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By Katherine Fung
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Carolyn Wheeler runs a sexual wellness company, but if you ask, she'll tell you she's in the business of words.
"I've always seen it as sort of a literacy project," she said of Vella Bioscience. "The more words that exist to describe a woman's body, the better our bodies will get taken care of."
Wheeler, who currently serves as CEO, will be the first to admit that even she lacked the language when she began pursuing this line of work.
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"I didn't know what female arousal was, and I considered myself an educated person," she told Newsweek. "I realized if I don't know what it is, then most other people probably don't either."
Wheeler co-founded Vella in 2020 with two industry experts: Dr. Harin Padma-Nathan, the lead investigator for clinical trials for Viagra and Cialis, and serial entrepreneur Nial DeMena, who also co-founded Manna Molecular Science, a cannabis extract pharmaceutical manufacturer.
In comparison, Wheeler's path to femtech is less clear-cut. After growing up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, she moved to Maine for college, then to New York to work in publishing. She would move again to Boston, where she completed a master's degree in landscape architecture at Harvard, before heading back south to her hometown to start a family.
But to Wheeler, each of those transitions underscores a larger theme.
"I like building things that have a purpose," the 40-year-old said. And that explains how she ended up at Vella, a company aimed at advancing women's sexual empowerment through a science-first approach.
"I don't think this company could have existed had we brought in people with a lot of experience, who have done this before," Wheeler said. "This requires an entire new way of thinking that [pure industry] experience would never have led to."
"Every time you hear a conversation about female Viagra, they're [usually] talking about a solution for libido, something to make you horny," she said. "But that's not what Viagra does for men. So, why is it that when we have a conversation about a women's body, it becomes something about our brains and not just about genitalia?"
Because innovation in the field of sexual health typically requires people to put aside common generalizations, it's true that experience can be a hindrance.
Photo-illustration by Newsweek/Canva/Courtesy of Hers
Vella's flagship product is its Women's Pleasure Serum, a topical arousal and orgasm cream that increases blood flow in the same way that Viagra does.
"The serum uses a technology called liposomes—tiny bubbles made of the same fat molecules that make up our cells," Dr. Maria Uloko, a urologist and member of Vella's scientific advisory board, told Newsweek. "You can think of them as microscopic delivery vehicles."
"Vella's scientists figured out how to load these bubbles with CBD and make them stable enough to work on skin and vaginal tissue. That means the active ingredient can actually get where it needs to go, instead of just sitting on the surface," Uloko said. "The result is a product that's effective, condom-safe and designed to enhance arousal in a way that's truly backed by science."
Clinical studies conducted by Padma-Nathan, who serves as Vella's chief medical officer, show that 90 percent of women aged 23 to 61 reported an improvement in orgasm and that 60 percent reported an increase in arousal when using the serum.
"The first time I bought the arousal cream was probably nine months to a year ago," a 52-year-old Vella customer from Olathe, Kansas told Newsweek. "It just relaxes you and helps you with feeling more sensations."
She said she had tried other creams on the market after suffering libido issues during menopause, but those only gave her a "tingly, almost bothersome" feeling. Sissy Chacon, a certified sex coach, agreed that while there are other products that enhance pleasure, "Vella's is exceptionally powerful."
Chacon, a former stylist, embarked on a journey to help others talk and improve their sex lives after she experienced her own "sexual reawakening" in her late 40s.
"It ended up transforming my whole life," she told Newsweek.
Chacon, who recently received her certification, is excited to recommend Vella's serum to female clients who are seeking more reliable or intense orgasms or those who might lack experience or confidence. She also thinks it would be an effective product for women in perimenopause or menopause.
"The pleasure serum can help enhance and heighten pleasurable sensations, which can help you get more out of your head, become embodied and make climax more likely," Chacon said.
While she doesn't want clients to become entirely reliant on the serum, she said it could help people "learn more about their body's response to pleasure and to help them tune into what's happening throughout the sexual response cycle."
Ultimately, "an orgasm isn't something you achieve or something someone gives you," she said. "It's an experience you allow yourself to have when you surrender to pleasure."
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Uloko decided to pursue her career in sexual health after treating cancer patients as a urologist.
"I loved supporting patients not only through treatment, but in the life they built afterward," she explained. "For many, sexual dysfunction became one of the biggest challenges they faced once the cancer was gone. Helping them reclaim intimacy and pleasure showed me how essential sexual health is to overall wellbeing."
But sexual health issues don't only pop up after major scares. Sometimes, it works in reverse: researchers have found that erectile dysfunction can signal serious underlying conditions, like heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
"[Sexual wellbeing] is an integral part of one's overall health and longevity," Wheeler said. "For men, [erectile dysfunction] is a canary in the coal mine for male cardiovascular disease. The same may be true for women, we just don't have the studies yet."
"Women's health has been underfunded and understudied for decades, often because of systemic sexism in medicine," Uloko said. "Too many companies cut corners, but Vella has invested in doing the research and translating that into safe, effective products. They're proving that when you treat women's pleasure with the same scientific rigor as any other area of health, you can actually create innovations that change lives."
Last year, Vella announced a Consortium for the Study of Women's Sexual Wellness, an initiative aimed to support research, education and public awareness of sexual health and wellness, as well as to enable healthcare providers and customers to directly research protocols and products.
Wheeler told Newsweek the 10 renowned experts were brought together to help inform Vella's research and innovation so that the brand "can create truly meaningful products... that are informed by discovery and that are closing the women's health research gap."
She said she anticipates consumer product goods to play a big role "because there's so much that has to be developed."
"It's an untapped white space that has real consumer value," she said.
Wheeler chuckled as she reflected on the last few years. For some reason, she said, it's still easier for her to explain female sexual arousal to men than to women.
"It's not their body, but it was an easier conceptual jump for [men]," Wheeler explained. "For a lot of women, who are having to unlearn or rethink a lot of conceptions—which is not to say women are stupid by any stretch of the imagination—it's that lack of words."
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