How Birkbeck alumna is championing better support for menopausal women
Becky Cotton (MRes Government, Policy and Politics, 2008) has spent her career advocating for better access to mental health support. After co-founding her own company Lumino, she is in a position where she can develop unique support for women’s health problems, specifically symptoms of menopause, to be accessed more widely.
For Becky Cotton, advocating for and securing change for people’s mental health has always been her motivation throughout her career.
Having worked in mental health policy for the NHS Confederation, she was instrumental in securing major policy commitments throughout different Governments as well as increasing mental health funding.
She said: “Mental health has always been my passion and the thing that has really driven me.
“We live in one of the richest countries in the world and we are already increasingly grateful for the NHS that is there for us when we are unwell.
“But it’s still the case that at any one time, one in five people are experiencing a mental health crisis.
“Too few people are experiencing treatment for that. It has improved but it’s nowhere near where we need it to be.
“Given that’s my motivation to see these numbers shift, policy was a good way of advocating for and securing change.”
She credits her time at Birkbeck at helping her drive forward her career in public policy.
She said: “The field I was working in in mental health policy was really competitive and I knew a Masters was going to help in my career.
“Birkbeck really does allow people to undertake that level of study while working. I was never going to be able to fit a degree around a full-time job at another university and If I did, I couldn’t live in London. I am really glad I did it.”
Driven by her desire to run her own company and with the Brexit referendum taking place in 2016, causing the “oxygen going into the conversation about mental health to evaporate”, Becky knew it was the right time for her to move on after more than a decade at the NHS Confederation.
She then embarked on a Master’s in Business Management, thanks to a scholarship from the Sainsbury Family Charitable Trust, which started her entrepreneurial journey.
She said: “It introduced me to entrepreneurship. I got to know people who were running their own companies.
“That was an idea in the back of my head as another vehicle of driving change.”
In 2018, Becky was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to explore how digital technology is being used to improve mental health in Australia and the USA.
She said: “I have always been interested in digital therapeutics. There’s a fundamental challenge in mental health services in that the treatment provided is provided by people, and that’s important to have that relationship.
“But the model we have for delivering treatment and care is so dependent on people, it makes it difficult to scale up access unless you have vast numbers.
“It’s increasingly difficult to see that happening in an environment where funding is flat.
“The question is how we might use digital therapeutics to upscale access? How could we turn some elements of somebody’s treatment digital to access in a self-guided way?
“It’s not about removing people from that process. It’s about using those psychologists and mental health professionals more efficiently.”
To help tackle these challenges and offer scalable and sustainable mental healthcare through digital therapeutic programmes, Becky co-founded start-up Lumino with senior strategist and technologist Mo Morgan in 2020.
In this new sector with products launching to help people living with insomnia and diabetes, it was Becky and Mo’s vision to specifically tackle women’s health challenges.
Lumino’s first product, Seren, is currently in development and provides self-guided cognitive behavioural therapy for anyone dealing with menopause symptoms.
Personalised programmes, all on an app on a phone, help people deal with hot flushes to night sweats, from sleep problems to stress.
Becky said: “Treatment for menopause is very underserved. It’s often the case that people’s experiences of going through the menopause can be very difficult.
“HRT can be incredibly helpful for an awful lot of people but there is a good evidence base for other sorts of treatments around the same time. Psychological therapies can be very helpful either for somebody who is taking HRT and still experiencing symptoms or for those people who can’t take HRT at all.
“Women over 50 in this country are the fastest growing demographic in the workforce. There’s a huge number of women who currently are not getting the treatment and care that they likely need and if we can make a difference in terms of improving access to helpful treatment, that can only be a good thing.
“We want to make a difference to the lives of all those women who aren’t getting the support they would otherwise benefit from.”
In 2023, Becky was named as the winner of Innovate UK’s Women in Innovation award, recognising trailblazing women entrepreneurs, which she said gave her a “huge vote of confidence in a challenging world”.
Giving her advice to budding entrepreneurs, she said: “You don’t have to leave your job to dip your toe in the water and see if it might be for you.
“Just start. Don’t be shy in seeking resources out and find the communities of people who are on the same journey as you. Community really matters.”