Abstract teal and purple waveform artwork.
Our story

We build smart tech for new moms

Lilu creates products that support parents through the transition to new parenthood. We started with breastfeeding and pumping because it is one of the hardest parts, and one of the least served by technology.

We’re Adriana C. Vázquez Ortiz and Sujay Suresh Kumar, engineers from MIT and Penn. We hail from Mexico and India respectively, and we met during our graduate programs at UPenn, where we were labmates working on creative robotics projects together.

Having watched friends and colleagues struggle with breast pump technology, we set out to understand the problem properly. We spent hundreds of hours on research, spoke with hundreds of moms in person and surveyed thousands more. What we found was that pump technology was severely outdated, and that the same pain points came up again and again.

Over the years, we’ve developed a work partnership built on trust, candor, and a shared commitment to getting the product right. We listen closely to parents, to our users, and to what the market is telling us — and then we challenge each other’s assumptions about what to do with what we’ve learned. Ideas at Lilu never move forward without being questioned, and tested by users and experts.

And we have never built any of it alone. We have been extraordinarily lucky to work with people who believed in this mission and worked hard at it — engineers, designers, lactation experts, marketers and operators who each made the products better for moms. Some are still here, many have moved on to other things. You all know who you are, and we are grateful to every one of you.

Adriana and Sujay with a fellow founder outside the Y Combinator office.
At Y Combinator, in the early days.
Adriana presenting on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt while Sujay demonstrates the Lilu Massage Bra on a dress form.
Demoing the Massage Bra at TechCrunch Disrupt, San Francisco.
The team

Who is building Lilu

Engineers, designers and parents working on lactation support that fits real life.

Adriana C. Vázquez

Co-CEO & Co-founder

Adriana is a product designer with a keen sense for listening to users and understanding their needs. She received her Master’s in Integrated Product Design at the University of Pennsylvania and a BS from MIT in Math with Computer Science. She has experience in project management and software development at Morgan Stanley, algorithmic research at BMW, and UX design at a NYC health and lifestyle startup. Adriana has represented Lilu at SXSW and TechCrunch Battlefield, and is a Tory Burch fellow.

Sujay Suresh Kumar

Co-CEO & Co-founder

Sujay is an engineer whose work lies at the intersection of technology and health. He has a Master’s in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and at the High Energy Physics Group at UPenn he designed circuits for the ATLAS experiment at CERN. Before Lilu he co-founded Jyothi, a nonprofit in India supporting survivors of harassment and assault, and worked at Reliance Jio Infocomm on the team that launched 4G in India. He spent two years in Shenzhen working closely with manufacturers to bring the Lilu Massage Bra to market.

Ian Daley

Product Engineer

Ian is a multidisciplinary engineer working on medical device development, with an M.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Columbia University. He has experience in CAD design, prototyping and testing for rehabilitation and mobility-focused technologies, and is drawn to building human-centered devices that improve patient outcomes.

Jennifer Enriquez

User Research

Jennifer works at the intersection of product, people and revenue. She started in early-stage product and R&D building technology for postpartum moms, leading the user research for her master’s capstone — interviewing new mothers and running structured discovery sessions to turn what she heard into product decisions. She went on to a founding go-to-market role at a seed-stage hardware company, working directly with engineers and founders to shape how they reached customers. Whether she is speaking with a mom navigating a new journey with her baby or an engineering team building the next generation of robotics, the job is the same: listen carefully, ask better questions, and bridge the gap between innovation and real-world adoption.

Josephine Odusanya

LifeSci NYC Intern

Josephine is a mechatronics and robotics engineer working on wearable hardware and medical technology, with a particular interest in assistive applications. She holds an M.S. in Mechatronics and Robotics Engineering from NYU, where she built systems at the intersection of embedded sensing, mechanical design and human-centred use, including custom software for blind and low-vision users. At Lilu she works on electromechanical prototyping, instrumented performance validation and data acquisition, translating feedback from postpartum mothers into product decisions.

Jesse Iozzio

LifeSci NYC Intern

Early days

The people who advised us

These are the people who advised Lilu in its earliest years, when the questions were hardest and the company was smallest. They gave us their expertise in the clinic, on the factory floor, and everywhere in between. None of them advise Lilu today, and we are still grateful.

Clinical

Diane L. Spatz, PhD

Director of the Lactation Program

Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

Strategy

Kara Forney

Founder, TheBump

Later acquired by The Knot (XO Group)

Supply chain

Sharrie Lister-Booker

Urban Outfitters · Nike

Design

Angie Kim

IDEO

Marketing

Christina Teo

Yahoo

Apparel

Irene Mak

Victoria’s Secret · FIT

Roles and affiliations are as they were at the time. These organisations are named to identify each person’s background and do not indicate any endorsement of Lilu.

How we got here

Built with support along the way

Lilu’s research and mission have been supported by grants, fellowships, early-stage angels and investors, and competitions since the very first prototype.

  • 2016 Penn iDesign Competition, first prize
  • Y Combinator Fellowship
  • 2017 NSF National I-Corps
  • Ben Franklin Technology Partners
  • 2018 AlphaLab Gear
  • Philips Health Impact Award
  • Ignitia, first prize
  • 2020 PitchHER
  • 2021 NSF SBIR Phase I
  • 2023 NSF SBIR Phase II
  • NSF I-Perf and TECP