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The world Tammy Sun encountered before ever founding Carrot has now changed, and much for the better.
Education and culture around fertility have significantly evolved, and there is now more consciousness than ever about the importance of planned parenthood. There is still an accessibility gap, however, that threatens with stretching more and more in the future.
More than half of all Americans get their healthcare benefits through their job, and those benefits almost never include fertility practices.
So when Tammy realized the fertility space had been ignored for way too long and decided to do something about it, she knew it had to be through the largest healthcare distributor in the country - the job market.
Through comprehensive and personalized healthcare plans, Carrot allows for employers to cover their employees access to all things fertility as much as they do medical, dental and vision, positioning it as the fourth big pillar of patient care.
After nearly a decade leading Carrot, Tammy’s mission remains the same: not only to uphold everyone’s right to start a family, but also to ensure access to information, expand available options, and empower fertility decisions regardless of age, gender, race, income, or sexual orientation.
KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM TAMMY SUN
Don’t have time to read the whole piece?
Here’s what you need to know from Carrot’s Tammy Sun, tying her lessons into ones we’ve previously learned from other founders we’ve covered:
Let the problem find you, then don’t let go. Tammy didn’t set out to become a founder. Instead, she discovered a problem that hit home, and she couldn’t walk away from it. Founding a company doesn’t always start with an idea; sometimes it starts with a personal experience that won’t let you ignore it.
Deep understanding beats perfect credentials. She immersed herself in fertility science, attending medical conferences as the only non-doctor in the room. As a founder, becoming an expert in your space, even without formal training, can be your biggest asset.
Mission clarity drives momentum. From bootstrapping to navigating rejections from investors, Tammy stuck with it because the mission was clear and urgent. Customers resonated with the need, even when VCs didn’t at first. The lesson: clarity and conviction in your “why” will carry you through hard seasons.
Choose the right vehicle for your impact. Tammy considered government and non-profit routes before choosing the startup model; not because she idolized startups, but because it was the sharpest tool available. Founders should choose the structure that best aligns with the scale and speed their mission requires.
Build for inclusivity from the start. Carrot’s reach today, 800+ companies across 170+ countries, comes from designing with inclusivity and flexibility baked in. Instead of narrowing the customer, Tammy asked: How can this work for everyone? Broad missions require infrastructure that can adapt and grow with your users.
Way before CEO life ever happened for Tammy Sun, the early days were already a bit of a frenzy.
She was born in Taiwan but at the age of 3 her family moved to Salt Lake City, where her dad was pursuing a Master’s Degree in Computer Science. Soon after, the family moved to New Jersey, this time to stay, since he got the opportunity to work for AT&T and Bell Labs - the very same place where Tammy would later have her first ever job as an intern.
Balancing her dad’s passion for numbers and metrics, her mom encouraged both Tammy and her sister to find other ways of expression and development outside of academics for a more comprehensive learning experience: art and piano lessons, athletics, horseback riding - they were free to explore and find what they liked best.
Pursuing her passion for International Relations and Women’s Studies, Tammy graduated from NYU and attended the London School of Economics. But even before completing her degree, she was already navigating the world of politics from inside the White House itself.
As an intern and Executive Assistant to Vice President Al Gore, Tammy gained an up-close understanding of how government can serve as a powerful platform for impact and change.
That’s also what the first few years of her career were spent on - she went on to work for the Clinton Foundation and later as a presidential appointee in President Barack Obama's administration at the Federal Communications Commission.
The first pivot in her career was in 2013 when she got the Director of Partnerships position at Evernote. It was during this time that the idea of Carrot sparked.
However, entrepreneurship had always been latent in the family, for both Tammy and her sister would grow up to become founders.
While her sister has spent the last decade working on the Opioid crisis and trying to serve those communities, Tammy has mainly focused on fertility healthcare since 2016, when Carrot was born.
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