they, I don't think we should make those assumptions.

Abby Mercado:
Absolutely. I love that's so nuanced. And I'm excited to take that offline with you. There's so much to dig into there. Well, so what are you excited about? Like, which categories in women's health do you see? Just making a lot of progress in?

Wendy Lund:
Well, I'm very excited about the pill going over the counter in a few weeks.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah.

Wendy Lund:
Hopefully. Hopefully. I think that is very exciting. I'm excited. Let's see what else. I'll be excited if we start to see some progress on the maternal health side, which we started to see a little bit in terms of helping her. I think we need more investment, like one of the things that's been exciting to me is seeing some of the people I'm very close with deep into the investment side and working for biotechs. Like, I like the fact that biotechs are now picking up. It's something that they want to invest in. So breast cancer treatment like certainly really, really important that women are not only getting really good treatment at the early stages of breast cancer, but also metastatic stages of breast cancer. So, there's some good stuff in the pipeline. I'm also looking forward to seeing some more stuff come up the pipeline. You know, again, 51% of the population, we should be getting a lot more attention in terms of discovery, research, and discovery.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah. When we're going back and forth about this podcast episode, we talked a little bit about just encouraging clinical trials. Tell us a little bit more about that and similar kind of you sit in that and if WPP is involved in any sort of advocacy there.

Wendy Lund:
I think the challenge there is that women are still so underrepresented in clinical trials. So I think the ones that are probably representing women the most are oncology trials, cancer trials, and is still like a tiny proportion of women. So this is an area that could really deeply improve studying women's bodies or women's bodies and what they are looking at certain conditions and diseases for sure, and certainly getting things into the pipeline that just impact women directly. And there's a couple of things out there that are happening and some excitement around that, but I don't think we're seeing progress fast enough in that space. We need more investors. We need more people to like, dig in, and like push hard.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah, absolutely. And I love to see more of the corporates investing in this space. I think, as a former VC investor myself, like, I get that, I get what's going on. Like, it's a lot of some of the traditional kind of male firms that are mostly men. That is the view of the industry. It's saying, oh, we don't understand women's health or making kind of like one marquee women's health investment and think, okay, box check. Like here we go on to the next, do something else. And then you see these female-founded funds, which are fantastic, but they're often first in funds, and they're having to place really safe investments in order to return capital back to their investors in order to raise another fund. And it's just, we're just getting lost in this rat race. And I think the corporates actually play a fantastic role here because they're less strict on the return that they can place bets in the ways that some of these female funds are not able to play. So it's been it's really great to see that. So also, we'd love to hear what are you reading, watching, and or listening to right now, Wendy, as we get closer to wrapping up.

Wendy Lund:
I just feel so pathetic when I answer this question to anyone who asks. So I look at TV as definitely, definitely a distraction from my day to day. Like just not watching anything that makes me kind of think so you can only guess the kind of television I'm watching, a lot of reality TV, I'm embarrassed to say, which is meaningless and empty, but, you know, gives me stuff to talk to my cousin about. So we watch these shows that we talk about. She's an attorney, so she's kind of same boat as me watching, like, Selling Sunset right now.

Abby Mercado:
Love Selling Sunset.

Wendy Lund:
I just finished, like, I'd like to get, like, we had our friends over this weekend, and we were watching Netflix, and they had seen every single show on Netflix. We were like, what about this? We were going to watch TV together, and then we were like, okay, let's watch the documentary on the people who go to the active volcano in New Zealand on White Beach, which I'm sure nobody has seen except us.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah.

Wendy Lund:
And, of course, then I went to bed like, terrified of volcanoes.

Abby Mercado:
And you're like, I need, like, why do I need to go to bed like this?

Wendy Lund:
I never watch anything with any level of, like, substance. I just have to keep watching reality TV.

Abby Mercado:
That's funny.

Wendy Lund:
Books. I was really excited that my daughter is like, you know, she's in law school and she's reading, like, all these different books with her friends, and I love it. They have this cool virtual like book club that they have. Like they are just adorable. And I was like, can I join? And they were like, no. I kind of watch. I'm kind of watching what they read and then following like fast follower.

Abby Mercado:
Love it, love it, and want to join. Will she let me in?

Wendy Lund:
Only her friends from college are in there, I think, and maybe a couple friends she grew up with. Yeah, it's very informal. Like I was like, oh, you have a book club. They're like, no, we don't. We're just reading the same book. I was like, okay, no book club, and that's it.

Abby Mercado:
Just like my co-founder, whatever my co-founder reads, I just read the same book.

Wendy Lund:
Yeah, because fun, you talk with her.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah.

Wendy Lund:
Right.

Abby Mercado:
Totally.

Wendy Lund:
Yeah.

Abby Mercado:
Totally. Yeah.

Wendy Lund:
It's nice to get older and get back to reading again because it's hard when they're little.

Abby Mercado:
It's so hard. Even if I read truly, I cannot go to sleep without reading for five minutes. I always strive to read more, but if it's 11:25 p.m. and I know it's like, okay, Abby and I'm a night owl, I'm like, okay, like. Yeah. And like, lights out at 11:30. I need to read for five minutes, or else I can't fall asleep. And on the TV note, I am completely the same way. My coach makes fun of me, and she's not allowed to make fun of me because she's like, whatever you need to do to, like, rest your brain for an hour. Honestly, that's my non-negotiable, is I need to watch TV for an hour, I just do, I'm sorry. I'm not going to, like, just get up at 4 a.m. and run ten miles. And that's my self-care. My self-care is I need to watch TV for an hour.

Wendy Lund:
It's just so funny. Like when I watch a show like Selling Sunset. I never actually met a woman like this in my life.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah.

Wendy Lund:
Because it's like, so not me, you know? And I'm like, where do these women.

Abby Mercado:
Who are they?

Wendy Lund:
But yeah. No, same. And you know, it's funny, before I had children, I was the most avid reader. I was obsessed with reading books.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah. Yeah.

Wendy Lund:
And then I had my two kids and it's been a long time. And like, I was always like, I got to get back to reading. I got to get back to reading. I got to get back to reading. Just like it's so hard. It's like my brain, like split off from reading because, like, I work all day, I'm reading on a screen or reading this or reading that. So that's why TV is sort of my godsend at night. And my iPad, I watch like five minutes of the iPad and then I'm like, passed out.

Abby Mercado:
Yeah, you and I are like, we're the same.

Wendy Lund:
Yeah.

Abby Mercado:
Well, Wendy, as we're wrapping up, my final question is Rescripted. It's a word we made up reframe, rewrite history, whatever it is, we call it rescript. So if you had to rescript one thing about women's health in America today, what would it be?

Wendy Lund:
Well, I think it's kind of obvious. So I'm going to just obviously say the one thing that I would rescript is definitely the overturn of Roe v. Wade and the Dobbs decision. I thought it's so ironic that you and I were having this conversation a year later. And, you know, this decision turned people's lives upside down, women's lives upside down. And if you look at things, there's so many facts coming out right now about the way women are going to vote about Ob-Gyns going in or out of the profession, the kind of care women are getting today, and how they, high positions, and like the unintended pregnancy rate was already pretty high. It was like hovering around 50%. Now, it got a little better over the past year in terms of teens, which is great, so happy to see that. But still, it's right there. So it's all around access to birth control. Certainly getting women the hand of women at birth control in the hands of every woman who wants it, no matter what kind of birth control it is, where she is, how much it costs. We got to get it in her hands. You know, we have laws in this country that offer birth control, but at the end of the day, you know, we need to find ways to overcome this. And I don't know that I have all the answers, but I am at the ready to support whatever needs to be done, from the individual woman to groups of women to this country, in terms of making this right again. So that is my hope for the next year will be that we come back a year from now. We're telling a different story and it's rescripted.

Abby Mercado:
Yes, I'm fired up now after talking to you. So let's do it. Let's fight for this. Let's fight for us. Let's fight for women everywhere. So well with that. Thank you so much, Wendy, for joining us today. This has been so fun. Just getting to know you better and hearing what you're doing to advocate and rewrite the story for women in America and worldwide. So thank you again and I'm sure we'll talk soon.

Wendy Lund:
Thank you, Abby.

Abby Mercado:
If this podcast means something to you, be sure to hit follow or subscribe. This helps you because you'll never miss an episode, and it helps us because you'll never miss an episode. It's wild enough to be a woman without taking on the Wild West of women's health information. The good news is that Rescripted did the legwork on your body, so you don't have to. And we're here when you're ready to be an expert in you, head to rescripted.com and follow us @HelloRescripted on Instagram and TikTok.

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