From Gold Medals To Groundbreaking Medicine: A Q&A With Jenn Heil

She’s no stranger to the podium—but these days, Olympic Champion Jenn Heil is taking her winning mindset from the slopes to the startup world. Recently named Chef de Mission for the upcoming Olympic Games, the Vancouver local is also the co-founder and CEO of Rya Health, a revolutionary AI-powered platform making Olympic-level healthcare accessible to women across Canada. We caught up with Jenn to talk about her leap from elite athletics to digital health, the gender gap in traditional medicine, and why she’s on a mission to ensure women receive the care they deserve. —Noa Nichol

1. Congratulations on being named Chef de Mission! What does this new leadership role mean to you personally and professionally?

Thank you—it’s a full circle moment. It’s an honor to lead our team on the global stage and to stand for Canadian values of integrity, resilience, and unity, especially when those values are being tested. Sport plays a powerful role in uniting our country and I’m proud to amplify the voices of our athletes preparing to perform in Milan/Cortina.

2. From Olympic podiums to launching Rya Health—what inspired your leap into the world of health tech?

I saw a huge gap. Elite athletes have access to integrated, expert care. Most women—especially those caring for entire families—are left to figure it out alone. That disconnect drove me to Stanford to dive into AI and innovation. I wanted to scale the Olympic model of care for every woman, not just the lucky few.

3. Rya Health is described as bringing Olympic-quality care to Canadian women. What does that look like in practice?

Just like I had a physiologist, nutritionist, sport psychologist, and doctor working together to keep me healthy and performing, Rya gives women their own virtual care team—AI agents modeled on real experts, trained on their unique health data. For example, you can speak to an AI physiologist who is already an expert on your health. Like an athlete’s support team, it delivers personalized, proactive care for sleep, mood, hormones, metabolism and more—available on-demand, no appointments needed.

4. How has your experience as an elite athlete informed the way you approach health, performance, and now, innovation in healthcare?

As an athlete, I had to know my body and invest in it daily. Now, I want to give women that same chance—to relate to their health in new ways and optimize their energy, strength, and quality of life, rather than to just get by. With AI, we can finally scale high-performance health support that was once exclusive and make it accessible to all.

5. The healthcare system has historically been designed around male physiology. How does Rya Health address this gap for women?

We’re not patching a broken system—we’re building a new paradigm that is rooted in women-specific data and expert knowledge. Rather than waiting for the medical system to catch-up, we can already provide female-specific expertise based on each woman’s unique needs. This means that each user is not being treated as an “average” in a system that has been built predominantly on male physiologies. Rya delivers care that adapts to each woman’s physiologies and needs. It’s precision health, not one-size-fits-all. 

6. What role does AI play in Rya Health, and how do you ensure technology remains empathetic and personalized in such a sensitive space?

AI lets us scale expert care in a way the system simply can’t because practitioners are scarce. We have worked hard to mitigate risks of using AI. For example, our expert agents are not bots—they are designed by the expert and continuously guided by them. We’re not diagnosing; we’re delivering smart, personalized insights and real access to knowledge. Our whole model is based on delivering a new standard in personalization which is built on centralizing a user’s health information and driving insights based on their specific physiologies and context. AI lets us deliver a new experience. I firmly believe that if you are intentional about building empathy and trust into technology you can achieve it. Our whole team is laser focused on making this a reality from how we tune our models to which experts are on our platform.

7. You’ve described Rya as affordable and accessible—two major barriers in women’s health. How does your platform remove those obstacles?

By removing the bottleneck of expert availability. With AI-trained expert agents, women can access tailored support anytime, at a fraction of the cost. No waitlists, just help when you need it. In order to keep it accessible, we have a free version and pricing starts at $8 per person per month.

8. What have been some of the biggest challenges in transitioning from athlete to CEO—and what skills have translated surprisingly well?

Letting go of perfection was hard. In sport, everything was measured to the 1/100th of a point. In entrepreneurship, it’s about progress over polish. But my discipline, vision, and team building—those skills from sport serve me in leadership daily. I love the process of setting audacious objectives and rallying to achieve them—that isn’t specific to any one domain.

9. What are your hopes for the impact Rya Health can have—not just for women in Canada, but globally?

I want Rya to become the standard for health management that is both precise and scalable. Starting with women, then every household. I see a future where families own and control their health data, where AI helps us manage aging, care transitions, and ongoing needs with clarity and confidence. I hope we become a catalyst for change—where high-quality, equitable care is the norm.

10. Finally, what message do you hope to share with young women—whether they’re athletes, entrepreneurs, or simply advocating for their own health?

Your voice is your power. In healthcare, too many women are taught to stay quiet and to not advocate. If we speak loudly enough, not only can we get the care we deserve but we change the system. I would also just add that it’s essential to trust your instincts whether in athletics, entrepreneurship or managing your health. I’ve had to learn that lesson a few times over.