Lead To Excel Podcast

Making Fertility Treatments Accessible and Transparent with Sarita Stefani - E90

• Maureen Chiana • Episode 90

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Today's episode of Lead to Excel podcast is a captivating conversation with Sarita Stefani, the dynamic CEO and Co-Founder of Amelis. Are you curious about Sarita's fascinating journey transitioning from a Bachelor Degree in History of Art to a Master in Finance, and then from Finance to Tech, and finally landing in Healthcare? Sarita opens up about her challenges, triumphs, and her personal mission of making fertility preservation more accessible, transparent, and cost-efficient.

What if you could gain a deeper understanding of the egg-freezing process? Sarita shares her decision to freeze her eggs, influenced by her family and personal experiences. She discusses the significance of the AMH test, the medications involved, and the safety measures implemented during the process. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in understanding egg freezing and the decisions surrounding the process.

We also discuss the various aspects of egg freezing and what it means for women. Sarita provides an insightful explanation of the process, from researching and selecting a clinic to understanding the pre-tests and injections involved. She also shares valuable information about her company, Amilis, and its commitment to providing support and resources to women considering fertility preservation. You won't want to miss this enlightening and empowering discussion with Sarita Stefani.

Connect with Sarita:
Website - https://www.amilis.co.uk

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Stay curious and empowered!

Speaker 1:

Welcome, welcome, welcome. You're tuning into the Lead to Excel podcast, the hub where science meets leadership and transformation begins. I'm your host, maureen Cheyanna, founder of the Mindsight Academy, a trailblazer in the world of neuroleadership. I'm an executive neurocoach, leadership transformer and a neuroscience enthusiast, dedicated to empowering leaders, entrepreneurs and changemakers like you. Every week, we delve into the heart of neuroscience to discover how you can unleash your potential, master your brain, manage emotions yours and others alter behaviors and exceed expectations. We're here to help you not just to survive, but thrive and flourish in the fast-paced world around us.

Speaker 1:

We're about to kick off another high-impact episode today, diving into a topic that is powerful, intriguing and has the potential to shift your leadership journey. So, my friends, it's time to put on your thinking caps, grab your favorite beverage and get comfortable. It's time to elevate your leadership to Excel, and so, hire, let's dive right in. I am absolutely excited to be back again with another episode of Lead to Excel, with a fantastic, amazing lady with me today. I have got today with me Sarita Stefani. I hope I pronounced that correctly.

Speaker 2:

Wonderful yes.

Speaker 1:

Oh, Sarita, it's so good to have you with us today on Lead to Excel podcast. So where are you based, Are you? You know, where are you in the world?

Speaker 2:

Hi, thank you for having me. I am based in London, so I'm a Londoner, yes, even though my background. I'm from Venice, Italy.

Speaker 1:

Awesome, it's so good to have you. I do love Venice. I do love Venice so much.

Speaker 2:

Because, it's the most beautiful place in the world.

Speaker 1:

It is. I agree with you, I totally agree with you. So, sarita, what do you do?

Speaker 2:

So I am the CEO and co-founder, along with my business partner, yasmin. We founded this company called Amelie's. It's an egg-freezing platform that helps women through how to the fertility preservation journey. So, from the start to the beginning, we help women find the clinics, matchmaking with doctors, get on boarding, and then we help them understand the result their test and, when we're ready, retrieve, collect the eggs and use them. And this is very important, obviously, for fertility preservation if you're not ready to have a baby yet for any reason, and so on.

Speaker 1:

Wow, thank you so much. That was why, when I saw what you did because I think we are members of the Healthcare Business Women's Association that was it yes. So when I saw what you did, I went oh, this is interesting, I would love to have a chat with you. And once we really had a chat, I went you're coming onto the podcast, We'll bring you on. So it's really good to have you here today.

Speaker 2:

Thank you. So Amelie's was born from my personal journey for fertility preservation, so we have this mission for us to make it more accessible, more transparent, more cost-efficient. So we know that egg-freezing and fertility preservation treatment is a popular word now, so we want just to be the unbiased friends that help women to understand the process before taking any decision. So you know like and this is like a personal journey for fertility, yeah, oh, that's fantastic.

Speaker 1:

That's fantastic. So what's your background, what did you study and where did you grow up?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I actually have a very mixed background. As a bachelor degree, I studied history of art because I just liked it, yeah, so I studied history of art, I loved it, and then I soon realized, you know like this is not going to take me so forward. So I decided to change and I did a master in finance in London. So completely like, from here to here, big change. And then I started working in finance. I used to work in the biggest brokerage firm in the world.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely hated my life every day Horrible, waking up 5am, male-dominated environment. I really didn't enjoy at all finance. So I quit and I changed to more like tech. So then I worked for a billion tons of Reuters in the tech platforms yeah, like a bit more, but still not. And then I finally landed in the healthcare tech space. So I worked for the RG and then the Clarivate and then IQVIA and then the system. So then, you know like, finally I got exposed to the love of my life, which is healthcare, and you know, and then I landed into Amelis, which you know like it's mixed between, obviously, healthcare and the health impatient for the journey from a personal reasons, and so on. So you know, I have a very, very bad grums. So I'm like the existing example that you can change your career anytime Like, from one from arts to healthcare.

Speaker 1:

If you really have passion for what you do, you can change anytime Finance no finance, yeah, so whatever, sorry, no, just going to say I love the fact that you know, you, you, you figured out what you did not want to do and you did it. But let's really be into that. So, changing from history of arts, you said, to finance, and then from finance you went into tech. How was that change? What level did you get up to in finance before you made the change?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I actually, you know, like studying. I studied international finance at Westminster University. So consider that I did my bachelor in Italy in Italian, and then I moved to London and then I did international finance in English as a master. So already that jump, you know, like studying of completely new, like not complete I spoke English already a little bit, but you know, studying doing a master in English, in finance, which was a completely new topic I didn't know even what was about, you know. So I had to study doubled but eventually, you know, I succeeded pretty well.

Speaker 2:

I took, like, quite good degrees because you know, like, I just wanted to to get good marks, good degrees. I wanted this degree to change my career. So it was tough, nothing comes easy. Like, I had to study a lot, I had to work double, but then eventually it paid off because I started my career in finance and I worked. So for the first year I was relatively junior in finance, but then you know like I grew up quite quickly Because also, you know, in this brokerage firm I was one of the very few women working in there, so there was a space to grow for me and then eventually I was making money. So you know like also like, like, when you perform well, you get a lot of. So when I left, I would say I was like in a mid senior level in finance.

Speaker 1:

Finance for how many? How many years? Three or three years, okay, and then you moved into tech.

Speaker 2:

And then I moved into tech at Reuters. I was working in the electronic platforms and that I stayed just one year. It was a huge. Reuters is a good, huge corporations. So you know like I I enjoyed. But then I wanted something a little bit smaller, with less. You know like, like, reuters is a huge. So I wanted something a bit different and I needed to change environment, you know like. So it was good to change from finance to tech, but I was still not happy. So when I landed into healthcare, I wanted to stay in medicine eventually, but my parents, like typical Italian, they were no, you can't, you have to get married, I kid baby, you can't study 10 years, it's not possible. So I didn't study medicine, but I always been fascinated by science and healthcare and doctors and so on.

Speaker 1:

So eventually, when I then-, did you actually actively go to look for work in healthcare, or was it something that just happened?

Speaker 2:

No, I was, I did, I did. Then I wanted to give it a try but then it happened. So you know, I was like I mean again, I changed my career so many times because I was not happy that I was expecting it to happen. But obviously you know like you have to prove a lot, you know like changing you have to prove that, yes, I can learn, I can learn. And then when I started in healthcare, my growth was like exponential because I enjoyed so much that I started from a junior level again. And then, you know, because I was performing very well, I loved it, In two years I was senior in the company, so I was doing everything, yeah, so you know like if you enjoy what you are doing, you can grow very quickly.

Speaker 1:

So how did you manage? You know that change Because, like you mentioned, you've got to prove yourself a lot and you've done quite a lot of changes. So how have you been able to navigate through those changes? Because a lot of times people don't want to change because of fear of failing, or you know you've got to do so much to really climb up. How have you managed to do to really handle those changes? And also, what gives you the ability to be able to do that? Is it something in your background? Is it how you grew up? But because you come into England to study in a language that was almost like a second language and then changing quite often, how did, where did that come from?

Speaker 2:

So I did fail a lot of times. So you know like I took failure as a part of the process in getting where I wanted to be. I also have to say, Can you?

Speaker 1:

give us an example of how you failed and how you actually came back up, because that is something that I think people would find really helpful.

Speaker 2:

So, you know, at the beginning, when I started a new job, I didn't know exactly what to do. Like how was the process? And you know, like the company that I joined it was not too big, so I had eventually to do things by myself and I was almost, you know, like I was getting stuck into processes I was not happy with, like how things were going at a certain point. And then you know like I was almost giving up and you know like that was almost like I felt that you know, like, okay, I can't do it, I can't deal with this. And then I took a step back and I'm like this is what I want to do, this is what I enjoy very much. Like, just do your own thing. You know, like, if you don't think this is right, just do your own thing and just show the people that. Like show to your boss that doing things in this way performs better. Try, give it a try. So sometimes it worked, you know like. Sometimes you know like I was like doing things differently from communication, the update to clients and so on, and it was like receiving very good feedback, better than what it was done before. Sometimes it was not and we had to let it go. But you know, at that time I had to, like I was.

Speaker 2:

It's very hard to change the status quo for a company that do things in their right in that way. So you have to take a leap of faith and just do things in what you think it would be the best way and show the progress that you make and show that this like the results that you get doing things differently. So you know, like sometimes the ID failed, sometimes I just like it was better, and then all the company would then was taking like was applying what I was, what I was implementing. You know, so it was. It's very hard because you have to do it. It's easier, you know, like to follow processes than start to start something new. But I have to say that what kept me going and what made me grow more is like always trying to do things in my own way and do like implement changes. That you know like were proof records that it was working. So that was my main track record.

Speaker 1:

So did you find that there are times that you try to do things your own way. That backfired, you know? So you try to do it your own way, and either things didn't work out well. How did, how was that taken and how did you handle that?

Speaker 2:

100%. I had huge fights sometimes with my boss, huge fights, not fights. But you know, like you know, we were sitting on the table. I'm like, sarita, what are you doing? You know it's like like this is not. But then you know, like also like people, are people right If you show them that there's like a mental process behind what you're trying to do? I mean, my manager at the time was like very flexible. So I'm like, obviously we're like, hey, what are you doing? But then when he started it was working. He let me do it. He was let me do my things, and that's why I progressed in the company.

Speaker 2:

You know, I also have to say that I was always, always asking to get my neck in the next row. So after one year I was like, ok, I have achieved this and this and this. You need to give me a promotion. I want a promotion, I want a promotion, I want a promotion. I want a promotion because I also realize if you don't ask, you don't get, and something you know like that is very important. That I also realize is that you have to show what are your progress is, because otherwise people take it from granted and it seems like you're doing nothing. So I learned this also very quickly. At the beginning I was getting frustrated. I'm like why don't people don't see what I'm doing? You know like it's working fantastically. How did you learn?

Speaker 1:

it. How did you learn that, though, and how were you able to have the confidence to do it? Because a lot of times, I find that a lot of women they see it, but they don't have the confidence to then do something about it. Some women, obviously not all, but yeah. So how did you do that?

Speaker 2:

So I established every at the team meetings that we were having our first day morning For my team the one that I was on. You know that was like the client facing team. I was like, okay, I want out of an hour of the time for this meeting for all the team to say what they have achieved and what they have done. You know, like for this week and every week, somebody needed to speak. You know, like I'm just showing the progressives out there were doing things and so on, and that worked very well, because then you know like, if something was working well, other people were willing to take on that progress and try it with their own clients. So you know, like you have to, like I learned that this is very important because sometimes you know like we can just do our jobs and that's it. But if you do not speak up, people don't see the progress. They're doing their own job. You know, like, so it's not even that people do it on purpose or it's just they're doing their own job, so they're willing to deliver their stuff.

Speaker 2:

And if you don't share, you don't get. So I learned that because at the beginning I was getting frustrated. You know, I'm like how did, like I'm doing all of this work, client is happy, why nobody tells me anything about it. But then I realized you know, like people don't know what I'm doing, so I need to share. So like I created a format that every week we were sharing and then also proposed the same in the team meeting, because sometimes you have a team in the States people love the work we were sharing. We had like sharing session so we could also like learn from each other what the work and what was not working.

Speaker 1:

That's fantastic. That's really amazing. Thanks for sharing that. So, when we then you've not come into healthcare, and so how did you then get? Or when did you set up the Amelies and why? So you know how did that come about?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so last year I quit my job in my last corporate and I had the rate of frozen my eye like the previous year. So all my family, they are all gynecologists. So I had a wide understanding of like the fertility space and so on. And then, because you know like I work in the healthcare sector for many years, I said you know what I went for the process I sold them at needs. I'm a patient myself.

Speaker 2:

There's a lot of space to improve this process with tech with you know like improving it for patients and I'm going to leverage also like my family contacts. You know like to get into the UK market to speak with the UK doctor and get into the UK market. So Amelies was born from like obviously my family helped me to speak with the doctors here in the UK, and also like from my journey. I had tracked down all the journey, all the pain points, what I spent money on, all the useless things I've done throughout the process, the stress that went through. So all of this I summed one plus one and I'm like okay, I have to do something to help women out there to go for this journey.

Speaker 1:

So really, I'm not created. So really, amelies was created from your own experience. So what you went through, that you now wanted, okay, interesting. So tell us a bit about your own experience in terms because you said, a year before you set up Amelies, you actually froze your own eggs. Is that correct? Yes, yes, so why?

Speaker 2:

Why? So I am married and I was married also at the time and I remember one day we sat down with my husband and we realized, okay, we don't wanna have kids anytime soon. I'm not getting any younger. We all know that fertility declines with age. For women, when you are around 30 years old starts the decline. After 35, the decline is very it's deeper, unfortunately. So there's more complication, miscarriages, chromosomes, abnormalities and so on. So I was like okay, I'm 32, it's time for me to understand. Even before we had this conversation and before I had my first AMH test, I didn't even know if I was fertile. My husband was fertile.

Speaker 2:

So we don't know this stuff at school. We don't learn these things at school. You will live in the society that you think it's a Hollywood movie. Oh yeah, you know what? Let's have a baby and tomorrow they deliver a baby and the whole makeup on. It's so easy, like I'm delivering my child. It's like I'm beautiful after five minutes and we don't believe in this word that you know. Like childbirth it's easy, getting pregnant it's easy, but it's actually not.

Speaker 2:

So I decided to basically like, just go through the process so you know we could have options in the future to have a child in the case I was deciding, you know like, to wait after 35 years old or even older. You never know. You know, maybe we have our first child naturally and then our second child because I'm older or because my husband is older. We were going to have some. We're going to need some help. So I did praise my egg for this reason, because I wanted to have option to use in the future, to use them in the future in the case, you know like we had more troubles to get pregnant. I'm pregnant now, naturally.

Speaker 1:

Congratulations, congratulations. That's amazing, but before you go on, I just want to ask you know you were married. You were not going to have kids. You felt you were not going to have kids soon. What gave you the idea of egg freezing, though? Because that's not the first thing that will occur to many people.

Speaker 2:

No, it's not. So I have to say that my family was very keen for me, like even when I was 28, and I met my husband, my father-in-law, so that I was like very focused. You know my career and we were traveling around the world and you know like we wanted just to have our own life before, you know, having a child, and it was like you should freeze your eggs. I'm like I'm 28 years old your father-in-law, my father-in-law.

Speaker 1:

That's so. That is a cool father-in-law you see a gynaecologist. Yes he's a gynaecologist, that makes sense, okay.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So it was like you should freeze your eggs and I'm like, so you have more time. You know, like you do whatever you want, you travel now, you work, do your things. And I'm like I'm 28 years old, what, I'm going to freeze my eggs for 20 years. Because I'm like, no, this is the time, the earliest, the better, the less painful, the less injections. You know, like better quality of eggs and all of that. I'm like no. And then after three years, I decided to basically do it because, you know, I was like, let's freeze your eggs, come on. You know like let's see. And then then I decided to do it.

Speaker 2:

But also, like it does take a bit of time to do your research and to understand the process and it's painful, not painful, you have a lot of questions and when you Google the stuff, you know like you just don't understand anything, and that's why we created Amelie's to provide information around it.

Speaker 2:

Because also, like egg freezing is not for everybody, right, Maybe you have a super eye, you have a lot of eggs, you're very reserved, you do not need to do it. Or you know like it's just, you have other conditions. You know, like we have to consider that people have other conditions, right, and then you have to, like we talk a lot about endometriosis nowadays If you have endometriosis, there's another protocol that you should go through it if you want to freeze your eggs, or you know other conditions. You know, like so it's not really for everybody and you should understand this before thinking about egg freezing. You know, like I think that every woman that has this in her mind Before thinking about egg freezing, you should know, like where are you in your fertility journey, right? Because you know, maybe from the fertility test that you do, which is the AMH, it comes up that you have another condition, like it comes up, you know, like, that you have polycystic ovaries, I don't know.

Speaker 1:

Can I just take you back a bit in terms of the egg freezing so that we can kind of go through. I hope people will understand the process as we go through. So when you then decided that you're going to look into it, what's now involved? What's the first thing to then do in terms of, okay, I want to freeze my egg and what's the process for egg freezing? Because I want us to go through this. Then I'm going to come back to Emily. So, for somebody that is thinking about it, what is the process? What do they do first and what's the timeframe? How does it work?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so you have to decide which clinics you want to go through. Okay, and that's already a huge decision to take. That's also why we created Ameliech. We much make women for their needs with doctors that meet their needs. So consider, for example, in London let's take London, because I'm based here Clinics are good, all the clinics are good. There's so much regulation. So you heard from a friend of one clinic, another one, whatever. So let's say you have gone through all the research, you have the cider. Which clinics you go to which, by the way, is not easy, because why would you pick one clinic rather than another one? You know it's a question that we receive on a daily basis from women. The answer is that clinics operate in a bit different ways. It depends if you want a boutique clinic, if you want a more clinical place, if you want a bigger hospital, so like, there's choices for all. But let's assume you went through this process, you're on board with the clinic.

Speaker 2:

You go to the clinic, then they do this test which is called AMH. It's a blood test that tells you you're a variant reserve. It doesn't tell all fertility things, but it tells you basically at which level is your variant reserve. It also can tell you if you have polycystic ovaries and other conditions, depending on the result of the test. So it's a very important test to do, also for understanding other conditions, and it's a test that costs 100 pounds between 100 to 150 pounds. So it's accessible, this test, and everybody should do it, just to know. So you do the test, then you do a vaginal scan in the clinic the same day usually and then you discuss the result with the doctor. They tell you you have a good variant reserve, low variant reserve or high variant reserve. If you have a good or low variant reserve, they usually tell you look, you should consider raising your eggs. Let's assume everything. You have a good ovarian reserve. You are 34 years old.

Speaker 2:

You decide to go for the treatment. What's happening then? Then you go home. They send you, like you do, all the paperwork with the clinic. They send you the medications at home.

Speaker 2:

These are self injection. The needle is very tiny. It's like same as the diabetic parents, so it's like very tiny needles. You basically have to self inject yourself in the lower abdomen. You pinch your skin in the lower abdomen. The treatment starts on the first day of your period. So when you have your period you start to self inject in yourself. That's why you're self inject, so you don't have to go back and forth to the clinic. So when the period starts you pinch your skin. First day, for five to six days you have one injection. Six days you have to go to the clinic. You have to top up with another injection. So for other four or five days you have another injection and then, throughout the process, if everything goes well, you do not have symptoms. You usually do not go to the clinic because also they do your blood work before they test if you have HIV or all of these things before you start the treatment.

Speaker 1:

All that is done at the beginning, isn't it? They pre-test, okay, yeah.

Speaker 2:

You have also the pre-test and that's very for a reason, because if you have HIV, for example, they can store your eggs in the same place that they store the other eggs. So it's more for safety of the other patients and so on. So that's why they do all of this test. And then, let's say, throughout the injection process you do not have specific condition. The only side effect that you could have is ovarian hyper-stimulation. So you stimulate to much ovarian, so you get bloated and so on, and usually the side effect you could have during this stimulation is that you're a bit bloated, you're a bit tired, you're a bit hormonal. So these are symptoms you could go through. But if you get ovarian hyper-stimulation, you will feel it and you have to go to the clinic to do a checkup. They have to take care of the patient, but that's very rare nowadays because they give a bit less medications than they are not too aggressive nowadays. So it's very rare.

Speaker 1:

So what does amelies do in terms of the fertility? I want to see where amelies comes in in terms of supporting women. So what does amelies actually do now?

Speaker 2:

Yes, so wait, let me finish like and then when you finish the self-inject yourself, you go to the clinic to retrieve the eggs. So this is like a five-minute surgery. They put you to sleep or they do local anesthesia. When you wake up or when you finish the treatment, they tell you how many eggs you have collected that are suitable to freeze, and then they put them in this nitrogen tank and you can freeze them for 55 years. So that's the process it's like to pursue. The egg retrieval is a five-minute procedure. All the rest you do it by yourself with self-injections, and it's not that painful or anything particular. It's a bit uncomfortable. Yes, it's uncomfortable and it's a two to three weeks process, let's say.

Speaker 2:

So what do we do? We do all the initial part of the discovery. So if you go to amelies, we have all the parts that you understand, the treatment. So, like you walk into the treatment with you know like a lot of knowledge around it, and then we much make you with doctors. So you tell us the parameter. Basically, we have a filter search that tells you the parameters that you want. Like I know I want to clean your home, I want to Spanish speaking doctors, I want a female doctor, a male doctor. I want a clinical place, I want a more boutique clinic For me. I need a budget clinic, you know like a cheaper clinic. So we do all of that.

Speaker 2:

Basically, we think for the patient and then we propose to the patient two options and what happens is that you can have free calls with our partner clinics.

Speaker 2:

So basically you can speak with the clinics for free, which I can have this. So I pay 250 pounds every time I walk in a clinic, so I spend thousands in just going and for picking the clinic with us with amelies it's free. So you walk into, like you speak with the doctor and then, when you're happy, we'll board you to the clinic. So we basically help the clinic to digitalize the journey so patients can follow their own journey from our app, which is being built now, and also, like another thing that is important is that we can amelies. If you do tests somewhere, you will be able, as a patient, to upload the test so that you don't have to do it again, because the initial package is around 500 to 600 pounds. So you know like if you don't have that results, you have to pay those money again. So you know like we basically get the patients to own their journey within the particular clinic and implement their communication with the particular clinic as well.

Speaker 1:

Right, no, that's really interesting. So so amelies comes in. Is it after the initial testing, the pre-test, that they do, or do they? If somebody is just thinking about it, do they then come to you? So at what point do they come to you?

Speaker 2:

And at the very, very beginning, when you think about egg freezing and you Google egg freezing, we come up.

Speaker 1:

Right, okay, so that's the stage at which they can come to you, and then you can then guide them through the whole process, exactly. Okay, that makes sense. Okay, that's really helpful. So, literally, what you then do is give them the information for them to then choose the clinic that they would then go through to have the full fertility treatment. Is that?

Speaker 2:

right? Yes, and they can have pre-consultations with the doctors from the clinics, our partner clinics for us. So you know like.

Speaker 1:

And then you know mind up which one they want to use Is that right Exactly. Correct. Right, okay, makes sense. Okay, that's really helpful. So, in terms of of um, um fertility treatment, is it just women that you work with, or is it also men?

Speaker 2:

So interested enough. Like at this early stage, we just speak with women. However, we did have two patients that went through the sperm freezing as well. So you know, like we there's opportunity for Amelie to expand also like to the to the men space for sperm freezing. Or, you know, like services for men, at present we just work with women and egg freezing or fertility investigation, testing or you know, like everything that is related to women, hormones and gynecology is busy then so on. So, like we are more like on the women side, I'm not going to say that in the future we don't cover the men because it already happened, so we are happy to do that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so what have you found from your work, from your experience and from what you're doing at Amelie's? What have you found out in terms of egg freezing that you can share with us to really help women, encourage women to look into it and and also kind of maybe remove the meats or stigmas that are attached to it?

Speaker 2:

Yes. So I think that nowadays we I personally, and also I see that there's a lot about egg freezing. There's like very positive, very negative and so on. The reality of the fact is that of any treatment, we're gonna have a lot of positive and negative feedback on it. The reality of the thing is that we want to have women take their own decision. You know, like, so you read negative, you read positive. Do you want to go through it? It's your decision. You know, like you shouldn't feel pushed by society or the clinics or doctor. So you know you should understand it so well, and you should be. You know, like, so self-conscious of, like where you are in your fertility journey. Then you decide to go for it, or maybe not, which is absolutely fine, you know, but that's what it's we want to like.

Speaker 2:

Our message is like egg freezing is not for everybody and it doesn't guarantee you to have a child, so, like you should work in this treatment knowing about this. It gives you options. Yes, it gives you options, because we've seen women that, for example, they have the first child naturally and then, because they're older they're like probably 38, 39, they have complications in having the second one naturally, and then because they froze their eggs 10 years before. They just do the frozen eggs, which is a five minutes procedure to use your eggs, rather than spending thousands and thousand on IVF treatments. You know, so you also have to consider that that if you freeze your eggs and you need to use them, it's a five minutes procedure. Basically it's like they inject the embryo back in the uterus. It's literally a five minutes procedure. And your eggs are the same quality when you freeze them. So your eggs are not 39 years old, that if you freeze them at 30, they are 30 years old, which is you know what I'm saying Like it's, like much better.

Speaker 2:

So you know like there's a lot of factor to consider. It might be, for example, also like some women that freeze their eggs, they have negative outcomes. So you should also be prepared that maybe you get two eggs out of the treatment. It's also possible Maybe you don't get any eggs, maybe you cannot finish the treatment because something happens. You know, and you know like that's where also like you should be prepared.

Speaker 2:

So you know like it's obviously like it's science and the medical advancement doesn't. You know like it's all in process, but we should be saying the truth about it. It doesn't. It's not a guarantee to have a child. We shouldn't say anything like that. It's an option for the future. So you know like, that's what it is and we should be transparent about it. The reality of the fact is that, also, you know, it's very true that you know like on average in the world, we are delayed modern hood. You know we are getting, women are getting older and it doesn't help. The fact that you know like, unfortunately for us, fertility declines arrives at an early age when you're like, you're still like in your, because you know like 35 years old yeah, I mean I'm young, but still you know like your fertility doesn't stay exactly the same thing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so how long can eggs be kept for frozen eggs, how long can they be stored for?

Speaker 2:

So in this country, in the UK, 55 years. Yeah, so, 55 years, but every 10, you have to give the consent to keep it or not? Yeah, okay, so, and then you should. Women should freeze their eggs. They should keep the cleaning sub data with their home address and stuff, because also now, every year they have to, like you basically get charged for the storage, right? So, like, if you don't update your details, you know, like they have bound the clinics that boundaries to keep the eggs, but eventually you know if you don't reply for like one year, probably they will discard them. If it's not, if you don't reply or don't pay for the storage. So you know, like there's also, like all of this part of the storage, that it's very interesting topic.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, interesting, interesting. Okay, I think we've kind of come to the end of that yes. But you know really fantastic insights into egg freezing and what you do at Amelie's. So if you just tell us a bit, I'm going to put the descriptions and information about Amelie's in our description or information about Amelie's in our description. But can you just quickly, just tell people quickly where they can find you? You know where they see websites and all that.

Speaker 2:

yeah, yes, so we have our website, which is wwwameliescouk. We have also some clinic in Spain. Now we are not live in the platform yet, but you know you can reach out to us. You can reach out to me directly Sarita at ameliescouk, or bookings at ameliescouk, and then you can follow us on media. We are on Instagram at Amelie's fertility. Do check us out, because what happens there is that we interview a lot of doctors, we have a lot of events, we collaborate a lot with clinics, so you know like we are aiming to spread the education around egg freezing and women's fertility, so we post a lot of interesting content in there tips, what's the process beyond injections and all of that stuff that could help through the process.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, thank you so much. You guys are doing such an amazing job and I truly admire you. Know how you live your life. I really admire it because it's a case of it's almost like you're fearless. You go for things, you want something, you do it. You know, you detect a problem, an issue based on your experience, and what do you do? You set up a business, you decide to do it, and I think that's so commendable, so well done.

Speaker 1:

And what you're doing, and then please reach out to Serita if you need any information or just even want to have a chat, if you're thinking if for yourself or even for someone that you know, and then, serita, thank you so much. And just finally, when you give listeners any word of advice for someone that is either thinking about egg freezing or onshore, you know anything that any word of advice you can give them.

Speaker 2:

Yes. So I would say go through your fertility investigation first before taking any decision. And also, what I have to say if egg freezing is whispering into your mind, do not procrastinate it too much. So these are my pieces of advice. And don't be. It's uncomfortable, but nobody should be scared of it. It's just we don't have enough information about it, but it's a quite easy process. So these are my free taken takes.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much. Thank you, that's really helpful and very fantastic. Thank you so much, serita, for joining us on Lito Excel Podcast, and thank you for opening yourself up for us and sharing with us. Thank you, thank you. Thank you so much. We've gotten to the end of another enlightening episode of Lito Excel Podcast. Thank you for spending your valuable time with us today diving deep into the intriguing world of neuroscience and leadership.

Speaker 1:

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Speaker 1:

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