Today we're speaking with Keren Leshem. Keren Leshem is the CEO of OCON Healthcare that focuses on women's health, primarily creating high-quality intrauterine drug delivery solutions. OCON is innovating in areas that have not been touched for three decades. Furthermore, Keren is very active in the FemTech ecosystem as a whole. 

00:55 Keren talks about her own personal journey that brought her into this market of pharma, MedTech and drug delivery.

 02:59 Keren talks about what OCON Healthcare does.

06:31 Why did Keren build OCON with a female majority? Her thoughts about the difference in managing a company that is predominantly female on a day-to-day basis.

09:23 Should a FemTech company be led by a woman?

10:40 What is Keren seeing changing in the FemTech space and her expectations looking forward?

16:47 When did Keren feel that  OCON’s solution is really unique. 

22:44 What did she find when you joined the company in 2018. What did she do to turn it around.

26:40 Inexpensive tactics OCON used to recruit patients in clinical studies during COVID. 

33:23 OCON activity on social media promoting its products to the end user.

34:49 Keren discusses where the world of direct-to-consumer or at least consumer-centric marketing live in her vision going forward for OCON.

 38:40 What would Keren say to those people that say that using social media and LinkedIn is only applicable to MedTech companies that are already in the market.

42:28 What tips would Keren give to up-and-coming CEOs in the MedTech space if they can contact you for advice and mentorship.

46:51 OCON's volunteer work with Michla’la.

Keren, you finished her military service and then went to study overseas. What was your journey that brought you into this market of pharma, med tech and drug delivery? And why did it begin abroad?

Keren Leshem: So, I grew up in the US and I came back to join the army. And before I came back, I did a couple years of premed, and I was on the path to studying medicine. After which I came back home to Israel and I found that, that's not what I wanted to do. I started working for an international company, a Japanese company. And I decided, 'Wow, this is what I want to do'. I want to travel and I want to do business. And that was basically my journey. After the military, I joined what was called "Matan at the Day". That was the Israeli high tech, because we did digital printing. Matan was later sold to HP Indigo, but this is the Scitex world where I did a lot of business development, marketing communication. And I found that this is really my area; after which I went to study. But then I came back and really, the whole medical thing kind of burned in me. And I joined the ecosystem of the incubator program here in Israel. So, I started at the Rad Biomed and helped a few companies there. Got into ophthalmology, where I then moved to BioLight, that were fully focused on ophthalmology. After which I joined a European pharmaceutical company in ophthalmology.

And recently, about a year and a half ago, I came back home from Europe, and wanted to do something that was ours, and Israeli, and very innovative. And so, I landed in OCON very thankfully, and this is what I did today. So, I'm in the women's health field.

OCON is an amazing company. What does OCON do?

Keren Leshem:  I think that there are not many companies that focus on women's health. We're 50% of the world. But even so, we see a lot of small companies trying to do great things. If it's with applications, digital applications, looking at women, becoming mothers and newborns. But looking at what women go through from the age of 14-15 when we first get our periods, all the way through menopause, is something that doesn't really exist in most of the world. And I think that what OCON does when we look at women from a very young age, and giving solutions to our menstrual syndromes, and to contraception, and looking at fibroids that really attack 7 in 10 women. We look at endometriosis today that we know 1 in 10 women suffer from and it takes a really long time to understand, even that a woman suffers from this disease. And so, when you look at a drug delivery platform that is safe, effective and simple to use. And you can really put on a little ball, any therapy that is directed to the target tissue to treat women of all ages, this is incredible.

And we're really building a unicorn here because we have a product that we're already selling, which I'm using also for contraception. It's a non-hormonal, long-term, reversible device. It also looks very pretty. So, we're pretty from the outside and pretty from the inside. But also, on the same platform, we're now testing and developing other therapies for abnormal uterine bleeding and the other indications that I mentioned. And so, it's great.

Can you expand just a little bit about specifically the product you have in mind and how it differs from whatever exists in the IUD world?

Sure. So, this is an IUD an intrauterine device. And this is a device that's been used for 60-70 years for contraception. So, it has two functions, right. The device itself that really doesn't allow the egg to kind of sit in the lining of the uterus and form a baby. But also, there's copper on this, or hormones depends which device it is. And both have different functions. But the copper itself really makes the sperm inactive. What we've done is we've taken this very big device that's two dimensional in a 3D cavity. It pokes, it turns and malposition’s. And we built the same copper idea or technology on a tiny little ball.

Do you see? So, a lot less scary. And this really fits the uterus, it moves with the contractions of the uterus, it doesn't block the fallopian tubes. So, we see a lot less ectopic pregnancies, and quality of life is just much higher. So, it's the next generation contraception. And it's now used by over 110,000 women around the world. We're going to bring this to the US as well. And it really validates the fact that this is an acceptable used platform technology.

Your company's very rare in that majority of employees are women. Why did you build that company that way and is there any difference in managing a company that is predominantly female on a day to day basis?

Keren Leshem :  So, we really need more than 24 hours a day, because I think for three hours a day, we just talk about anything but work. It's hard. Everyone is so interesting, and everyone has stories, and we're women we have to gossip. And so, that's the hardest part of my job is to try to avoid all these conversations, because we do have work. I'm kidding.

We're 85% women, I think that women bring a different perspective to women's health. When we look at the various conditions of women and women work for a company like this; In the development, in the manufacturing, in the R&D, in the quality system, in the management, in the technology, in the clinical studies.

You see that there's also a personal journey where women say, 'I'm doing good for women like me'. So that's the first motivation. The second motivation is that when you have very smart people around the table, and I'm very fortunate to have a team of experts, everyone is an expert in their field. Let's say it's a team of professionals like navy seals that run to the target together and hold each other, right. So, women know how to multitask. We know how to do 100 things. We're very loyal. We're very smart. And we really care about diversity.

So, we have women that are students, we employ women that are 60 years old. We employ women that are single mothers, women that have many, many kids, we have grandmothers here, LGBTQ. It's very important to have so many opinions around the table. We also have a few men. So, we are diverse. But even in our board, we have a Chairwoman that is fantastic. She's in the women's health space for so many years, and an advocate for women's health. And I think that this really makes this company very, very focused and different from what we see today. Where we see a lot of women struggling to get positions that are C-level, VP level and even board level. And so, it's a personal mission of mine to really push these intelligently, smart, successful, fantastic women to grow as much as possible with me.

Do you think that you need to be a woman in order to lead a FemTech company?

Keren Leshem:  Well, the short answer is yes. And the longer answer is, I think you need to be a professional that understands the disease. I think if this was an OB-GYN who knows the woman's anatomy perfectly he could also do a great job. But I think that women have obviously an advantage because we understand our bodies. And even if we don't suffer from specific indications, we can always relate to them. And so, it's a lot more believable when you talk about abnormal uterine bleeding, or you talk about different other diseases. It's a lot more personal for us than it would be for a man.

A report from Rock Health that came out a few months ago said that women's health is now one of the top six funded clinical indications for 2020. It's very clear that investors are going strongly into this market for various reasons. And it's a trend that is continuing, and we're seeing that the pharma companies are looking at it much more. And there is a very large, a very significant growth that we expect is going to continue. What are you seeing that is changing in the FemTech space? And what do you expect will continue to happen looking forward?

Keren Leshem: Well, Gali, it's a really good question. I think that personalized medicine in general is something that is pushed today more than previously. And when you look at personalized medicine there is a group, 50% of the population that are women, that have been underserved for a reason. I always say that, creating drugs cost a lot of money. And pharmaceutical companies usually want to have a specific type of person, like white men, to test their new drugs on for good reason. Because women have a menstrual cycle, we're hormonal and then this data may not be as specific as required. And so, for many, many years women were excluded. But today, you see a lot more regulation around including women.

And even in ophthalmology, we really made sure that we stratify our clinical studies to also include women and certain women of certain ages. Here, we're really personalizing medicine but it's for a very big group. So that's number one.

Number two, there's been a lot of new founded money. And a lot of women made money and want to give back to the community, the society; There's a lot of women led companies. Not only in FemTech, but women led ideas and companies that are again underserved, and want to create some sort of movement or money around that.

And so, I'm very lucky to have entered into an era where there's a lot of discussion around female health and female technology. I think that OCON, being a 10-year-old company, has not done a good job in promoting some of these amazing innovations that we have. And so, I also feel lucky to be able to push forward in an era where this has become more discussed. And so, I'm very active not only for OCON, but also to help younger entrepreneurs to mentor them in various areas not only in female health, but women entrepreneurs. I do a lot to look at new companies that emerge in FemTech. OCON is built with very solid pillars. And so we have labs here, and we have our manufacturing, and we have our clinical and marketing and medical teams.

We can accept other innovations into OCON very easily, especially innovations that may be smaller, but require a bigger network and group to work around to bring it forward. And so, I'm very active in this space. And I feel very fortunate that this has become something very prominent these past couple of years.

(Gali) A lot of the FemTech space is now built around apps and managing your contraception and managing your period cycles.  It's part of that consumerization of health, and the fact that there's a lot more activity there. Additionally, it's become quite obvious that in a home where there's a woman, usually the woman is the one who's managing the health for everybody in the home. And so, that focus on women in general, and health has become a priority.

Keren Leshem: I absolutely agree, Gali. That's also something I wanted to add that we as women in the household make most of the decisions on the health care of our family members. And so, we are ripe to be communicated to in terms of healthcare. So, I absolutely agree with what you're saying.

(Chen) This is a correction of a moral injustice. Until 10 years ago, there weren't any clinical studies on women because “women are exactly the same as white men only with the hormones”. It's an absurdity. And I'm so happy that it is happening, because this is the right way to go.

I want to go back to OCON. I recall having a conversation with Ariel Weinstein, who is the previous CEO, and founder. I asked him, 'What was the point of time where you understood that there might be a good opportunity with what OCON was developing?'

And he mentioned a meeting he had with Dr. James Trussell in the US. And he said that Dr. Trussell looked at the IUB, your device, and said, 'You've got a home run.' At that point of time he felt pretty confident ‘that we're on the right path'. When did you feel that you have here something really different? Because you're taking this company to a totally different level.

Keren Leshem: When I joined OCON the situation wasn't great. We weren't selling as much as we thought we would. The new products weren't really getting traction in terms of clinical development. And the company was really in dire mode. We were about to even close. When the board approached me and decided to put some money in and really do a full restart. So, I feel very lucky. But I did tell the board, "let me just do some checking". And one of the things I've done is, and I really recommend this to anyone starting a company managing a company, to reach out to someone who's been there done that as a mentor and consult. And that's what I did.

I reached out to an incredible woman called Dr. Jessica Grossman. She was the CEO of Medicines360. And they built intrauterine devices to treat abnormal uterine bleeding, but also for contraception the hormonal version in the US; doing a lot of impact. I reached out to her and I said, 'Jessica, you don't know me, you may not even know OCON. But I want to show you what we're working on. Tell me what you think.' And I remember what she said, she looked and she just said, 'Keep your money. I just want a percent in this company. And I said, 'Can you join my board?' And so, that's how it started. We later had so many incredible people join us on this journey. And every single time we managed to get another incredible person, man, woman, doctor, professional.

It's still makes us realize what a wonderful thing we're doing here. We're really building a unicorn. If you look at some of the successes in the space, and we see that Merck with their spin out of Organon just acquired a company in the US for $250 million. This is a medical device company with a one-off device. And when you look at OCON with a platform and drug delivery, you see where we are in this is very mesmerizing and gives us a lot of motivation to move forward.

Can you expand on the drug delivery space? Is that really at the end the goal or is it an add on? Do you want to see your platform as a drug delivery device?

So, that's such a great question Gali. Because in the last year, we all as a team were focused on fixing our board, fixing our management, fixing our products, fixing our patents, fixing our offices, fixing our manufacturing, fixing our strategy in the US. And now when we have done such awesome work in this last year, year and a half, now we have time to look forward.

And that's exactly the question we asked ourselves about two months ago. And what we're building here in OCON is something bigger than just contraception, or just drug delivery. We want to really create a woman's health hub. And when I say hub, I look at 4, if I may, pillars of technology. So, pillar number one will be contraception, where we'll have two products.

Product, one will be a non-hormonal LARC. Product two will be a hormonal LARC. We're going to put hormones on this little device. Because some women want to have a hormonal version of a safer and more tolerable product. Then we look at a pillar of therapies. And this is exactly where all the different conditions stemming from the uterus come in; abnormal uterine bleeding and endometriosis. And we're going to look at, of course, myomas, and maybe even IVF, certain cancers. And so, that's the second pillar.

The third pillar I want to see us also grow in terms of vaginal health, right. So, there's uterine health, and there's vaginal health. And we're already looking at companies in the space that do amazing work that we want to bring in and have us push forward. And last but not least, and this is the digital age revolution. And this is really where we're super excited. We want to put a little chip on our little devices, because we want to monitor our health. And we want to build the biggest AI possible for women. And why not? If this device is already in my body, monitor my blood and have an internal wearable, right? If something changes in my endometrium, God forbid cancers or anything like that, it will give me a little shout out.

Anything from when I ovulate, to make my contraception even safer. And so, there's so many things we can do. So, we really want to build OCON as a unicorn, in not only in one or other space, but really with these pillars.

In 2018, everything looked pretty good for OCON. OCON had, I think, a $10 million investment round; Exeltis joined as an investor. But some things didn't happen as planned. What did you find when you join the company and what did you do in order to turn it around?

Keren Leshem: Even management has a shelf life, just like drugs. And one of the things that the former management was really great at doing was bringing this device to fruition. So, this was just an idea from the founder, Dr. Ilan Baram; just an idea. And once this idea came into a device, it was very quickly approved by CE. And very quickly, being an Israeli company pushed into the market without really understanding what this product is. This is not a better product. This initial product that we have is not a better product than any other intrauterine device. It's not. It's not going to give more contraception effect, right. 99% is 99%; It's the same technology. But when you look at how it's deployed into the uterus. When you look at the side effect profile, when you look at the safety, this is where this product excels. And I think that was the biggest misunderstanding of the product itself. Because the company claimed, 'It's the best. It's the best'. That's on one hand.

On the other hand, it's your choice of partners. When you go and you choose a partner that is a pharmaceutical company and their DNA, and I worked for a pharmaceutical company in Europe. I know exactly the DNA of these companies. They don't know how to promote devices in this space. They don't have the key account managers. They don't have the FaceTime with the doctors, they sell pills. So, they have five minutes. This is my pill. This is why it's different than the other pill and they go away. This product requires training, requires some thought process, requires showing the doctor why it would be different. The insertion is counter intuitive to what the doctors are used to. And so, the choice of distributors was very important.

And I think this is what we've done in the last year, we changed over our distributors to competitors; to distributors that actually sell this product. Now they have a premium product. And they are booming. We see this in the Netherlands. And we see this in France. And we see this in Hungary. And we're going to see this in Russia and in Brazil.

And this is very exciting for us to understand that this product can be super successful, but it has to have the right force behind it. And I think that's the biggest thing we've done here is to change the strategy of our distributors to really push forward on our clinical studies. We kind of changed our endpoints on that as well, and look forward to the future with goals in mind; how to grow the company bigger.

I guess not only management has a shelf life; products have a shelf life. And the IUD has been pretty unchanged for 25 or 30 years.

Keren Leshem: 60 or 70 (years). I think that the main innovation was Bayer that brought in the hormonal version, right. So that was about 30 years ago, indeed, or 25.

You need to incentivize medical centers in clinical studies so that they can recruit enough patients, so you have enough patient data. You mentioned you found a way to do this inexpensively during COVID. And we all know about decentralized digital trials now being "the thing". Can you tell us a little bit about how you did this?

Keren Leshem: One of the biggest advantages here is that we don't have capital equipment that requires travel or know-how or engineers behind it. And so, we didn't really suffer from COVID so much in terms of clinical studies. Because these are women that had to get to the clinic to get treated for abnormal uterine bleeding. So, just one device in-out and then they get to follow up. And so, we couldn't travel to open more sites. And so, what we did we incentivize the primary investigators in the initial sites to go and train the new PIs in the other sites. And there's many ways to incentivize, you can incentivize, of course, with cash. And you can incentivize, of course, with giving them place on a formal write up of the company, and then peer reviewed in certain articles. So, there are many things you can incentivize but this is on the clinical, professional side. So, this is how we treated it; we couldn't travel. So, we made the doctors, do our own training, which was great. And I think doctors on the other sites, looking or hearing from doctors that have done this treatment. They find it a lot more educational from their experience. So, this is one.

And also, for the women, we incentivize them by giving them some feedback about how their progress is going. I think that made a lot of sense for women to show how they started out and where they are today. And we made sure that the sites communicated to the women how well they're doing. They have to fill in a diary every day about, how many pads and tampons are soiled.

And so, we also incentivize the CRO. And also, incentivize the women with shopping sprees, and all kinds of other things to allow them to continue on and to say, 'We're not done here. If you have any friends bring them also to do this clinical study.' So, I think that was very smart of us to really push from all ends, the doctors, the CRO, and the women.

You sat on the CEO chair on March 12, and then, on March 13 was the first shut down in Israel because of COVID. So, how was this year for you?

So literally today looking back, but even during, I was very thankful for COVID. I think COVID was a blessing and a teacher. And we learned a lot and we also talked about this with Chen before our call. So, one of the things that I learned is how resilient and strong my team is. They were taken out to leave, right. So, we did a whole two months of leave. And they kept it together with a lot of motivation, they understood that this is for the best of the company. They came back strong and I'm so proud of them. One of the things that we've done is we're able to strategize.

So, me and my CFO, he's my team member and my partner really sat and strategize, 'All right, what do we do?' How do we save money? How do we get money from the government? How do we push our distributors to pay their invoices? And so, we really had a plan going for those two months. Of course, we had to rush and get funding. And again, this is where COVID was really a blessing, because I've never raised money over Zoom, over video chat, from the US. It's insane, we always had to travel.

I've never closed a huge distribution agreement and Russia over Zoom, we always had to travel, build a relationship and go out for dinner; and this would take months. And so, a lot of these processes were a lot quicker, which made it a lot very helpful for us during these times. It was very easy to recruit people, even with smaller positions.

So not a 100% full-time employee, really great people, that today are full-time employees and managers of their own departments. COVID was really a blessing in disguise for where OCON was to get us money, to get us partnerships and to get really great team members coming on.

A lot of companies closed down during that time, it was very difficult for everyone in this space. But OCON kept pushing forward. And one of the things we identified very early on is LinkedIn and our social media. And this is what Chen and I spoke about is, there was no way to network anymore. You didn't have your conferences; you didn't have your specific conferences. You can't meet anyone.

And how do you meet over Zoom, if you don't know the person in advance or get an introduction? And I was new to this space, and I needed people to know what we're doing. And I needed people to know about me, and I needed to know people. And so, we really use LinkedIn as our conference platform.

And in women's health specifically, and I'm not saying that this is very common in other areas, we need to be very educational. A lot of us women don't know our bodies. A lot of us women don't complain when it hurts. A lot of us don't realize what options are out there for us because we just don't ask.

And so, OCON took upon itself not only to develop these products, but also to be educational. And in being educational, I pushed myself and my team to really be part of any conference or podcast, or any roundtable they possibly can to educate; To educate about contraception, to educate about women's health.

And we do that strongly through LinkedIn. And I can tell you, we're very successful in getting out the word of OCON. It's very, very hard to not notice OCON in this space. today. I think because of the work we've done on social media, mainly.

There is no doubt that you're very visible and very pronounced. And congratulations about that. LinkedIn is very focused on professionals. Do you do any work with social media on the end user, the one that has to go to the clinic and ask for the device?

Keren Leshem: In Israel, we're very lucky we do our own marketing and sales here in Israel. So, we're very lucky because we can do direct to consumer. So, we're on Facebook and we're on LinkedIn and we do lots of really fun stuff. In Europe it's very different, you're not allowed to do direct to consumer in most of the countries so, you have to keep it website and LinkedIn based. In the US when we get there, I can't wait because there, also we will be direct to consumer and we can do all kinds of fun stuff with social media. So, in Israel we are we're on Facebook and we're on Instagram for sure and we do a lot of work there.

Your devices is definitely something you would want to market to the consumer. Obviously, at the end the decision or the recommendation is made by the physician. But there is a very large component of consumer with your existing device and definitely with all your strategic plan. Where does the world of direct to consumer or at least the consumer centric marketing live in your vision going forward for OCON?

Keren Leshem: So, right now, the product that we commercialize is a product that doesn't treat a disease. It's a lifestyle choice. And while the doctor has a lot of influence, we see a lot of women today moving away from hormonal therapies, they're just done with the side effects, right. Women that have heavy bleeding or require hormones, of course, still use them. But a lot of women realize that they don't need to suffer the side effects and they want to move to non-hormonal. And there's many different options. And one of them is a LARC, a long acting reversible contraception. And while the doctor does make a big impact, you see a lot of women studying their options. And so, we really cater to that.

We try to be as educational as possible. We tried to show contraception as like an art and it changes as we age, right. So, our requirements when we're younger is very, very different than when we're older and have kids. When we're younger, and we may change our partners, we may need a contraception that is also something that will allow us to stay away from STDs, from sexually transmitted diseases.

But later on, after we have kids and we have our husbands or spouses that are regular, we need something that is safe. Something maybe that we don't have to take every day, something that we trust and something that won't have side effects. And so, we use those platforms to really educate women. And what we do is we use a lot of our leaders. So, we do a lot of roundtables where we ask questions and that's how women can learn about the different options, not only OCON. And also, we do a lot of work with women that are thought leaders, right. And so, some of it is funny. So, we gave the Ballerine to a thought leader in Israel. And she was like, 'What is this? I don't know, is this jewelry? What is this used for?'

So that was a fun fact, one. But also, we do things that are, ... For example, I went on social media and said, I'm using the Ballerine. Here's my phone number, call me. Asked me what I feel about it, I would be glad to share. And I had a few women call me and say, 'What do you think?' I even had a woman calling me angrily saying she got pregnant with the Ballerine. And I said to her, 'You know, 99% is 99%. Tell me, you know who inserted it?' So, one of the best doctors did. And I told her, I said, 'You know, it's all about COVID'. And she was like, 'What do you mean?' And I said, 'Who has sex during COVID? We all want to kill our husbands. Are you kidding me? You're having sex. Now you're upset that you got pregnant.' So, she was laughing. But of course, we have a lifetime warranty. So, we offered any other product for her and the Ballerine. And so, she wasn't happy, but I told her that for me, it won't be just unhappy. I would probably, shoot myself if I have to get pregnant at my age. But 99% is 99%, right. So, we have a lot of communication. We have a great team here that supports a lot of questions. Women have a ton of questions. Doctors have questions. And so, we really try to give that support.

How many people are you in the team?

Keren Leshem: So, in OCON, we're 21 employees. And we have two fabulous women that head our offices in Europe that live and reside there.

I think that you can blame everything on COVID. If something works, it's awesome. If something doesn't work, it's because of COVID.

Keren Leshem: Absolutely, you can always use it. COVID and men, you can always blame COVID and men always.

I want to ask you a little bit more about social media. Because I feel that OCON is like celebrating the medium. And there are many who can say, 'Well, OCON is a direct to customer or basically a consumer orientated product. They're already in the market. We don't  need to be on social media. It doesn't matter if it's LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, it doesn't matter what channel. We will reserve it maybe to a much later stage when we have a CE, when we have an FDA, when we we're already selling’. What would you say to those people?

Keren Leshem: From my experience, I would say that is incorrect. Even if a product is in development, and it is something that is revolutionary, like our SEAD product, our Spherical Endometrium Ablation Device. I think that it is super important to show what companies are working on because that gives the company a lot of credibility. Investors may come in and say, 'Ooh, I'm in this space'. This is something interesting that's being worked on. You can get a lot more feedback from clinical studies. A lot of women say, 'Ooh, is this clinical study going to be in my area? This is something I suffer from; I may want to join.' I had at least three or four different incredible women contact me for a job, because they heard about OCON. One of the students that came here is now the head of our R&D engineering, a 22 or 23-year-old, incredible girl. I would have never have found her if we weren't doing the noise that we were doing. And so, I think that in any stage of a company, celebrating wins is so important. It's important for the team. It's important for the management. It's important for the board. It's important for the product. It's important for society to know what we're working on. People that see our products come back with feedback, and say, 'Does this, do this and that?' And then we can also amend and change and listen to feedback that we get. I think it's crucial and important to be on social media.

And to celebrate everything that the company does. We don't get a lot of pats on our back, right. It's mainly stresses and mainly "perform, perform, perform". But when we do celebrate and we get feedback, we get the loves, and the likes, and the awards, and the investments. That's worth everything. So, my huge tip is to celebrate your wins on social media, not only internally with the company.

You take time to also help up-and-coming CEOs and startups in their journey. What is your "I believe", your "Ani Ma’ amin", around this? What tips you would give to up-and-coming CEOs in the MedTech space, and if they can contact you for advice and mentorship?

Keren Leshem: So, I give lectures to girls in high schools, what makes a successful woman. What makes us successful? And I always say, 'There's three things and then you'll win', you have to remember three things. And I say these to my mentees, as well. The first thing is that you have to know you're in a certain area, a certain device, a certain disease, you have to know. Because you'll sit around the table with a lot of very smart people. Especially if you're a woman you'll always be criticized, you have to be in the know to study. Study whatever you're working on. Be the best and most rounded as you can in terms of your studies. So, number one is studying your area and be the smartest you can be.

And it doesn't have to me that you have to be a physician. But you do have to study and put people around you that help you learn, ask questions. Number two is network. And I always say that to everyone I speak to, I'm now part of your network. And so, use me as much as you can. Because when you have a good network, you can find better employees because they come with a reference. You can find money because these people want to help you. You can find a job if you're looking for one. And you can find technical and clinical and medical people that other people trust. And that comes into your ecosystem. Networking is so important. And when you network well, you almost can't fall, right. Because there are always going to be someone there to help catch you in whatever you need help with, right. Sometimes you don't and sometimes you do. And last but not least you just need to have some guts. Just go out and don't feel bad. You're not selling yourself short and you're not being pompous. You are showing what you can bring to the table. And you are showing how you can help a certain organization with what you studied, with what you know, with your experience.

And that's really important. When women come up to me and say, 'You know what, Keren? I don't know what job you can offer me. But I'm really good at this, this, this and that.' I'll find something I'll find something to involve them because I know, 'Oh, my gosh, she's so passionate about this thing, she'll do this thing so well'. And so, don't be shy and have guts. When I had my first million that I raised, I thought, 'Oh, my God, a million dollars'. And then I raised $70 million, right. And it's the same thing, I'm not a changed person. I just had more guts to say, this is the amount of money we need. This is why. And so, study well, have a good network and just have guts.

It has nothing to do with the way you look or how you think or how tall you are, or what you wear. Nothing. Or what you studied even or what your title is, just is your network, how well you know your area and some guts. And so, those are my tips.

Also, from my mentees, but when you mentor, startups are really hard. They're so hard, you're always ... I always say you wake up in the morning to a sprint and then you run faster. It's just so hard. And when you have someone on the side that you trust, and that gives you a pat on your back and say, 'You're doing well. You're doing good'. Or shows you some things that you may miss because you're so into your own world. I think that's super important. I have a mentor. I think everyone should have one person that mentors him. It doesn't have to be every week, it could be once a month, but someone to talk to for a sanity check. I think that's super important.

OCON is involved with an organization, Michla'la that is helps women after prostitutions find a direction in life. How did you get involved with that?

Keren Leshem: I'm very much into giving back to the community. I feel so fortunate to lead an amazing organization that does well and have women support us and buy our products. And I think we need to give back. This is a duty for every organization that has sales and has the ability to reach a very large population. And we looked, and my entire team, my entire management team volunteers. We all do what we can to really give back to the community. It's part of our company backbone.

One of the things we identified is that the Israeli government helps women come out of the prostitution cycle by giving them the emotional support. And then they move on to this college, which is fantastic, where they get to learn different trade, right. They learn marketing, they learn sales, they learn how to take care of kids, they learn cooking, all kinds of trades. And I want OCON to be the last block in that road to give them also job experience because I can. I have all of my departments here; I have such incredible people working here. And they can come in not for full time jobs. But at peaks where I have manufacturing, where I have packaging, where I need to do a lot of my marketing, I need to do some other administration work. They can come in and really help in those areas. And they get a reference, and they get a job. Of course, they get paid; It's not volunteer in any way. And it gives them a little bit of security. Wow, I can work for a company I do well in a company. Other companies that want to employ these women may call us for a reference. I think this gives it a whole kind of road for their recovering success. And these women are incredible, they're strong, they're smart. And so, we give back as much as we can. We also donate twice a year. This is very important for us. We sit as a team and we decide what and how and when. Incredible. I find that the most exciting part of my job; most touching and moving also.

Keren Leshem's Profile on LinkedIn

OCON Healthcare's Website

Dr. Jessica Grossman's Profile on LinkedIn

Her Academy Website