Sasha Ottey, MHA, MLS (ASCP) Founder and Executive Director PCOS Challenge: The National Polycystic Ovary Syndrome Association

PCOS Challenge serves nearly 60,000 members and is the leading patient advocacy organization for people with PCOS. As Executive Director of PCOS Challenge, Sasha has had a significant global influence on PCOS awareness, education, advocacy, health policy and patient-focused drug development. Sasha created the PCOS Awareness Symposium, the largest event dedicated to PCOS, which has educated thousands of patients and healthcare professionals about PCOS since 2013. Sasha has also helped develop one of the most extensive multimedia bodies of evidence-based content dedicated to PCOS. As part of PCOS Challenge’s legislative advocacy efforts, Sasha helped form the Bipartisan Congressional PCOS Caucus in the U.S. Congress. She helped build a coalition of over 70 major national and international health organizations and led the first successful PCOS legislative advocacy effort in the U.S. Congress. Under Sasha’s leadership, PCOS Challenge is currently developing the PCOS National Health Policy Agenda, advancing research through its patient registry and working on the PCOS Voice of the Patient Report for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration based on the organization’s recent Externally-Led Patient-Focused Drug Development Meeting on PCOS. Sasha’s work in the field focuses on improving care, patient-centered research into understudied areas of PCOS, increasing research funding, driving innovation, and working with industry partners to accelerate the development and approval of safe and effective treatments, diagnostics and technology for PCOS.

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).