I'm the Gen Z founder of a period-care company using my business to push back on the 'tampon tax'

• Nadya Okamoto cofounded August, a menstrual-care company, in 2021.
• August started a campaign to reimburse customers for some taxes on period products.

Nadya Okamoto wakes up and goes to sleep thinking about periods.

The 25-year-old is the cofounder of August, a menstrual-care company launched in 2021. She's working to improve period-care accessibility and end the stigma around menstruation.

She's also fighting the so-called tampon tax, which refers to the sales tax added to tampons, pads, and menstrual-care products when they're classified as luxury, nonessential items.

Okamoto and her team began a campaign this year called #AugustTaxBack, a pledge to reimburse customers for taxation on August products in the 22 states where the tax exists.

This is an as-told-to essay based on an interview with Okamoto about her desire to use business to drive societal change as a Gen Z founder. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

August was founded as a socially and environmentally conscious consumer brand

I first learned about period poverty from conversations with friends and peers and my own Google searching. To me, it was an issue that once I heard about it, I couldn't stop thinking about it.

I wanted to take action to the best of my ability, which at the time led me to start a nonprofit called Period.

I was the executive director at Period until 2020, which is when I started workshopping August.

From the beginning we wanted to introduce a product that was something new, that could reduce plastic waste, and that actually improved the comfort of period products.

We spent a lot of time building relationships with the community we wanted to serve, including a Geneva community, which is a group-messaging app, and a social-media following.

But we also wanted to make sure it focused on period poverty, accessibility, and advocacy.

That's why we've always covered the tampon tax when customers bought their products directly from August. But when we launched in Target in March, we suddenly had no ability to get rid of the tampon tax at the point of purchase, because the sale wasn't going through us.

We hustled behind the scenes to find a way we could take a material stance against the tampon tax. We came up with the #AugustTaxBack campaign, where customers can text us a picture of their receipt and we'll reimburse the tax.

Being a for-profit, venture-backed business provides more opportunities to make change

For the first several years, Period was completely run by volunteer work. I was spending 90% of my time fundraising just to have the necessary resources.

With August, we raised venture capital.

That financial support helped us pay for the products. Being a consumer-packaged-goods brand is really expensive since you have to purchase the inventory up front, so the initial investments went toward that. The money also went toward paying our team, even pre-revenue.

My passion for the business side of August — and using business ventures as a vehicle to create change — comes from spending so many years in the nonprofit space.

As a Gen Z founder, I know my generation feels a lot more responsibility to take action around certain social issues.

We've grown up learning that the Supreme Court is there to protect our rights, yet here we are with less reproductive rights than we had 50 years ago.

There's a lot of frustration there. So while my mission has remained the same as it was when I started my nonprofit, I've learned to change how I use my efforts to make a difference.

I didn't think "I want to be this big business person." I thought: I have this big goal. I've tried running a nonprofit. I wrote a book about it, and I'm trying to use that to convince government officials to take it seriously. But people only ever take it seriously if it's a company making money.