Stories

Being at the head of a start-up wasn’t always in the cards for Ceylan Rowe, a 2003 graduate of the College of Social Sciences and Humanities. Though she’s always been in the business of helping people—her first co-op at Northeastern being at the Massachusetts Office for Refugees and Immigrants—her prior ambitions were firmly in the realm of politics. In 2020, Rowe made a bid for election to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, an endeavor which ended in defeat. But for the ever-optimistic Rowe, this turn of events “…ended up being this hidden blessing.”

It didn’t take long for Rowe to find her true calling. During her stint as a MetroWest commissioner for the status of women, Rowe happened upon a group of eighth-grade girls teaching sixth graders how to use toilet paper as makeshift period pads. “I kept thinking, ‘How is period poverty happening here—in our neighborhood, in our communities?’” For Rowe, access to menstrual products is more than a question of hygiene or comfort. “If you don’t have access to period products,” says Rowe, “[then] how do you go to school? How do you go to work? How do you have financial stability?”

In response to these challenges, Rowe founded Fihri, which she named after Fatima al-Fihri, the first person in history to have founded an institution of higher learning. Fihri aims to provide opportunities for menstrual education via its “Period Palooza” period kit making events while distributing sustainable period products to financially disadvantaged students and disaster-stricken communities. “500 million menstruators do not have access to period products each month,” says Rowe. “So, we want women and girls all over the world to have access to period products that are better for themselves and the environment.”

Over the span of a few short years, the company’s growth has been remarkable—they’ve distributed over 20,000 sustainable menstrual products across 12 different countries. Even with this success, Rowe still credits her time at Northeastern with giving her the tools and knowledge base to start a company. “I think the co-op program really had a positive impact on my life,” says Rowe. “Sometimes, being in the wrong place is helpful to help you discover what the right place is…even if an internship didn’t go the way you were expecting, that’s great, because now you didn’t waste five years!”

Though candid about the strides that are yet to be made in the realms of menstrual product access and education, Rowe believes that she has reason to be optimistic about the future of the industry. “I’m really excited that there’s a lot more small women-owned companies being innovative. In Africa, they’ve launched biodegradable pads that are actually made out of banana fibers. The innovation [in the industry] is making me really hopeful that we can come up with more products that can actually lead to alleviating period poverty.”