Closing the Gap: Meet Lori Brotto, Founder & President of eSense Health
tl;dr
Lori Brotto, Founder & President of eSense Health, is on a mission to close the health gap for women, starting with the sexual health struggles too many suffer through in silence.
A clinician-scientist long before she was a founder, Lori built eSense Health after one patient asked her the question that changed everything: what about the millions of other women living with the same problem?
Relational, research-driven, and deeply personal in her approach to leadership, Lori is proof that founders don't have to leave their humanity at the door to build something that lasts.
Some founders start with a business plan. Lori Brotto started with a waiting room full of women who had nowhere else to turn. For years, as a clinician and scientist, she watched women quietly carry the weight of sexual health struggles the world preferred not to talk about or simply never asked about at all. eSense Health became her answer: a way to take what she had learned in the clinic and put it into the hands of the millions of women who could never get an appointment with her.
The Moment Everything Changed
Lori set out to help one patient. Then another. Somewhere along the way, she started counting how many more there were. Misinformation and dismissal surrounding women's health, particularly women's sexual health, is what frustrated her enough to dedicate years of her life to fighting it.
The turning point came in a single conversation. A patient thanked her for helping her overcome sexual dysfunction, then asked the question Lori couldn't shake: what was she doing for the millions of other women dealing with the same thing? That question became the seed of eSense Health, a company built to scale one clinician's compassion into something that could reach far beyond her own practice.
"I've been able to learn so much about business and entrepreneurship amidst a full-time academic portfolio, teaching, and clinical practice," Lori says of the leap, a reminder that she didn't set aside her research career to become a founder. She built the company on top of it, in the hours most people reserve for rest.
Leading with Relationship, Not Just Results
Ask Lori what has evolved most since she started the company, and she doesn't point to a pivot or a product decision. She points to people. She describes her leadership style as being highly relational, known for elevating the voices of those who are often ignored or dismissed, and says that instinct has only deepened at eSense, where the team works hard to keep women's voices at the center of everything they build.
It shows up in how she hires, too. When bringing on early employees, advisors, or executives, credentials come second; alignment with the mission of closing the health gap for women comes first. And when asked what she's proudest of, she skips the metrics entirely. Her trainees and team find her relatable, accessible, compassionate, and caring, an achievement no pitch deck could ever capture.
What Founders Don't Show You
Behind eSense's momentum is a founder who has paid for it in ways that don't show up on a cap table. Lori describes the toughest decision she's had to make so far as saying no to other opportunities to make space for starting the company, and the sacrifice most people never see: late nights away from her family to work on eSense.
There was a moment when funding was running out, when she came close to giving up entirely. What kept her going wasn't a pitch deck breakthrough. It was the possibility of a "yes" from an investor, and the inspiration she drew from hearing other founders' stories when hers felt hardest to tell. That "yes" eventually came in the form of eSense's lead angel investor, whose belief in Lori, not just the business, changed the company's trajectory. Hearing that someone believed in her that much, she says, is one of the conversations that has stayed with her ever since.
She's also learned the harder lessons of leadership, chief among them that not everyone will carry the same passion for the cause that she does. And she's had to push back on assumptions about who gets to be a founder at all. One misconception she runs into often: that scientists can't be founders, and that there's inherently a conflict of interest when they try. Lori's career is the counterargument.
Why This Work Matters
What drives Lori is specific: the long waitlist of women seeking treatment who can't get it, and the even longer, quieter list who never seek care at all because of shame and stigma. That's what keeps her committed on the difficult days.
Building eSense has also opened her eyes to how much research stays buried in academic journals, inaccessible to the people it could help most.
Lori's path from clinician-scientist to founder is a reminder that the most durable companies are built by people who were solving the problem long before they had a business plan for it. One patient's question set the whole thing in motion, and she refused to stop until the answer reached everyone who needed it. It's also a quiet challenge to founders everywhere: leadership doesn't require abandoning relationality for results, and the sacrifices founders make in private are as much a part of the company's story as any funding round.
At Disruption Magazine, we celebrate founders like Lori Brotto, who turn clinical expertise into conviction, and conviction into a company built to close a gap the world has ignored for far too long.
