Meet Catherine Lee | Co-Founder of Semaine Health

We had the good fortune of connecting with Catherine Lee and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Catherine, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
Our first product, the PMS & Period Support, came about selfishly. We both suffer from endometriosis and after multiple surgeries and decades of painful periods, we wanted something that could help our pain without being damaging to our bodies. So many people suffer from painful periods that it’s been normalized by society. Most of us don’t realize that missing a day or more of work or school each cycle due to period pain is not normal. Just because something is common, doesn’t mean it should be ignored or dealt with in silence. People with periods deserve more options to help with period pain and other hormonal issues that are usually just treated with pain killers and birth control.

What should our readers know about your business?
Neither one of us ever thought we’d be entrepreneurs – we just knew we wanted to work together somehow at some point. Before starting Semaine Health, we had very different career paths. Lauren was a creative director and graphic designer. Catherine worked in economic development. It wasn’t until we realized our shared passion was about helping other people deal with frequently dismissed or misunderstood health issues, that we were motivated to start a company. We each quit our jobs – our careers – knowing it was the right thing, but also being terrified at the same time. And that fear is still there, but we also have so much excitement and optimism with the way things are growing.

We started out as an e-commerce company, but quickly realized that to be more accessible to a larger audience, we had to go into national retail stores. Getting into retail has been a hard and long process, but we never wanted Semaine Health to be an exclusive wellness company. The majority of the population will experience painful periods, hormonal mood swings, UTIs and/or menopause. Because those are the issues we’re tackling, it makes common sense that we should be in as many doors as possible.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Atlanta is such an amazing city. Our headquarters are right by the King Center, so we’d start out the week hanging out in the Old Fourth Ward: coffee at Condesa, a walk through the rose garden at the King Center, visit MLK’s childhood home, have lunch at Lotta Frutta, hit the Beltline at Krog Street and walk or scoot up to Lady Ha for Boba Tea. Beyond the Old Fourth Ward, we’ll take our bestie to Kimball House for oysters, Ruby Chow’s for the Shoyu Tomago, Big Boss Chinese for the Lo Mein, Lucien Wine and Books for the pate and toast, butter chicken from Bismallah Cafe, LanZhou Ramen for all the noods, Chinese Breakfast at Steinbeck’s in Oakhurst and omakase at Brush Sushi.

The best people watching is on the Beltline, so at some point, we’d grab an iced tea from Just Add Honey. All other activities are also food related: walking over to Sweet Auburn Curb Market, visiting the Freedom Park Farmer’s Market on Saturday – shoutout to David Sweeney who creates some of the best food in ATL – and then heading over to Decatur for a negroni on Leon’s patio.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
We want to give a shoutout to all the amazing endometriosis support groups out there. So many of their members have been with us from the very beginning – testing out our products, giving great feedback and providing inspiration for new products. They understand the motivation we to continue to grow Semaine Health and help as many people as possible.

Website: https://www.semainehealth.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/semainehealth/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/semaine-health/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/semainehealth

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/semainehealth

Other: TikTok: @semaine_health

Image Credits
I will send the photos separately because I don’t think they uploaded properly.