GIMBHI‘s Q&A with Puberry’s Founder and CEO, Demetra Mallios

Demetra Mallios is the founder and CEO of Puberry, a B2B SaaS company providing gamified and medically verified, AI-powered health curriculum for K-12 – Think Duolingo for health. She's a 1st generation Greek-American and an ex-pro soccer player turned entrepreneur with more than 15 years of experience in analytics, startups, and leadership. At 23 years old she led the global adidas analytics team to define their 5-year global women's strategy at their HQ in Germany and the Netherlands.

Why did you start Puberry?

When I was 11, I got my first period on New Year’s Eve – I remember crying, feeling embarrassed and totally unprepared. Growing up in a traditional Greek family, I was always told to hide these types of moments, as they weren’t “lady-like” or “appropriate.” And unfortunately, for many of us, talking about our personal health, including mental, menstrual or sexual was off-limits both in the home and in school, leading to long-term health consequences. While leading the 5 year global women’s strategy at Adidas and studying at Columbia, I realized just how widespread this lack of health education really is. In fact, health illiteracy costs the U.S. economy an estimated $3 trillion each year and contributes to avoidable diseases, worsening mental health, and even increased youth suicide rates. Puberty shouldn’t feel like a crisis, it should be a milestone we meet with confidence, not shame. That’s why I created Puberry to make health education fun, easy, inclusive, and empowering for everyone, because understanding our mental and physical health can literally change the trajectory of our lives.


What differentiates Puberry from other similar startups?

Puberry is the only platform that gamifies medically verified health education, making it easy to learn and talk about critical, sensitive topics, while also fostering mental health and emotional wellbeing. We also provide a parent and teacher interface, solving a problem for everyone with 1 holistic effective solution. Plus, we're expanding our language offering starting with Spanish, to support non-English-speaking parents (ex: 42% of NYC public school students identify as Hispanic) and ensure every family can confidently engage with and guide their child’s health education. And parents have the ability to hide or unhide content, offering confidence and peace of mind regarding what their kids are learning. And, teachers have access to free upskilling workshops!

And, unlike other EdTech resources, Puberry enables customizable curriculums to meet your school’s needs (ex: vaping/nicotine problems with 6th graders), while also extending beyond the classroom. More than 50% of users (~300 total users) are active DAILY on Puberry! They even ask for plushies and draw Puberry characters for us to integrate into the platform!

Plus, we are HIPAA, COPAA, FERPA compliant, and enable youth to learn via their emotions calendar and check-ins, empowering their health conversations.

Most importantly, we’ve proven effectiveness, including improving confidence and comfortability in youth by more than 90% when it comes to talking about health topics!

What does the future of sex ed look like?

The future of sex ed is not in a textbook. It’s smart, digital, safe, inclusive, and empowering - meeting students where they are, in a language they understand, all while parents and teachers stay in control with full transparency, customizable lesson access, and real-time student insights.

At Puberry, we’re already building that future. Think of us as the Duolingo for health education: a B2B SaaS platform revolutionizing youth health education with MD-verified, gamified content for K-12.

Students learn through fun, interactive lessons, play games, track emotions or cycles, and ask anonymous questions - all while earning rewards and upgrading their fruit character.

And, we don’t just teach sex ed. We cover men's health, mental health, menstrual health, puberty, substance abuse, personal safety, and more, ensuring that every student, regardless of background, zip code or school resources, can access high-quality, MD verified information.

In a world of teacher shortages and inconsistent curricula, Puberry fills the gap - supporting classrooms, uplifting underserved communities, and helping schools improve attendance, test scores, and compliance.

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