Sarah Highfield, a former Costa executive, has been named the dual chief operating officer and chief financial officer of femtech firm Elvie.
In her role as COO, Highfield will be part of Elvie’s senior team and will report directly to the company’s founder and CEO. Her primary job responsibilities will include finding new strategic opportunities and supporting the firm’s international growth. Her work will cover operations, human resources, finance, customer care, and legal.
Highfield is a good fit for Elvie because of her success helping companies around the world grow, said Tania Boler, Elvie’s CEO and founder, in a press statement.
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“The current economic climate has many businesses thinking twice before investing, but we believe that investing in the right areas now will pay off in the future,” Boler said. “Coming from a commercial finance background, Sarah understands our challenges and is well placed to help us identify the right opportunities.”
Highfield said she is looking forward to working with a company with such potential to expand and develop.
“The appeal of joining a team as exciting and dynamic as Elvie is truly exhilarating,” she said. “Elvie’s blend of exceptional technology, talented people, and focus on championing women’s health made this an opportunity too good to pass up.”
More About Highfield
Highfield most recently served for five years as CFO of Costa, a UK-based coffee shop chain that was founded in London in 1971. There, she oversaw financial planning and strategy for several aspects of the business, including supply chain and shop floor technology.
She played a key role when The Coca-Cola Company bought Costa Coffee in 2019. The $4.9 billion sale was driven by Coca-Cola’s interest in the hot beverage market and Costa Coffee’s considerable global retail presence. At the time the sale was announced, Costa Coffee had more than 3,800 stores in 32 countries, including 459 stores in China.
Prior to Costa, Highfield worked in several international roles. She served as CFO of Tesco Stores’ Hungary and Slovakia divisions for almost five years, where she managed financial activities such as management and statutory accounting and fixed assets and inventory control. Tesco Stores, a British multinational grocery and general merchandise retailer, had about 330 stores in the two countries with a combined annual revenue of more than €2.5 billion.
She also spent five years with Mars, Incorporated, including two years as a finance analyst and three years as one of two members of the Mars Finance graduate scheme. Highfield is a 2000 graduate of the University of Birmingham in the UK.
More about Elvie
Boler founded Elvie after realizing how little innovation had been done in women’s post-natal health. After giving birth, Boler learned that French women regularly attend pelvic floor rehabilitation classes to help their bodies gain strength after their babies are born. She found that this focus on rehabilitation was uncommon in other countries, even though a third of post-natal women experience health issues such as bladder control problems and lower back pain.
In response, Boler created the Elvie Trainer, a discreet, smart tech device that allows women to perform pelvic floor exercises at home. The device connects to an app that provides real-time biofeedback to users as they exercise their pelvic floor. The product launched in 2015 after two years of research and development, finding a place in the growing femtech market and earning mentions in international magazines such as Marie Claire and Vogue. Elvie has also worked with the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) to make the Trainer available to patients free of charge.
Several forces are driving the femtech market, including women’s growing willingness to talk about their bodies, wearable technology that allows for real-time body monitoring, and women taking charge of their own health. In a media interview, Boler said that investors are noticing—for Elvie, that translated into a record $42 million round of investments in 2019. This represented the largest-ever femtech investment to date.
“Until recently, consumer tech often just meant making a pink accessory or turning something into jewelry,” Boler said in an interview for Elvie’s website. “Now there is the realization that women appreciate and want the best technology available.”
The company also is expanding its research and development capabilities, which already have created a silent, wearable breast pump that fits into a nursing bra, activates expression mode when it senses milk let-down, and pauses when the attached bottle is full. The smart pump connects to a free app that monitors milk volume, controls the pump remotely, and tracks the user’s pumping history.
Boler said the company is experiencing “unprecedented growth,” and it plans to continue creating products that use technology to address women’s problems.
“Our ambition is to become the go-to destination for women’s health,” Boler told a media outlet. “We’re planning a suite of connected tech products to support women on everything from menstruation to menopause, starting with new mums.”
