Tina Beilinson is the Co-founder and CEO of Seven Starling, a digital platform making high-quality mental healthcare more accessible for new mothers and caregivers. After spending six years at Warby Parker, Tina founded Seven Starling while pursuing her MBA at Harvard Business School. Seven Starling offers specialized therapy, peer support, and in-app exercises to treat common perinatal mood disorders like postpartum depression and anxiety. The company is active in the Washington, DC, Virginia, and Maryland areas and will be expanding to another 10+ states this year. 

The Pulse: Could you tell me about your background and how you became involved in entrepreneurship and health care?

Tina Beilinson: I’m originally from Kazakhstan, where my family ended up after the Holocaust. When I was six years old, we were granted asylum to come to the US. We landed in Cleveland because there was a big Jewish community there that was helping recent immigrants get settled. Both of my parents became entrepreneurs by necessity. Growing up, I watched them hustle to create a future for our family. My dad built a successful small business in bathroom fixtures and accessories, and now he employs recent immigrants in our local community. 

My parents have been super inspirational to me in terms of starting my own business. I always knew that someday I would start a company that was focused on doing good in the world. I started my career in management consulting, which was a great way to get a handle on the business world, but very quickly I realized I wanted to have more impact with my work. I was lucky that my next career move was to join Warby Parker in the early days. I spent about six years there, and had an absolutely amazing experience, including working very closely with Neil [Blumenthal, WG ’10] and Dave [Gilboa, WG ’10]. My primary role was running large growth initiatives, so I did everything from expanding to our first international market to launching our first telemedicine offering that allowed customers to take a vision test on their phone. I became inspired by the impact that technology can have on consumers, especially when you think about access to care and affordability. 

At that point I realized that I wanted to focus my career in digital health, and I was ready to take the next step on my own in my entrepreneurial journey. But my parents, being recent immigrants, said “you’re not quitting your job.” So I decided to take a less risky approach to starting a company. I applied to MBA programs, and was lucky enough to get into Harvard Business School. 

The Pulse: The mission of your company is closely related to this year’s conference theme, “the empowered healthcare consumer.” How did you come up with the idea? 

TB: I met my co-founders Sophia Richter and Julia Cole in business school, and what brought us together was the lack of innovation in women’s health and maternal care, and our desire to create change in this space. So many people around us were going through the pregnancy and postpartum journey and didn’t have the right support, resources, community, and education to feel empowered. That insight led us to start Seven Starling, with the core thesis that group-based care and community can drive better health outcomes. 

Group therapy is super powerful for us for two reasons. First, it is lower cost of care, which increases access for patients. But most importantly, it drives better outcomes – we’ve found that people who are part of a group stay longer and are more engaged in their care.

The Pulse: How did you come up with the name of your company?

TB: The company is named after starlings, birds that are known for creating murmurations, which are formations of hundreds of birds coming together to create beautiful shapes. The way that starlings stay together is by following their seven closest neighbors. At Seven Starling, our average group therapy cohort size is seven, so the name is a nod to community and to something bigger than yourself. 

The Pulse: That’s such a great story! I would love to hear about the Seven Starling services and how they’ve evolved since you founded the company. 

TB: Seven Starling is a digital maternal mental health clinic that has community at the center of the experience. We combine specialized providers – licensed therapists who have perinatal expertise – with a blended care model that includes both individual and group therapy appointments. We also have an app with learning lessons, CBT-inspired exercises, meditations, and journaling prompts designed to support the specific care journey that people are going through. 

When we first started, our offering was a little different. It was a general maternity offering and we were offering virtual support groups for expecting and new mothers, led by doulas. Then we found that we had many women coming to us because they were suffering from mental health conditions like anxiety, depression, or trauma. We realized that while our doulas were amazing resources, they were not trained to support more acute patient mental health needs. An important thing to understand about our patient population is that 94% of people who are experiencing postpartum depression, anxiety, paranoia, or anxiety disorders are not in a state to seek care because they feel so much shame and guilt. They feel like they’re failing as a parent, but the sad reality is that these experiences are so common. One in three women face mental health challenges during the pregnancy and postpartum period, but 85% of them aren’t getting treatment. This massive care gap is the opposite of patient empowerment. 

At first, we tried connecting people to a mental health resource, but that idea completely failed because there really wasn’t anyone out there specializing in this patient population, let alone providing affordable behavioral health care. We saw that there was a big opportunity that we were well-positioned to solve, and we refocused the company on maternal mental health at the end of 2021. We have also evolved from focusing on just the postpartum period to supporting all stages of the motherhood journey, including preconception, miscarriage and loss, pregnancy, postpartum, and early parenthood. 

The Pulse: I understand that getting insurance coverage for your services was a big moment for Seven Starling. Could you tell me more about how you partner with payers? 

TB: Absolutely. First and foremost, our mission is to make high quality mental health care more accessible for people who are going through the motherhood journey. As I mentioned earlier, one in three new moms will suffer from postpartum depression, or a perinatal mood and anxiety disorder, and these figures are up significantly from a few years ago. These mental health challenges are driving over $14B of additional health care costs in our system every year, and unfortunately poor birth outcomes are a big component of those costs. However, now that researchers have established a link between untreated maternal mental health conditions and poor birth outcomes, the long-term impact on child development, and the economic cost of moms not going back to work, payers are finally paying attention. We’ve been fortunate to secure partnerships with health plans much more quickly than we anticipated, which enables us to come back to our mission of making this care more accessible and affordable. With these partnerships, we can offer our programs to clients at a fraction of the cost while paying our providers competitively for the high-quality care they provide. 

The Pulse: That’s great. What else is next for Seven Starling? Any other projects that you’re excited about or future directions coming up soon?

TB: Yes! There are a few big areas we’re focusing on next. Number one, we are bringing medication management in-house so that we can provide medical evaluations and ongoing management for people who benefit from this type of treatment. We will also be able to address the misinformation and stigma around taking medications during pregnancy or breastfeeding with our evidence-based approach to make sure that women can access the medications they need confidently and safely. 

We’re also going to be expanding our geographical reach. We’re currently supporting patients in DC, Maryland, and Virginia. Next year, we’ll be launching in at least ten states, starting with New York, Texas and California. We’re really excited about supporting patients in those markets and making care more accessible for them. 

Our final focus is to continue scaling both our OB/GYN referral network and our partnerships with health systems and payers so that we can support their maternity programs in bigger and broader ways. We believe this is the next frontier for us. 

The Pulse: One last big picture question. If you could redesign part of our healthcare system, what changes would you want to see? 

TB: Maternal outcomes are such a huge problem in the U.S. – we have the worst outcomes and highest cost of care of any developed country. A big part of fixing this will be aligning incentives across the healthcare system and more collaboration across OB/GYNs, specialty care providers, and mental health providers. Currently, OB/GYNs have so much on their plates and are expected to support everything from women’s ongoing primary care to helping them through their motherhood journeys. They often don’t get reimbursed for any postpartum visits or time outside of the 6-week postpartum checkup.  For us, there is so much opportunity to partner with OB/Gyns and health plans to help stitch all these pieces together and create a more cohesive experience that puts the patient at the center. To do this, we will need to move towards a more value-based care model, with a team of providers supporting one patient and driving the best outcomes for them. I think we’re far away from that today, but we know from the research that behavioral health is a huge part of that journey. There is a lot to be figured out with connecting all the data and research together, but there’s also so much opportunity to deliver better outcomes for patients. And we’re working to do just that!

Interviewed by Elena Butler, December 2022.

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On Feb 16-17, 2023, Wharton is excited to feature more expert perspectives at our annual Wharton Health Care Business Conference. This year’s theme is ‘The Empowered Health Care Consumer’. Conference details and early-bird tickets are available here.