Who names their company after an ovary? Me. Mary Kucek, founder, CEO, and someone who learned the hard way that the healthcare system wasn't built with women like us in mind.
Here's what happened: I was prescribed the wrong category of hormonal contraceptives. Not because my doctor was careless. Because I had slipped through the cracks, quietly ineligible for combined oral contraceptives in ways nobody had ever bothered to check. I didn't know. My providers didn't catch it. And one ordinary morning, my left leg stopped working. It dragged across the floor, and I collapsed.
Things got scary fast.
Thankfully, I got the care I needed and made a full recovery. What I discovered afterward changed everything. I had migraines with aura, what I'd casually called "bad headaches" my whole life. I also carry a genetic clotting disorder that makes me exponentially more vulnerable to blood clots, stroke, and heart attack — a risk that compounds dramatically in the presence of estrogen from hormonal birth control. No one had ever connected those dots for me.
Once I was done throwing my (very justified) pity party, I started asking questions. The answers were just as alarming as my collapse.
A peer-reviewed study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology found that 57% of women discontinued oral contraceptives within six months, many losing access to a method that could have been working for them if the right fit had been found from the start. Hundreds of women die from contraceptive complications every year. Thousands more are hospitalized. Countless others experience side effects that go dismissed, minimized, or simply never followed up on. Women stop seeking solutions. They stop trusting the system. They stop asking for help.
American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology
I couldn't unsee it.
Birth control has given women freedom — the freedom to plan families on our own terms, to build careers, to own our futures. That's not a small thing. But freedom shouldn't come with a side of preventable harm. There had to be a better way to make sure every woman gets the right option for her body, not just the default prescription, not just the most convenient answer, and not at the cost of her safety.
So I left my job. I used my background in biology and technology. And I built OvaryIt.
The platform started as an idea and became a life mission — one that grew louder every time I heard someone say "I've been dealing with this for years and nobody has listened." OvaryIt gives women free access to a pre-evaluation screening that identifies which contraceptive categories are actually safe for them. It creates guardrails so that prescribers can never accidentally override CDC guidelines. And it brings that access to where women already are — the pharmacy. No appointment. No waiting. Walk in, get seen, walk out with a hormonal or non-hormonal option that same day.
We built this to put the power back where it belongs: in the relationship between a patient and her provider — without the noise, the redundancy, and the systems that were never designed for her in the first place.
Every single morning I wake up with one purpose: to make sure no woman slips through the cracks again.
OvaryIt was built to honor every woman searching for affordable, safe, quality care —
- the women told to "just wait out" the side effects
- the women navigating loss and needing space to heal
- the women who feel like society only sees their value in what their bodies can produce
We see you. We hear you. We built this for you.
So if you're over it —
We're OvaryIt.
This content is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the guidance of a qualified healthcare provider.