Lindsay Davis discusses how collaboration, research, and technology are transforming women’s health across the region.
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Show Notes:
In this Mission Matters episode, Adam Torres interviews Lindsay Davis, Founder of FemTech Association Asia, about leading Asia’s growing femtech ecosystem. Davis shares how the association connects 80+ startups across 10 countries, fostering innovation and collaboration in women’s health, advocacy, and technology.
About Lindsay Davis
Lindsay Davis started her career in multicultural advertising in the USA, then was recruited by the world’s leading luxury lifestyle management brand, Quintessentially in the UK, to lead global expansion into 25 countries and oversee 60 offices worldwide, with secondments in NYC, China and Qatar. Davis was honoured on the Luxury Daily list of “Luxury Women in Watch” because of her global impact in the luxury sector. As the Founder & CEO of Singapore-based One Bee Consulting, Davis works with brands to develop and elevate loyalty solutions, customer experience and brand affinity through product development, content and programming, PR, community engagement and strategic partnerships.
With a vision of available, accessible and affordable healthcare for all women in Asia, Davis founded FemTech Association Asia in October 2021 as the region’s first and largest industry network for founders, professionals and investors with the core focus on improving women’s health through technology solutions. The organisation represents 80+ companies across 10 countries in Asia. FemTech Asia was a Finalist in the GIOF – 2022 Business Inclusivity Awards and is member of the UNFPA Equity 2030 Alliance. In 2025, Davis launched Femtech Spain given her extensive industry experience and deep connection with the country.
About FemTech Association Asia
FemTech Association Asia is the gateway to the femtech industry in Asia, driving advancement in available, accessible and affordable healthcare for every woman at each stage of life, through knowledge, solutions and funding.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today’s a very special episode. This will be part of our Asia Summit 2025 coverage where we went to Singapore to cover the Milken Institute’s Asia Summit.
And let me tell you, I had. Quite a time and F1 was taking place at around the same time. Boy, what a privilege to see all of that. And my next guest is Lindsay Davis, who is the founder of Fem Tech Association, Asia. Lindsay, welcome to the show. Thank you, Adam. It’s nice to be connected again after our time together here in Singapore.
All right, so first off what’s your connection with the Milken Institute? Have you been to one of the conferences either in Asia or in Beverly Hills or elsewhere? Like how did you originally learn about, the institute in general? Well, of course I have to say, you know, I hope Beverly Hills next.
But you know, oh, that’s a big one. If you haven’t been to that one yet, that’s my favorite. That’s in my backyard. So I, I’ve been covering that one for the last four years or so. This is my first time going to Singapore, but Singapore was beautiful, but continue, I’m just, I’ll, I’ll put the quick plug in there.
Make it out here, but go ahead and continue. Yeah, absolutely. So this was my second year in a row speaking at the Milken Institute Asia. Summit it’s really great to see Milken stepping up and really saying, you know, women’s health needs to be front and center. Thought leadership, which they’re we’re, which they’re so amazing at, with collaboration, with partnership, and with of course, investment support and inspiring that support.
So I’m really grateful to everything Milken has done from giving us a place to amplify our work as Fem Tech Association, Asia, the industry, our founders, our solutions. But also looking at the fact that they have just launched the Milken Institute Women’s Health Network, which is actually chaired by Dr.
Jill Biden. Hmm. So it’s so exciting to really see Milken, you know, putting their time and energy and saying, this is an important field, women’s health. Wow. why do you feel or I should say, what’s one of your favorite parts about the conference? Just in general? Like, why should a lot of people, we have a big audience in California, New York, all well, all throughout the United States.
Really? Why should other people be there? Well, I think the first thing for me is kind of the diversity of people, of industry, of geography. It’s really an opportunity, or it has been an opportunity for me. I can’t speak for everyone, but it’s been such a great opportunity for me. To just talk with policymakers and investors and other founders and community builders and non non-for-profit leaders.
So it’s really just getting to connect with all of these different people and find opportunities to continue to partner and stay connected into the future. So I’d really say that community aspect through focused thought leadership, that Milken just excels. Hmm. Yeah, I, I have to agree with you on that.
And it’s, I knew when I went there that I was like, okay, this is gonna be amazing. It’ll be just like, what, what they do here, over there, I know that all the panels will be curated, the information, the people that make it through their processes to be on stage and the information that’ll be given will be vetted.
So I find it very gratifying to know that when I go, I can, I can already kind of tell what’s gonna happen and I’m always surprised and I’m always pleasantly surprised by like the what I, what I learned in the context I’m make and all that good stuff. So switching subjects slightly here, Lindsay.
I wanna get into fem Check Association Asia. So I, I see the, title founder. How’d you come up with this idea? Where’d that start? Thank you so much for asking. So my background is in the luxury space. I am British American, so, you know, grew up in the US and then moved around a bunch, was in the UK for about 14 years before moving to Singapore, six years ago.
And I knew I wanted to, have a career transition as much as it was a geography transition. You know, moving to my, my gosh, third continent, I guess that would be. So with that in mind, I thought I definitely wanna be more focused on technology. So when, of course, when we first moved somewhere new. We just meet as many people as we can, which is supernatural, right?
We wanna build our personal and social communities as well as our professional communities. So across all of the people I met, I ended up doing some hosting of conferences and I do a lot of speaking at conferences and panels and moderating. And what I actually found at one of the conferences where I was moderating was the photographer who is really, really great, was talking about fem tech.
And of course I thought Women in tech, I love that. That’s what I’m going for. And she said, actually. Fem tech or female technology, so electronic devices, software, wearables all of these things that support women’s health and the advancement of women’s health and improving women’s health, using technology as the solution.
So of course, jumped online and curiosity wins, always jumped online, started researching how I could get involved. And actually there was kind of. Just a, disconnected ecosystem. There were a couple of founders here and one group over here, but no one actually uniting the ecosystem and the industry.
And so, you know, speaking with a couple of the founders, they said, well, you should do it. And so of course I had to do as I was asked, and here we are now. Four years later and just have learned so much and never thought I would move into women’s health. I mean, this is definitely something that just came from fortuitous meetings of wonderful people.
And here we are now with, over 80 startups in our network. We’re in 10 countries across Asia. Most recently launched in Bhutan in November of 2024 with a strong advocacy arm. So, you know, we just keep moving and growing and I think the interest in women’s health. You know, the, wave is, you know, the wave is there.
And, and so I think in Asia, we’re just seeing that development as the third largest region in the world for women’s health and fem tech, and that growth is just exponential here. So excited to see what happens next. Oh man. That’s amazing. I wanna stick on the, business case a little bit longer.
On on this part of it. When you were doing your research, where did you find the opportunity? Like there had to be something that, it’s like, you know, I, and I know you have, you had to do it ’cause it was, you saw the, need for it. But over and above that, where do you see the business opportunity?
Sure. I think that’s a great question. I knew it was gonna be a longer term business investment for sure. Sure. For sure. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And whether that’s just ’cause of where women’s health is you know, the, the amplification, you’re trailblazing, I mean, you didn’t use that word, but I’ll use it. You’re trailblazing.
When you start something new, it takes time period for people to, to adopt, to, to follow, and to, see, okay, this person that’s leading this initiative has the right intention in mind. You know, so it takes time. But go ahead, please continue. Well, I, think that’s a really good point. And so I see the.
When we talk about the, like a sustainable financial model. Mm-hmm. So that’s why instead of just industry, I also say specialist advisory because a lot of the work we do is around connectivity is around introductions, is around advising overseas investors or even local and regional investors.
What’s happening in the space with the fem tech landscape doing research with other partners. So it’s really finding ways of creating a sustainable financial model that doesn’t depend on the investment of the founders who really are 83% female or women founders. Wow. Wow here in Asia so far in Southeast Asia.
Excuse me. Yeah. In particular. And so the reality is, women are often at a disadvantage when it comes to investing, when it comes to bias, when it comes to, you know, kind of discrimination in these things. So our thought right from the start was, our goal for the members is to create the ecosystem, but we will get our money from those supporting the ecosystem.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That was kind of the mindset around our structure. and so where are you at with it right now? are you holding conferences? Is there like, ’cause there’s a large audience here and I wanna make sure that individuals know, what to tap into the association for and like, like where it fits and their plans.
Thank you so much for that question. I, I really appreciate your support on this. I mean, so how we look at it is, of course we have our five key pillars. I talked a little bit about specialist advisory, so those who wanna know about what’s happening in Asia and the women’s health and fem tech space, those who need to be connected or want to be connected in the space.
Secondly, we have our thought leadership. So a lot of it is around the research we do. Mm-hmm. You know, the blogs we write, the papers we work on. For instance, we launched the first ever, consumer insights report last year in June of 2024 that discussed consumer perspectives around. EmTech and their, views on women’s health, how much they spend the influence of media, the influence of religion their education and awareness, et cetera.
So we do a lot of work in research partnerships. We’re actually doing another research partnership now with that research being released probably around June of 2026. We’re in the early days of research for Southeast Asia. Secondly, like you mentioned, programming. So we do a lot of events. Virtual and in person across multiple countries.
This year we’ve had events in the Philippines as well as in Singapore, and it all depends on where the activity is for that year. So we do programming around Asia. Mm-hmm. We also, of course, contribute to other markets. For instance, I was in Spain earlier this year and worked with EmTech, Spain to co-host an event there, which was really fun to kind of talk about different markets, compare and contrast.
And then also with our programming, we hosted the first ever women’s health and fem tech conference, homegrown here in Asia. For, you know, for founders, government officials, policy makers corporate partners, et cetera. So we do a lot of programming, a lot of amplification. We work with the media, so leaders like you in the media space, whether it’s through podcasts, whether it’s through, you know, online publications or even print publications.
Like recently we won the award for the Wellbeing Award with Tatler here in Singapore. So we’re always trying to amplify the founders, the industry, the solutions, the problems the. Products and services. And then finally, community building again, connectivity. How can people get connected?
Yeah. This may seem like a silly question, but I’m just curious. I know when I was in, Singapore, all the, language, at least at the conference was in English. is this primarily in English, the platform or? Thank you so much for asking. Yes, we are. Mm-hmm. And that, you know, really is just, we’re headquartered here in Singapore, where English is, of course, the, you know, the, as you know, the, the language, the primary language.
But what we found is that because we have members in other markets, yeah. They obviously leverage their language skills to work with others in those markets. So really about that. That’s amazing. Yeah. Yeah. It’s about the contagious effect of women’s health, if we’re gonna use a health word, right? Mm-hmm.
This is positive, contagious, that we actually have people taking their learnings and their network in fem tech. And sharing it locally. And so we find that, of course, I wish I spoke, Thai and Vietnamese and you know, I, I wish I spoke all these languages, but I don’t. Mm-hmm. Your Duolingo, Lindsay?
No, I’m just playing. Not exactly right. I wish it was not easy. I’m sorry. I wish it was not easy. I do too. I I just started for a program but that’s why I’m, that’s why I’m, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pick on you. Like go ahead. No, I love it. I love I know, and it’s funny too because, so I speak, I speak, you know, I speak Spanish and I have beginner level Farsi, and I laugh.
Wow. Like of all the, and of course English, which I say oftentimes for me, my English is even struggling sometimes. Mm. There’s so many languages to learn. I’ve started my you first Bahasa Indonesian class. ’cause I just, oh my God. Like not being able to connect, you know? I mean, I love people and, so part of what we do obviously is connection and that’s what community building, you know, the foundation is.
How do we engage the ecosystem? And I talked earlier about why I love the Milken Institute events because it is about engaging different people from different backgrounds and finding that common way of supporting each other. Ah, that’s amazing. Well, Lindsay this has been an absolute pleasure having you on the show and having you part of the Asia Summit series.
That being said, if somebody’s listening or watching this and if they wanna follow up and learn more or connect with you and your team, how, how do they do that? Thanks for asking. Well, first of all, of course, visit our website, www.femtechassociation.com, or you can always email me [email protected].
And again, I love when people connect on LinkedIn, so please reach out, connect on LinkedIn. You know, we’re always posting on our fem tech association Asia page, or of course on my personal page. Mm-hmm. Where I like to share a lot of what I’m working on in this space so people can get a better personal feel of the industry here in Asia.
Fantastic and fie watching. Just so you know. We’ll definitely put some links in the show notes, so you can just click on the links and head right on over. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button. This is a daily show each and every day of bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way, your journey as well.
So again, hit that subscribe or follow button. And Lindsay, thanks so much for coming on the show. Thank you, Adam, and thank you. Mission matters.
