A Champion Recognized her Potential and Built a Million-Dollar Worth Enterprise, Empowering Women Through Jennis

It wasn’t easy for her, as entrepreneurship was a completely different field. However, she found it exciting and intriguing to explore something that felt both new and somewhat familiar. With a vision to make a meaningful impact in the femtech sector, she embraced this new journey with passion and determination.

Dame Jessica Ennis Hill:

Meet Dame Jessica Ennis Hill, a retired athlete from England who specialized in the heptathlon and 100-meter hurdles. Jessica began her journey as a full-time athlete at just 12 years old, when she discovered her passion for the heptathlon. Jessica won her first senior medal at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne and later achieved Olympic gold at the London Olympics.

Jessica also secured three World Championship gold medals in the heptathlon in 2009, 2011, and 2015. However, after the 2016 Olympics, she decided to retire from sports and began a new chapter as an entrepreneur.

Inspiration behind her startup:

Even after the birth of her son, she remained active in competition for 2 more years, which led her to explore the mental and psychological aspects of performance, including mindset and behavior. When she retired from sports and had been thinking, “What would I do next?” She looked back on the privilege of being able to juggle motherhood and a successful athletic career.

This time she realized that she was able to balance motherhood with a thriving athletic career due to a strong support system, including her physiotherapist, coach, and other specialists. She was able to return to competition and achieve a world championship victory just a year after giving birth.

This realization led Ennis to think deeply about the struggles that many women face challenges during exercising in pregnancy and the postpartum period. With so much information about how to exercise, it was hard to think of what to do.

She felt a strong desire to create a resource that would support women at every stage—whether they’re generally trying to stay fit, pregnant, or recovering postnatally. Her goal is to assist women in optimizing their training by understanding their bodies and hormones, a cause she is truly passionate about pursuing.

She aimed to help more women understand their bodies by offering workouts, advice on adjusting training routines for different life stages, tracking menstrual cycles, and guidance on managing perimenopause and menopause. Despite the challenges of entering the world of entrepreneurship, which was quite different from her athletic career, she enjoyed diving into this new field.

She quickly recognized that this was the place where she wanted to nurture her entrepreneurial spirit. Finally, she took a leap of faith and embarked on a new chapter, launching her startup.

What was her start-up? 

After stepping away from athletics in 2016, Ennis focused on building a business. By 2019, she and her co-founder Jane Cowmeadow launched Jennis, a UK-based platform focused on women’s hormonal health.

Jennis is a wellness app designed to help women enhance their hormonal health and fitness with intelligent training programs tailored for every stage of their lives. By collaborating with leading experts in women’s hormonal health, Jennis offers programs that empower women to understand their bodies and hormones better. It provides guidance on how to train, eat, and sleep for optimal hormonal well-being.

Leading to a Successive Startup:

Ennis’ users have observed impressive changes:

• 72% saw a decrease in negative symptoms.
• 55% gained more motivation to be physically active.
• 61% increased the number of active days per month.
• 77% felt an improvement in their mood.

Ennis has made a difference for millions. What makes her story truly inspiring is that, instead of overlooking the gap, she pursued a solution and ultimately founded a million-dollar worth company filling that gap.

Jessica Ennis-Hill is a champion in both athletics and entrepreneurship.