- Company
- August
- Role
- Founder & CEO
- Est. Net Worth
- $5 Million (Est.)
- Stage
- Emerging
- Industry
- Retail
Nadya Okamoto
Founder & CEO at August
About
Nadya Okamoto is the founder of August, a lifestyle period care brand that is redefining how a new generation thinks about menstruation — transforming period products from a source of embarrassment into a category of self-expression, sustainability, and community. Before founding August, Okamoto launched PERIOD, a nonprofit focused on menstrual equity that she started at age 16, which became the largest youth-run NGO in women's health and distributed millions of period products to people in need. August, which she founded while a student at Harvard, sells organic and sustainable tampons, pads, and liners through a direct-to-consumer model built heavily on TikTok, where Okamoto has amassed millions of followers by speaking openly and unapologetically about menstruation. Her approach — combining social mission with genuine commercial ambition and social media fluency — represents a new model for Gen Z entrepreneurship.
Current Company
August — Founder & CEO
The Teenager Who Took On Period Stigma
Nadya Okamoto's career as a menstrual equity advocate began when she was sixteen years old and experiencing homelessness with her family in Portland, Oregon. During that period, she became acutely aware of how difficult it was for people without stable housing to access menstrual products — and how the shame and stigma surrounding menstruation compounded the practical challenges of managing periods while homeless. She founded PERIOD, a nonprofit organization dedicated to fighting period poverty and stigma, which grew into the largest youth-run NGO in women's health, distributing millions of menstrual products, registering hundreds of campus chapters, and successfully advocating for policy changes in multiple states. Her book, 'Period Power: A Manifesto for the Menstrual Movement,' published when she was just nineteen, laid out both the personal and political dimensions of menstrual equity.
What distinguished Okamoto from other young activists was her understanding that stigma operates not just through silence but through the visual and cultural language of the products themselves — that conventional period products, packaged in clinical pastels and marketed with euphemistic language, reinforced the idea that menstruation was something to be hidden rather than openly managed. This insight became the foundation for her commercial venture: if the products themselves could be redesigned to reflect confidence and self-expression rather than concealment, they could become tools for cultural change as well as hygiene. It was a sophisticated analysis for someone barely out of high school, and it would guide everything she built next.
Building August and the TikTok-Native Brand
August, the period care company Okamoto founded in 2021, represents a new model for consumer brands: one that was conceived, marketed, and scaled primarily through TikTok, where Okamoto's willingness to talk frankly and humorously about menstruation attracted millions of followers and created a community around the brand before the first product shipped. August's products — organic cotton tampons, pads, and liners in bold, Instagram-friendly packaging — are positioned as a lifestyle brand rather than a medical necessity, and the company's marketing treats periods as a normal part of life deserving of well-designed, sustainable products rather than the clinical discretion that has characterized the category for decades.
The company's direct-to-consumer model, subscription options, and sustainability commitments (organic materials, carbon-neutral shipping, partnership with menstrual equity organizations) reflect the values of its Gen Z target audience, but what truly differentiates August is Okamoto's authentic relationship with her community. Her TikTok presence — which includes candid discussions about her own menstrual experiences, responses to follower questions, and behind-the-scenes content about building the company — creates a level of founder-brand identification that traditional consumer goods companies spend millions trying to manufacture. Okamoto's success demonstrates that for a generation raised on social media, authenticity and mission are not just nice-to-have brand attributes but essential competitive advantages.