Miller Morris, BS’16, MS’17, MPH’19: Disrupt and Redirect

Miller Morris is the founder and CEO of Comma, a company that aims to improve reproductive health through menstrual care products, sustainability, clinical research and technology. She describes herself as a "women's health researcher turned social entrepreneur."

"What if we thought about periods as a vital sign and as a meaningful diagnostic," Morris asks, rather than just associating them with an aisle in the store.

She spends most Thursday mornings meeting with young women, many of them college students, over Zoom or in a café. She sees them as her chance to give back, and these meetings also help with product development for Comma.

"Coming from a public health background, I think it's good science to make people feel comfortable, to build trust and rapport, and to earn the data people are willing to share with you," she says.

Comma's first product, launched in February 2025, is a cycle tracking app called Sara, a secure application for reproductive autonomy. It is the first such app incorporating HIPAA privacy regulations as benchmarks, according to Morris. Sara's future capabilities could include integration with electronic medical records to improve treatment plans. The company has plans to develop more sustainable menstrual care products and to establish a nonprofit foundation.

I think it's good science to make people feel comfortable.

During Morris' graduate experiences with the Lwala Community Alliance in Kenya and the World Health Organization in Switzerland,
she saw the importance of addressing the menstrual care needs of girls. Their lack of proper supplies often meant they would miss-or even leave-school. Morris credits her Vanderbilt professors, mentors and advisers "who never discouraged me from thinking outside of the box" and interdisciplinary coursework "to make sure I was building connective tissue."

One important connection for her is Vanderbilt: The majority of the Comma team are Vanderbilt alumni. "COMMAdores?" she jokes. "I built almost my whole team while I was a student."

And the company's name? One's period shouldn't bring life to a full stop, Morris says. "'Full stop' is an Anglicism for the period punctuation mark. A comma is a chance for disruption and redirection."

-MiChelle Jones