We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lauren Bongiorno. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lauren below.

Lauren, appreciate you joining us today. When you’ve been a professional in an industry for long enough, you’ll experience moments when the entire field takes a U-Turn, an instance where the consensus completely flips upside down or where the “best practices” completely change. If you’ve experienced such a U-Turn over the course of your professional career, we’d love to hear about it.

Throughout my eight-year entrepreneurial journey, I’ve witnessed the strength that lies in a proactive, offensive approach, seeing the immense value in being at the affect of events, rather than the effect. This principle has been instrumental in the success of building Risely Health, and is what allowed us the unique opportunity to be at the forefront of an industry-wide-U-turn in the diabetes healthcare space.

Back in 2015, I was frustrated by the endocrinology field and that individuals living with Type 1 Diabetes were not receiving the comprehensive support they needed to improve blood sugar management and lead healthy lives. It became apparent that limited time and resources from providers hindered their full ability to support patients in the way they needed to be supported. I was motivated by a vision of a future where traditional healthcare was supplemented with more in depth education, accountability, and focus on overall quality of life factors beyond just the blood sugar data points themselves. From there, and with what some may say was a delusional amount of self confidence for my age and experience,I set out to be part of the change that was inevitably on the horizon.

By recognizing the urgency of addressing this pressing problem within the community I belonged to, I found myself at the forefront of an industry-wide U-turn that had been long overdue in the diabetes space. Timing and a deep sense of commitment allowed my team and I to play a pivotal role in driving the transformation that was desperately needed.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes (T1D), an auto-immune disease with no cure on November 1st, 2000, when I was 7 years old. When I was diagnosed, my family’s lives completely flipped upside down as we all grappled with the realization that T1D wasn’t something that was managed by simply just eating less carbs and taking insulin. It was very nuanced and pretty much dependent on the learning we did outside of the 2-3 doctors visits per year.

During my senior year of college, after taking the LSATs and starting to apply to law school to follow in my dad’s footsteps, I had a profound realization that changed everything I thought I knew about my future. I was headed towards the direction of lobbying and creating change in healthcare but one day in a yoga class, I had a massive epiphany that this wasn’t “mine” to do, not the path meant for me. I didn’t want to fight against a system for years and not see anything change. Instead, I wanted to make an impact on an individual level – to support people living with Type 1 Diabetes outside the endocrinologist office to lead healthier, more confident lives.

Today, Risely Health is a female-founded and female-led company that empowers those impacted by type one diabetes to take ownership of their health, create sustainable outcomes, and improve their daily experience through our transformative coaching methodology that extends beyond the traditional healthcare approach. Beyond having a track record of serving over 600 clients to date, we are most proud of Georgetown medical students working to publish a study on the qualitative and quantitative outcomes we have helped people achieve, further validating the effectiveness of our team of health coaches who live with Type 1 Diabetes.

While improving blood sugar management is always at the core of what we support people in, our mission goes beyond that. We exist to help individuals and families impacted by T1D discover their true potential when diabetes isn’t holding them back.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Reliability and community are two aspects that are often overlooked in a person’s journey with Type 1 Diabetes. This condition can be incredibly isolating and overwhelming, affecting not only our physical well-being but also our mental and emotional state on a daily basis as well. While in today’s age there is no shortage of accessible education, the support for actually knowing how to implement it all and finding people who “get it” are lacking. At Risely, one of our biggest strengths lies in our team of Nationally Board Certified Health Coaches, all of whom live with type 1 diabetes themselves and truly understand the challenges our community faces along with the group coaching programs we run.

In addition, what I believe has put us on the map as a leader in our space is that we do not only focus on growing the services we provide people, but we advocate for systemic change as well so that anyone in the future who receives a diagnosis can be better supported than those before them. In this past year, we’ve created relationships and partnerships with hospitals and medical schools and have had the opportunity to be a voice for the community, sharing their stories and experiences to further influence patient outcomes.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

Something I remind myself daily is a quote by Simon Sinek that says, “Leadership is not about being in charge, it’s about taking care of those in your charge.” When you are in a startup environment, there are a lot of moving parts at all times and it’s easy for the most important things to slip away from the top of your priority list if you’re not grounded in them. My number one piece of advice is that the team needs to be number 1, always. I look at one of my most important roles as one that helps foster an environment of mutual respect, effective communication, space for fun, and teamwork.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.riselyhealth.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lauren_bongiorno
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauren-bongiorno/