Judith Nowlin started as a childbirth educator and worked as a birth doula and postpartum doula serving hundreds of families in the Denver/Boulder area. In 2008, she realized there was an opportunity to improve clinical outcomes and lower the cost of care for mothers and babies by increasing access to care via mobile health technologies.
Nowlin, an experienced tech entrepreneur, founded iBirth, a patient care companion app for pregnancy, birth and postpartum designed to improve outcomes for women and children. She led the company as CEO from inception to its acquisition in 2018.
“The most important risk I have taken in my career was to ‘simply start,’” Nowlin said. “When I made the choice to build my first healthtech company, I was the mom of three kids aged 4 and under, with one child suffering from an undiagnosed, debilitating health condition, and my husband working extremely long hours at a technology startup while also working towards his MBA 45 minutes away from home in the evenings … Those conditions certainly were not ideal for starting a new company. Most people told me I was crazy for taking this risk. Nonetheless, I put one foot out into the unknown and trusted that the path forward would rise up to meet me. Fifteen years later I still lean on this principle daily. Simply start.”
Nowlin was hired as chief operating officer by Nest Collaborative’s founder, Amanda Gorman, in November 2021 at a time of significant growth for the company and the industry. She quickly ascended into the role of CEO where her charge was to expand the lactation platform and lead the next wave of innovation in maternal healthcare.
Nest Collaborative is the nation’s first and largest virtual lactation platform. The company said it “is revolutionizing breastfeeding care through its proprietary, preventive care model that leads to healthier families and reduced unnecessary-care costs across the country.” The company has a nationwide network of certified lactation consultants available to families for virtual consultations. Nest Collaborative’s consultants are in all 50 states and speak 11 languages.
Under Nowlin’s leadership, Nest Collaborative has continued its growth trajectory by increasing revenue by 333%, doubling the size of its national network of certified consultants from 32 to 70 and signing major health systems.
Verywell Family named Nest Collaborative the Best Online Lactation Consultant of 2021 and 2022. The company earned first place in the 2022 Yale Innovation Summit’s Tech and Digital Health Pitch Contest, and the New England Venture Capital Association nominated Nest Collaborative as Emerging Company of the Year.
“Nest Collaborative has seen tremendous growth over the past year and is positioned to take the next step in reinventing the way breastfeeding care is provided to new parents,” Gorman said. “Judith is one of the most qualified, experienced and passionate entrepreneurs I’ve met. I am excited for the future of Nest Collaborative under her leadership as we continue to expand our network of lactation consultants, accelerate our platform development and grow our reach to thousands more families.”
