Ask me about maternal health at work
- Member since 2022
- Now a Resident Desk member
- FIT MAMA app, launched 2023
Member spotlight · · 2 min read
From intensive care nurse to maternal health founder
Mari Carmen · Founder, Matresa and Mari Carmen Fitness
"1 Mill Street have nailed down what good culture looks like"
The business
Mari Carmen started her career in paediatric intensive care at Birmingham Children's Hospital. Nursing, and then her own maternity experience, showed her how little support there is for women after birth, so she set out to fill the gap.
She qualified as a postnatal fitness coach in 2018 and runs Mari Carmen Fitness, pre- and postnatal coaching across Warwickshire. In January 2023 she launched FIT MAMA, a motherhood app covering everything from pregnancy to menopause.
Her newest business, Matresa, takes the same mission into the workplace: a diagnostic platform that helps employers build proper maternal health support ahead of the 2027 changes to UK employment law.
Biggest win
Getting people to listen. Mari Carmen writes on LinkedIn about the gaps in postnatal care and the misleading language of maternity leave, and one post reached 80,000 people. She has also attended an All-Party Parliamentary Group on Baby Loss session in the House of Lords, reviewing Baroness Amos's maternity investigation.
What Mill Street changed
Mari Carmen joined in 2022 on a Lite membership and has just moved up to a Resident Desk. In her words, it's "not only a space to work and be creative but also find support on hard days and connect with others on similar journeys."
