Founder and Executive Director
PCOS Challenge: The National Polycystic Ovary Syndrome Association

Sasha Ottey is Founder and Executive Director of PCOS Challenge: The National Polycystic Ovary Syndrome Association.

Serving nearly 60,000 members, PCOS Challenge is the leading patient support and advocacy organization for women and girls with PCOS. The organization touches the lives of women with PCOS and their supporters each year through television and radio programming, support groups, grants, health screenings and awareness, education and advocacy initiatives. Since PCOS Challenge began in 2008, the organization has helped women overcome struggles with infertility, weight gain, hirsutism, anxiety and depression and reduce their risk for life-threatening related conditions including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer.

Sasha started PCOS Challenge after she was diagnosed with PCOS and experienced great dissatisfaction with the availability of support resources for women with the condition. As Executive Director of PCOS Challenge, Sasha built a coalition of over 70 major national and international health organizations and led the first successful legislative advocacy effort in the U.S. Congress to recognize the seriousness of PCOS, the need for further research, improved treatment and care options, and for a cure for PCOS and to designate September as PCOS Awareness Month. Sasha also created the PCOS Awareness Symposium, the largest event globally dedicated to polycystic ovary syndrome, which has educated thousands of patients and healthcare professionals about PCOS since 2013. In 2018, Sasha helped organize the first International Conference on PCOS in India for both patients and healthcare providers.

Sasha is a Clinical and Research Microbiologist with a Bachelor’s degree in Clinical Laboratory Science from Howard University and a Master’s in Health Administration from the University of Phoenix. Prior to founding PCOS Challenge, Sasha was a contract research microbiologist at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).