Liz Klinger knew there was a problem. It was the beginning of March, and the Bay Area native was starting to hear reports about personal protective equipment shortages on the news as coronavirus started to spread in the United States. Klinger called her mom, a nurse in the Bay Area, to ask about how conditions were at her hospital. She didn’t have a mask. Realizing her mom’s situation was widespread, one Thursday night Klinger jumped on a Zoom call with Alper.
Chloe [Alper] and I both have backgrounds in supply chains. For Chloe, her company works with the medical supply chain. For myself, I’m a co-founder of Lioness, and we do biofeedback vibrators, so I’m pretty familiar with advanced electronics manufacturing.
Oh gosh, a lot. One of the ones that we’re pretty proud of was there was a hospital in Mississippi that got hit by apparently one of the largest tornados U.S. history. I think about 60 healthcare workers at the hospital lost their homes. It sounded like a pretty tough situation because you have a bunch of volunteers coming in from Georgia and Louisiana and the surrounding states to help, but no one had masks and everyone's coming close to each other. They had a couple of COVID cases.