Titilope Olotu, at just nineteen, has successfully acquired grant funding to support her innovative work in the field of menstruation.
Olotu, who was born and grew up in Nigeria, often witnessed health care disparities, beginning in her school years. Due to her mother’s strong belief in education, Olotu started school three years early. She recalled seeing female students resort to using makeshift menstrual products, such as rags and foam from their beds, during their periods.
She told AfroTech, “I was traumatized.”
Before moving to the U.S. in 2015, at age 9, Olotu observed the negative stigma and taboos surrounding menstruation in Nigeria, which discouraged women from being around men or openly discussing their cycles.
Her perspective on menstruation shifted following an incident shortly after she arrived in the U.S. While at her California middle school gym, she got her period.
Reluctant to accept help from the assigned male teacher, she only felt comfortable accepting assistance from the sole female gym teacher on staff. This teacher comforted Olotu by wrapping a hoodie around her waist and accompanying her to a private room.
“She gave me this pouch. And in the pouch was a menstrual pad. And then it was like these stickers and things are like ‘Menstruation is good, and menstruation is fun,’ and, ‘You’re strong,’” Olotu recounted.
“And that’s kind of when I saw menstruation in a different light … This is a privilege that I received, and I wanted to kind of extend it further,” she added.
Olotu, currently a third-year undergraduate at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) on a full-ride scholarship, is actively working toward her goal of becoming an OB-GYN. She is majoring in biology and is in the process of declaring a second major in women’s health.
Beyond her academic pursuits, Olotu is dedicated to giving back. In 2024, she founded her nonprofit, Period Padi (“padi” means “friend” in Nigerian Pidgin).
While initially focused on addressing period poverty in Nigeria, the organization has since expanded its scope. It now offers mobile wellness booths that deliver resources tailored to the needs of individual schools, covering mental health, academics, career guidance, and menstrual support.
Following research spurred by online complaints about a major period-care brand causing increased cramping and heavier bleeding, Olotu sourced chemical-free, sustainable banana fiber pads in the summer of 2024.
Later, in November 2024, Olotu launched the Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder campaign to examine the link between women’s mental health and their menstrual cycles. Through this campaign, she observed that 12 out of 212 women surveyed globally had developed antibiotic resistance due to bacterial vaginosis (BV). When these women were redirected by their doctors and sought home remedies from Olotu, she researched solutions, which led her to discover castor oil on TikTok as a potential remedy.
“How can we legitimize this? Why is it not a scientific proven thing? But in that very moment, I just came to understand that you can’t make castor oil a product,” she said.
“It’s an oil, it has a lot of dangers. So the only thing you can really do is, since it’s not proven, you can help these women avoid the risks of castor oil. Because even though it’s working, doesn’t mean it works for everyone. A young girl, I wouldn’t want her using castor oil if she has BV when it’s not scientifically proven or medically proven,” she continued.
“It’s just this thing that we’re seeing on TikTok, this trend that’s working, but there’s no research paper on it. So that’s why, for me, I was like, ‘I want to go into something more definite,’ which is early diagnostics,” Olotu added.
Olotu further developed her work by creating a smart, sustainable biosensing menstrual pad and an accompanying AI-powered data-tracking platform. This project has since received $38,000 in grant funding.
The pad allows for proactive health monitoring by tracking key biomarkers—including for hormones, pH levels, infections, and iron—through colorimetric analysis of the menstrual blood, as explained by Olotu.
“A woman would menstruate as normal, but within her pad, if she flips it after menstruating, all she needs to do is flip, and on the back, there will be a reagent area with different biomarkers. That biomarker would then be able to tell her, like, if it’s a deeper shade of purple, she has higher iron. Fainter, she has less iron. The key point is there’s a pad, there’s a readout on the back of it. It shows you what the colors are. You can scan it with the platform, and then you get your results,” she continued.
While the biomarkers alone offer basic diagnoses, combining this data with lifestyle factors shared via the AI-powered platform allows for a personalized diagnosis and health analysis. This analysis provides proactive insights that can be shared with medical providers. Future plans also include offering in-app consultations with telehealth providers for users.
“Some of these conditions are not easily detected because it builds up over time. So rather than getting to that worsened extremity, we want to help you tackle it at its initial stage,” she explained.
The platform, which empowers women as it offers cycle tracking, mental health support, and a community forum, is scheduled for public release in 2026.
Olotu is dedicated to empowering others, evidenced by her mentorship of over 453 students and her rigorous editing of more than 620 scholarship and college applications, which has successfully aided peers in gaining admission to prestigious universities, according to the Global Teacher Prize website.
Her commitment continues as she develops the PADÍ Global Fellows Programme, aimed at enabling other first-generation college students to initiate and implement wellness projects within their own communities.
READ ALSO: Meet the Howard student behind the smartpad and app to protect children from weapons
