According to the CDC’s most recent data, Black women in the United States experienced pregnancy-related mortality rates approximately 3.5 times higher than white women in 2023.
That rate was the only one among all racial and ethnic groups that did not decline. Researchers and maternal health advocates have pointed to bias in care, gaps in provider trust, and delayed intervention as major contributors to the disparity.
Maya Hardigan understood these conditions before she built Mae. She spent more than a decade at Pfizer following earlier years in healthcare management consulting and had access to a level of care unavailable to most patients.
Mae launched in 2020. The company’s name honors Dr. May Edward Chinn, the first Black woman to graduate from what is now NYU School of Medicine.
After being excluded from hospital practice, Dr. Chinn built her own practice in Harlem and spent decades caring for Black families throughout the community. The maternal health disparities Mae addresses have existed for decades. Large-scale infrastructure supporting culturally aligned maternal care remained limited.
The Structural Decision
Many maternal health startups serving underserved populations operate through direct-to-consumer engagement models. Access depends on whether patients can find the service, afford it, and sustain engagement without institutional support. Hardigan built Mae to operate through the insurance system. If payers covered the service, access could scale alongside the patient population already moving through Medicaid and managed care networks.
That decision required payer relationships, Medicaid integration, and reimbursement infrastructure from the beginning. Mae sold directly to managed care organizations and Medicaid plans already absorbing the downstream cost of poor maternal outcomes. The sales argument centered on reducing adverse maternal outcomes and lowering long-term healthcare costs.
Mae connects expectant mothers with community-based doulas matched based on cultural alignment and health needs, while layering in digital tools for symptom tracking, risk screening, and care coordination.
Medicaid covers nearly half of all births in the United States and more than 65% of Black births nationally. Building within that system allowed Mae to reach the patient population already relying on Medicaid coverage throughout pregnancy and postpartum care.
Scaling the Doula Workforce
The insurance channel also became the mechanism through which Mae scaled its doula workforce. Mae handles billing and Medicaid reimbursement for doulas directly, removing administrative barriers that historically kept many community birth workers outside formal reimbursement systems.
Doulas join the network at no cost, receive member referrals through Mae, and are paid through the platform rather than managing payer relationships independently. Supply and demand grow in parallel as additional health plans and members enter the system.
That model reflects the central role community-based doulas play in maternal care delivery. According to company-reported outcomes data, members experience a 41% reduction in preterm birth rates and a 26% reduction in c-section rates. Doula utilization across the platform runs at 72%.
Mae is also SOC 2 certified, a compliance standard widely used across enterprise healthcare infrastructure and data systems.
Traction
Mae now operates across 11 states with 19 health plan partners covering approximately 110 million lives, including Molina Healthcare, Aetna, UnitedHealthcare, and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas.
The platform has facilitated more than 12,000 doula sessions and served more than 6,000 members across Medicaid and managed care populations. Members are 11 times more likely to be supported by a doula compared to the national average. Mae reports a 41% reduction in preterm birth rates, a 26% reduction in c-section rates, and $4,000 in clinical costs saved per doula-engaged member.
According to the company, Mae performs in the 90th percentile nationally on the HEDIS timeliness measure for prenatal and postpartum care, a standardized benchmark used by insurers and managed care organizations to evaluate care delivery.
Capital
Mae raised a $1.3 million pre-seed round in 2021 and closed an oversubscribed seed round in 2024 led by Jumpstart Nova, with participation from Astia Fund, Impact Engine, Joyance Partners, Gratitude Railroad, and several earlier investors.
The company filed notice of a Series A raise in late 2025. Total capital raised across rounds stands at approximately $4.2 million from 16 investors.
The structural design Hardigan chose allows Mae to reach women who historically have had limited access to culturally aligned maternal care.
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