Leisa: Hello I’m Leisa Holland-Nelson and welcome to another edition of Women Mean Business where we’re going to take you up close and personal with extraordinary women doing extraordinary things. My guest today is Ursula Hessenflow, CO-founder and CEO of myLABbox, where safe is sexy. Ursula, welcome to Women Mean Business.

Ursula: Thank you for inviting me Leisa.

Leisa: I know that you’re a new company, fairly early stage, but I know also that you’ve raised money and you’ve been in business for 6 months and I want you tell us about how you got this going and what you did before myLABbox.

Ursula: Sure. So myself and my Co-founder Laura, we have very deep roots in digital marketing, e-commerce. She spent a lot of years at Newegg, I built 2 other digital companies where we were essentially Marketing. So we got into this business because we really saw this as a marketing opportunity and a real reason for us to make real social impact using our marketing expertise.

Leisa: So as marketers you’re going to help eradicate sexually transmitted diseases if I’m correct? I would think that’s the goal; what’s the first step in doing that?

Ursula: what got us really excited about this opportunity is that we all know we can go talk to our doctor and be tested, it’s just why is it that the statistics are literally half of us will get something in our lifetime? Why does that still exist? And what we found is that it’s all about how testing is delivered. And so what we’ve gone about doing is essentially cutting out all of those hurdles that cause people to not get tested and make it super easy where ultimately we see this as something that would come to your door every 6 months and you would just do it in 5 minutes and it becomes like brushing your teeth.

Leisa: that’s very cool. I’m gonna guess that you probably didn’t dream of doing this as a little girl.

Ursula: No I didn’t.

Leisa: What did you think you were going to be when you grew up?

Ursula: You know, that’s really funny because I think I thought I was going to be a fashion designer.

Leisa: This is very close.

Ursula: I think that it’s all creative and I’ve had my hands in a number of entrepreneurial endeavors, of building digital businesses and that’s what really got us here. And I just see this as problem solving really; it’s just problem solving our world and you know, seeing an opportunity where something needs a new spin and it needs a new solution in order to be able to make a real impact on a problem.

Leisa: Thank you very much.

Ursula: You’re welcome.

Leisa: There you have it, another extraordinary woman doing extraordinary things. I’m Leisa Holland-Nelson, President and Co-founder of ContentActive, Houston’s leading web and mobile design and development company. You can find me at ContentActive.com or follow me on Twitter @LHNelson. We’ll be back again next week with another edition of Women Mean Business.