Fruitful & Multiplying

In this special episode, Chloe Harrouche shares her inspiring journey from facing a shocking breast cancer diagnosis at just 23 years old to founding The Lanby , a groundbreaking reimagining of primary care. Chloe opens up about her passion for medicine, her experiences as a patient navigating the healthcare system, and the gaps she discovered in preventive and integrative care. From advocating fo...

In this raw, funny, and affirming episode, Elana talks with Leah McKendrick, writer, director, and star of Scrambled, a new movie about one woman's experience freezing her eggs as a single woman in her thirties. You don't want to miss hearing all about the way some women in Hollywood discover this as an option, Leah's take on her own experience with the egg freezing process, and much more.

In this episode that is both touching and laugh out loud funny, host Elana Frank chats with Jen, Maya, and Gina, who each have an embryo donation story (either as donors or recipients) and have created a platform to help simplify and streamline the often confusing and complex family building option that many still don't even know about! Empower does education, emotional support, and matching for p...

Join us for a captivating episode as Judy Simon, a devoted dietitian specializing in fertility nutrition, shares her inspiring journey and unravels the crucial link between food and fertility. Delve into the depths of nutrition's role in optimizing fertility, as Judy discusses the impact of inflammation, personalized nutrition plans, the myths around weight and IVF success, and the importance of c...

Fertility treatment is not cheap. On average, a round of IVF costs between $15,000-$30,000. We know the inaccessibility of ART well here at JFF: after all, we give Jewish Fertility Foundation grants to make fertility treatment more affordable. Angela Rastegar shares a similar mission. She is democratizing fertility treatment through finance. After working as a Director of Circle Surrogacy and the...

Rachel Ginocchio is on a mission to make sex education about more than sex. As a puberty educator, Rachel teaches her students about the variety of paths parents take to have children, paths that many of us in the infertility community know well. Rachel has a Master’s Degree in Public Health with a specialization in maternal and child health. Before becoming a puberty educator, she directed two wo...

After Joe Cody shares experienced a personal journey with infertility full of both emotional and logistical challenges, he used his background in healthcare IT and digital health policy to tackle the frustrating issue of coordinating between various members of a fertility care team. In this episode, Joe shares his story and introduces Grain Fertility, an application that allows patients to aggrega...

Two-time National Book Award finalist Adele Griffin has written about everything from teen vampires to twin witches--and now surrogacy. The Favor is Adele's first novel written for adults and it is her most personal book yet. Inspired by her own experience with infertility and surrogacy, Adele has crafted a story that magically remains light while exploring heavy themes. In this episode, she discu...

In this eye-opening episode, we learn first about Ellen Gustafson's wild and jaw-dropping fertility journey, and then about the lack of fertility coverage for members of the US military and their partners. Ellen's personal experience led her to become a "go-to" for other military spouses and active members of the military who were trying to navigate the fertility landscape. From there, she met Kat...

Ashley Mareko knows surrogacy better than most. Not only does she work as program manager for Surrogacy First, a surrogacy agency, but Ashley has been a surrogate herself, four times. Listen to hear how she got "into" surrogacy after she heard about it for the first time, the ups and downs of her first (and second, and third, and fourth!) journeys, and why she has such a passion for doing this for...

Pelvic floor health and pelvic floor therapy are just starting to be understood as having immense benefits for treating infertility and improving reproductive health, as we learn in this enlightening and fun episode with Dr. Sujata Martin, MS OT and owner of Pelvic Soul. She and Elana get into the fascinating ways pelvic floor therapists with specialized training can provide fertility support and...

Dr. Rachel Rubin is not your run-of-the-mill urologist, as you'll quickly learn in this fascinating episode! Dr. Rubin (https://www.instagram.com/drrachelrubin) believes that education is empowerment, and, today, we have the amazing opportunity to learn from her about menopause. Listen to hear host Elana Frank and Dr. Rubin discuss the "orgasm gap", whether it's plausible that undergoing fertility...

Erez Baron is known as "The Surrogacy Guru", who many turn to for answers on this complex but important family building pathway. In this podcast, he shares the intimate details of his own story, from why he and his partner had to travel to the U.S. in the first place, to the awkward but positive 'first date' they had with their potential surrogate and her family, to deciding whose sperm and whose...

AI seems to be everywhere...including assisted reproductive technology! Daniella Gilboa was working on her PhD research when she realized the potential of data and AI in improving IVF care. She quickly transitioned from the world of academia to leading a start-up company. The company, AIVF, is already in some fertility clinics and the technology is helping embryologists with embryo selection (amon...

In this episode of Fruitful & Multiplying, Elana talks to Kathrin Folkendt, founder of FemTech Insider, arguably the main source for all femtech industry news and insights. We get the history of the term itself (and the slight controversy surrounding that term), the origin story of the extremely popular newsletter, but also the story of Ms. Folkendt and the ups and downs of her own journey wit...

Ali Prato is a powerhouse in the fertility community, and she shares frankly about the rollercoaster of her own secondary infertility experience, including the strain it put on her relationship with her husband, the isolation and confusion of multiple losses, and how she eventually channeled her frustration and experiences to found InfertileAF!

In this entertaining, eye-opening, and extremely touching interview, Trystan Reese, author and advocate, shares about everything from growing up in a small town, to his experience with transitioning, to his unique family building journey, including both adoption and trans pregnancy. You'll come away with new appreciation, understanding and respect for Trystan. Spend some time getting to know the w...

Buckle up for an emotional, insightful, and must-listen conversation about one strong woman's journey from an intense desire to grow her family to facing the unthinkable once she finally became pregnant. You will be riveted by this fascinating and intimate conversation that sheds light on what it was like for one person to choose termination for medical reasons, with all the twists and turns (the...

Elana chats with Abby Mercado and Krystin Hodgdon about their origin story (and their own fertility stories) and the founding of Rescripted, a global media platform for fertility and women's health, with a free, online community with science-backed content, tools, and resources for wherever people are on their fertility journey...and an in-house pharmacy to boot! They also discuss their their focu...

When, if ever, did you first have a conversation with your primary care physician or OB-GYN about your plans for having a child or children? Timing is everything, as Jessica Bell van der Wal explains. In her own experience, as a conscientious person who dutifully went on yearly well checks with her primary care physician, she realized that "Fertility never came up in any of those (well woman) visi...

Today we had the AWESOME opportunity to hear from our brilliant and talented Board Chair, Rachel Loftspring. Rachel is a Partner at Essig and Evans, a family law and fertility law firm, where she supports clients throughout their family-building journeys. We were so excited to learn more about Rachel’s unique experience as both a fertility attorney and the JFF board chair! Rachel shares her JFF “d...

Today's amazing "Fruitful & Multiplying" guest, Dr. Julie Bindeman, assists people through the journey of reproduction and all the bumps along the way including termination. As the co-founder and co-director of Integrative Therapy of Greater Washington, she also provides support to the infertility community by writing educational articles on mental health and infertility. Dr. Julie Bindeman sh...

Today we had the opportunity to meet Lauren Makler, the CEO and Co-Founder of Cofertility, an incredible company focused on making fertility preservation and third-party reproduction more accessible, human, and community-driven. Lauren has an amazing fertility story to share- including her sister freezing her eggs to donate to Lauren- which inspired her to shift her successful career and build thi...

What makes someone Jewish? From its painful historic connotations to its open invitation for exclusion, this is a loaded question. Yet, there is a deceptively simple answer: one is “technically” Jewish if their mother is Jewish. Of course, different sects of Judaism have different opinions on this answer. The complexity behind “What makes someone Jewish?” has only increased as artificial reproduct...

Today, we get a glimpse into Fabi Powell’s real and raw fertility journey, which began when Fabi and her husband Josh fell in love in 2014. The pair traveled, checked items off their bucket lists, and enjoyed their relationship. But in the background, cancer was looming. Upon learning of his diagnosis, Josh decided to preserve his sperm. Unfortunately, in 2016, Josh passed away from synovial sarco...