Anna is the co-founder and Vice President of Engineering at Lioness, a sexual wellness company dedicated to championing female pleasure and health. A mechanical engineer by training, Anna and her team have built the first smart vibrator that helps improve orgasms through biofeedback data.

The company is planning to launch the second generation of Lioness in mid-2020. The update will include AI-assisted guidance based on customer feedback and data from more than 30,000 orgasms and numerous user studies. Before Lioness, Anna was a mechanical engineer at Amazon Lab 126’s concept engineer team, and helped launch the Kindle Voyage. In her spare time, she works as a teacher at Scientific Adventures for Girls, a nonprofit providing hands-on STEM afterschool programs in elementary schools. She was listed on Forbes 30 Under 30 this year.

Anna, how did Lioness come about in the first place?

My co-founder Liz and I didn’t know each other before starting the company, however we do have similar stories as to growing up in really conservative families. In my case, I was part of an immigrant Korean family in the U.S., and we never talked about sex. Up until my late 20s, I felt really ashamed, afraid of my own body, and realized that there weren’t many tools to help women navigate and learn about their bodies and what’s working for them and what’s not.

In addition, I realized that much of the intimate and important products in the sextech industry were being defined and developed by men. This led me to become aware of the superpower I hold, being a woman and an engineer.

My roommate back then introduced me to Liz, and the rest is history. We started playing around with different prototypes and ideas, and now we’re six years into Lioness.

Major internet platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Google, Amazon, and Twitter restrict content related to sexual wellness. This limits the conversation on female sexuality and pleasure. On the other hand, close to 40% of all internet data is pornographic content — mainly serving a male audience. What do you make of this?

When we first started out, we didn’t expect to have to deal with the heaviness of red tape and taboo involved because we saw ourselves first and foremost as a sexual wellness company. But what we were confronted with is that sex toys are categorized under pornographic content, which changes the rules of business quite a bit. We can’t do ads on Instagram, Facebook, Google and all of that. And just in a larger sense, we see there is still an issue around how we think about female sexual pleasure.

For example the CES, the largest consumer trade show in the world, has always banned sex toys. No matter how much technology innovation is embedded in those technologies, they always considered it pornographic material and they didn’t allow us to participate.

Last year, another sex toy company won an award at CES but it was actually rescinded when the organizers realized it was a sex toy. What followed was an outrage which then resulted in CES allowing us to come and showcase for the first time. We received such an overwhelmingly positive reception — and even became a finalist for the Last Gadget Standing award!

It just showed that times are changing. Even while big tech gatherings are starting to reimagine their understanding of sexual wellness products, the public discussion is at a different point still. In the New York City subway system, advertising for such products was banned until a lawsuit was filed against the M.TA. last year.

So we are doing our best to shift the conversation, specifically about female sexual wellness and pleasure. We still have a lot to do, but I’m optimistic.

If you look at representation of female sexuality globally, what patterns do you see? Are any countries or regions at the forefront of investing in sextech and wellness?

When we started Lioness six years ago, a majority of the responses we received were about how taboo and radical our idea is for most people, companies, and countries. I can honestly say, on a positive note, that starting maybe late 2019 to now in 2020, we’ve seen a transition wherein sex tech is being regraded as a legitimate factor in human lives and well-being.

So we’re starting to see people in different countries reach out to us, and being interested in breaching what I would assume were traditionally taboo areas for their company or country.

For example, as someone with Korean descent, I am encouraged by seeing all these sex-toy shops pop up around the biggest and most popular areas of Seoul. They are no longer only in seedy, dark lit buildings, but in really fine, brightly colored places with beautiful window displays.

I would also definitely highlight Israel’s diverse scene. Even last year, they hosted the 1st World’s Congress on Women’s Health Innovations and Inventions. With growing attention for this business, I think we’re only going to see better policies and focus on female sexual pleasure and sexual health.

With the #MeToo movement, and Harvey Weinstein’s recent verdict, have you observed a different societal debate on the larger question of “female empowerment,” on what it means to be a woman, and what is expected of us— personally and in business?

Throughout these past years, I became more and more confident in our company’s vision, despite the stigma around it, especially for female founders in the sextech industry. More honest conversations around the horrible things that result from inequality for women have been encouraging, too. There’s this growing feeling of unapologetic promise just in being a woman now, and to be a woman founder as well. I definitely think there we’re seeing that shift.

What does beautiful business mean to you?

Honestly, I would have never thought to run a startup. It was never a dream of mine to become an entrepreneur, and especially not in Silicon Valley, where it’s so easy to get lost in the hustle and the ruthlessness of business.

So to us, what “beautiful business” means at its core is to never forget why we started this company in the first place — because we came from conservative backgrounds where we never got to talk about sex or wellness or pleasure.

I experienced a lot of shame and stigma around my body and we wanted to change that, not just for ourselves but for everybody else in the world, especially for the women and people’s vaginas out there.

To this day, much of the research on sex and female sexuality that you’ll hear quoted is from the 1980s—with a sample size of 20 women — so we really want to help expand the research around that.

So doing beautiful business is changing the startup game in a traditionally taboo and male-dominated industry, with the mission to have everyone love and accept their bodies for what they are, and to learn more about their bodies. We’re really excited to continue doing so.