My mum was born in Hong Kong and moved to New Zealand when she was a child. It was there that she met my dad, a Briton, and I was born in 1991. Before I turned one, we moved to Somerset, in the UK, and my dad started his own business in printing. My mum had been an air hostess and then worked in the police and is now with the NHS (National Health Service). I was an only child until I was eight, when my brother came along, and was quite solitary. I had a vivid imagination and was always making up elaborate stories and games, and I was a voracious reader. When I was 11, we moved to Taunton and I got a scholarship to Taunton School. Writing and debating was my bread and butter, and I loved sports. Teased and bullied I got my first period when I was 12. It’s telling of the lack of education and cultural attitudes towards menstruation that my first thought was, “My life is over.” Scotland first country in world to ensure access to free period products That negative view turned out to be quite on point considering I had terrible symptoms of menstruation for over a decade. I had incredibly heavy bleeding and had to wear two pads on top of each other and change them within an hour. I didn’t socialise because I had so many awful leaking experiences. I also had cyclical acne, which affected me physically and mentally for many years and I was teased and bullied for it. I was incredibly depressed at times. I’d get halfway to school and have a panic attack and turn back. It wasn’t that everyone was awful, or I was ostracised, but comments can stick with you. Those experiences really shaped how I am today. When I was 14, I was prescribed the oral contraceptive pill, which lightened my period and helped with the acne to some degree. It allowed me to live a slightly more carefree life. Happy places I studied English literature at Leeds University, which I loved, and had a brilliant time there. A combination of a new contraceptive pill and lifestyle changes helped clear up my acne. The physical results didn’t match the mental results immediately, considering I’d dreamed of this for so long, and it took a long time to shake off those years of self-consciousness. Immediately after I graduated, in 2013, I got a teaching job at a language centre in Hong Kong and fell in love with the city. I started to network and, in 2015, got a job with a digital marketing agency, We Are Social. In 2016, the company moved me to Shanghai. It was tough in that I moved with zero savings and was Airbnb-ing, but I was boosted by being in a new city. Conversation starter In 2016, I met Mandy, an Australian-Chinese who was setting up a boutique agency, and I became her first employee. She gave me the best training in terms of creativity and strategy. In Hong Kong, I’d begun to get frustrated that I was in my 20s and still struggling with period pain and yeast infections around it and became hyper aware that many of us are walking around feeling uncomfortable or in debilitating pain and not talking about it. Working for Mandy, I had more space and confidence to pursue conversations that had already started with the women around me. I scooted around Shanghai asking cafes if they could do me a deal to host a workshop on the weekend to talk about periods and advertised on WeChat. I went to a lot of effort to put workshops together and amazingly people would come. I ran it with a local friend so we could cater to local and international audiences. Seeing the light What started as an interest became an obsession and I thought of nothing other than the conversations and insights people raised. I put together a community group and it was through that and research that I realised the tampons and pads I was using were coated in a synthetic material. I switched to organic cotton alternatives and my yeast infections stopped. My discussions with the community followed that line and it was fascinating to see how many people had a positive experience when they switched to an organic cotton alternative, from a disappearance of odour, especially in the summer in a humid climate, to yeast infections and irritations and improved levels of comfort. It made me angry that so many of us were experiencing these struggles because the industry was keeping us in the dark about the ingredients and no one was talking about alternatives. When I started to research brand alternatives, I found there were a few disruptive brands in the United States challenging the big conglomerates, but it was nothing like it is today. Going all in One minute I was realising the problem and the next I was researching suppliers and factories and putting together an investment deck. My proposition was that the industry is not transparent about the ingredients it uses in its products, which has consequences for the health of individuals and the health of our planet. My first pitch wasn’t great, and I sought out someone to steer me through this, which was the best decision I ever made. I found Grace He-Saunders on LinkedIn; she’s done so much in the China start-up space. She liked the proposition and agreed to help me raise my pre-seed round of funding from investors in Shanghai and Hong Kong. She is a mentor to me to this day and sits on my board of directors. Menstrual health is the foundation of the physical, mental and future health of half the world’s population, and half the workforce Olivia Cotes-James, founder of Luüna I gave up my full-time job in 2018 and was living very frugally, my rent was 2,000 yuan (US$300) a month and I was luckily given a seat in a WeWork in Shanghai and lived off the free coffee and 5 yuan jianbing (crepes) that I got on the way to work. Love in a time of Covid We launched Luüna in Hong Kong in 2019. I was travelling between Shanghai and Hong Kong and moved back to Hong Kong in 2020, when Covid kicked off and I couldn’t go back to China, so the pandemic sped up what was my original intention of moving back. The manufacturing is done in Germany – for tampon production – and pads in China. In 2020, a friend suggested I speak to Doug Irwin, co-founder and CEO of KacePack, a Hong Kong-based product design and manufacturing company, for advice about manufacturing. A year after we met, and after months of providing me with personal support and advice in navigating the challenges of running a business during Covid, we started dating and have been together ever since. The first few years of starting a business are stressful and I think with Covid, even more so, there was a lot of getting excited about opportunities which then got delayed because of the pandemic. Getting through to men Since 2020, a big part of our focus has been on the workplace and schools, looking at shifting policy within organisations to make sure the needs of menstruating people are catered to. We’ve done sessions in the workplace with senior management teams, which are sometimes predominantly men. It can be interesting trying to convince those teams that they must attend these sessions – that’s usually the job of HR, not us – but for the most part, when they come, they see the value and the relevance. Menstrual health is the foundation of the physical, mental and future health of half the world’s population, and half the workforce. For schools or employers to offer the care that they should, if you are not talking about the menstrual cycle you are not having those conversations to their full extent. Staying home I would never want to go back to my 20s. There’s a lot of pressure on women to look a certain way. Unless you’re really confident, you never feel that good about yourself. I do see that changing for younger women, but there’s still so much toxicity. If your skin clears up, what’s the next thing you are not feeling good about? I’m cautiously optimistic; it feels like Hong Kong is in a good place and Luüna is in a good place. I hope this will be the year I get more of a work-life balance because Luüna has been everything I live and breathe. I devoured my first book in years when I was in the UK in January; I hadn’t been in the head space to do that for a few years. I’m in the mindset now where I can get lost in a book. My Chinese learning fell by the wayside, so I’m starting to pick that up as well. I plan to stay in Hong Kong; it’s home for me and for Doug. We love it here and being able to travel now helps, especially for work. I will go to Singapore next week and take my first China trip in a few years in a couple of months.