Cecilia Tse

Chapter I

The toughest challenges you've faced as a founder.

I’ve always challenged the status quo, but as the daughter of immigrants, I was taught that safety meant stability. I followed the “right” path into finance consulting, excelled for over a decade, and paid the price. As an Asian woman, I worked in rooms where leadership didn’t look like me, eat like me, or carry the same unspoken family obligations. I was told that simply existing there made me a representative for other minorities, while enduring sexism and racism, including being asked to clean a client’s office and fetch his lunch. I worked constantly, drank in attempt to ’spark joy', lost sleep, and burned out hard. I had done everything “right,” yet felt deeply unsatisfied and unseen. That breaking point forced me to question whose definition of success and safety I was living by. I turned toward wellness - not the whitewashed version, but a more honest, culturally grounded approach, and began reconnecting with my identity and womanhood. That journey led me to become Wellbeing Strategy Leader at a global professional services firm, supporting the wellbeing of over 200,000 employees globally. Ultimately, I founded Hey Freya and raised over $1M to build what I never had: a space designed outside oppressive systems, by someone who has lived the burnout, bias, and dismissal firsthand. My grit is choosing authenticity over conformity, and building something meaningful anyway.

Chapter II

Your vision.

The rampant guesswork in women’s health is well documented. So to start, I’m obsessed with tackling the guesswork as it relates to stress (aka cortisol). Stress disproportionately affects women, and cortisol, the stress hormone, is the root cause of women's actual top health concerns including low libido, brain fog, insomnia, fatigue, and anxiety (read: not infertility, nor menopause). Women currently spend $196B annually to attempt to solve these concerns, and a lot of it is wasted on trend- or fad-based solutions. My company will enable women to measure their cortisol without the collection of bodily fluids or additional hardware beyond their current cellphone or PC. The ability to effortlessly and continuously measure their cortisol will effectively inform the appropriate remedies to resolve their symptoms, validate the efficacy of their chosen remedies, and with the help of AI and machine learning, predict what cortisol and other hormone related health concerns they may want to look out for in the future. Imagine no longer turning to a search engine about your latest symptom, falling victim to celebrity or influencer hype, or enduring dismissal by medical professionals, and feeling in total control over your health?

Chapter III

The impact you want to leave behind — for your industry, your community, and the women who come next.

In Hey Freya I have discovered a new definition for what it means to truly feel safe - especially as an immigrant woman: something that is yours and mine, and not built in the systems that have oppressed and hurt us but rather around them. I want to have left behind an entirely reimagined ecosystem for women’s health - where women have multiple options of places to heal, rejoice, and exist completely as their truest self. Where women can feel confident about the remedies they choose to take, empowered about their bodies, and informed when seeking counsel from medical experts.