From Thailand’s ‘Condom King’ to the US and Beyond: Effecting Positive Change in the Field of Women’s Reproductive Health
By Stasia Obremskey
In my late twenties, my hard-charging career as a Wall Street investment banker, Harvard B-School grad, and management consultant took a left turn when I set off to Bangkok as a trailing spouse. Once there, I went to work for Mechai Viravaidya, the ‘Condom King of Thailand’ who earned his name for his ground-breaking work in family planning and his famous restaurant, Cabbages and Condoms.
In the early 90s, Thailand was becoming one of the epicenters of the AIDS epidemic, and Mechai had emerged as one of the leading AIDS activists in Asia. My job was to analyze the economic impact of AIDS on the Thai economy if the government didn’t take aggressive actions to prevent the spread of HIV. This work took me throughout the country to understand the drivers of the Thai AIDS epidemic, primarily the widespread prostitution industry supported by both international tourists and everyday Thai males.
In the years before I arrived in Thailand, a woman born into a poor, rural Thai family had few educational or economic options—one of the most lucrative was to spend a few years as a “hostess” earning money in a neighboring province. This new-found wealth was then sent back to the village, and after a few years, when all the necessary consumer goods had been purchased, it was normal for a woman to return home to marry, have children, and live happily ever after.
That was before AIDS. Now, women were returning HIV positive, or already sick and dying. On one level, I understood that these women were making rational economic decisions. But the onset of AIDS had turned them into deadly ones.
My experience in Thailand has informed my philanthropy, professional choices, and personal philosophy to this day. I strongly believe that when you give women the opportunity to manage their fertility, combined with educational opportunities, you unleash 50 percent of the world’s human capital.
I have organized my philanthropy around education and family planning initiatives both in the US and globally with organizations like Room to Read and UpstreamUSA, among others. I think of my philanthropic portfolio in the same way I think about my financial portfolio: to look for diversity across regions by investing locally, nationally, and globally. I conduct thorough due diligence on an organization and then I almost always make unrestricted gifts, believing that the organization’s leadership team should know the highest and best use for additional resources.
Several years ago, I was looking for a more engaged form of philanthropic investing and became a founding member of Maverick Collective by PSI (Population Services International), a community of women philanthropists making catalytic investments in health and reproductive rights.
I was able to deepen my knowledge of reproductive health and contraceptive options by partnering with a PSI country team in Mozambique to pilot a project in family planning. This experience-based philanthropic investing allowed me and other Maverick members to go beyond check-writing to really engage with the staff, Mozambiquan women and girls, and local officials, with the ultimate objective to find larger institutional funders to take our innovations to scale. In a business framework, Maverick Collective members act as venture capital investors—willing to take additional risk in order to test new ideas often generated and co-created in partnership with the women and girls we serve.
One of the gifts of the Maverick Collective has been the opportunity to connect with other women who feel as passionately about lifting up women as I do. We have formed a strong community that learns, inspires, and encourages one another as we move beyond our Maverick experiences to find new ways to amplify our efforts for girls and women in the world. This powerful network supports our ever-expanding work in women’s health by co-investing, referring, advising, supporting, and advocating together for issues related to women’s reproductive health.
I’ve learned that grant-making is one tool to effect positive change in the field of women’s reproductive health. Going back to my capitalist roots, I believe the private sector also has an important role to play. Specifically, through impact investing, using equity or debt in addition to grants, investors can spur innovation and scale solutions to meet the needs of women. I found my dream job several years ago that allows me to combine my passion for reproductive health with my private sector experience when I joined Rhia Ventures, an organization that uses capital creatively to address market failures in women’s health.
With my partner, Elizabeth Bailey, we run an impact venture fund, RH Capital, that invests in companies working on innovations in contraception, maternal health, and other high impact areas of reproductive health. Our companies are focused on meeting the needs of women in the US—particularly women of color, women on Medicaid, and women from lower socioeconomic levels. With annual unintended pregnancy rates of 45 percent and increasing maternal mortality rates in the U.S., particularly among women of color, we need capital and innovation to find scalable solutions. Our investors are philanthropists, family offices, and foundations looking to amplify their impact through equity investments in companies that achieve a double bottom line with their portfolio-mission and money. Several Maverick Collective members are investors in the fund looking to increase their impact in the field.
My motto these days is “yes, and.” Yes, philanthropy AND impact investing, to have more influence on women’s lives. Yes, invest locally AND globally as the needs are great in both markets, Yes, mission AND financial returns to drive more investment capital into women’s health, Yes, education AND more and better products that enable women to manage their fertility, allowing them to make their mark on the world.
The world so needs the minds and voices of women, working with men, to solve our most pressing problems—from climate change, economic inequities and disparities in health, education, and well-being. Let’s invest in improvements in reproductive health and education for women and girls to make the world a better place.
This exclusive essay is part of a series between The Conscious Investor and The Maverick Collective by PSI. To learn more about The Maverick Collective click here.
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Stasia Obremskey is the Managing Director of RH Capital Funds the impact investing venture fund of Rhia Ventures where she is responsible for investing in innovations in women’s reproductive health. She joined Rhia Ventures at its founding in 2018 after more than twenty-five years of experience as an interim CFO for non-profit organizations and start-up companies and an impact investor and philanthropist in women’s reproductive health.
Stasia holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with a concentration in Finance from the University of Notre Dame and an MBA from the Harvard Graduate School of Business. She has extensive experience as a member of several nonprofit boards where she has held a number of leadership positions. Stasia is a founding member of The Maverick Collective, an initiative of PSI. As the proud mother of three young adults, she is working with scientists and entrepreneurs to find the next generation of hormone-free contraceptives to meet their sexual health needs.
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