Two moms. One mission.
We’re Vanessa and Erin, the co-founders of Pump For Joy. We both tried to make pumping work while juggling jobs, travel, and tiny humans, and quickly realized the products we were supposed to rely on were not built for real life.
So we stopped waiting for someone else to fix it. Erin brought a sustainability and product background obsessed with responsible materials. Vanessa brought years of building fast-moving companies and turning chaos into systems.
Together, we’re reimagining what a breast pump system can be, starting with the moments that happen away from home. Because the system wasn’t built for working parents. Yet.
A latch that would not stick, and weeks of life spent washing parts.
When Erin had her daughter in 2021, breastfeeding did not go as planned. Her daughter could not latch, so Erin entered a months-long relationship with her breast pump.
Every trip meant packing, washing, cleaning, and drying parts in office kitchens, airport bathrooms, and parking lots. She realized she had spent weeks of her life just cleaning pump parts.
If the convenience had to be single-use, why did the waste have to last forever? She set out to make a guilt-free disposable that could actually return to the earth.
Meet the Founders.
Erin Devine Martin.
Erin is based in Davidson, North Carolina. She has spent 15 years working with Fortune 100 companies to ideate, build, and launch 0-to-1 products, and she brings that same product discipline to Pump For Joy.
A material-science and sustainability nerd, she is the kind of founder who will spend months iterating a flange fit and just as long interrogating whether the material can safely return to the earth.
Her journey into entrepreneurship began in 2021, when her daughter could not latch and she found herself pumping everywhere life took her. The NC IDEA community got to know her as the founder of Pump For Joy in fall 2024.
Outside of work, she is happiest on or in the water: paddling, boating, and SCUBA diving.
Vanessa Parker.
Vanessa is based in Tampa, Florida, and calls herself the Chief Chaos Organizer. She is a serial entrepreneur, wife, and mother who has founded and run multiple globally recognized businesses, including Pink Boss and Divas in Defense.
As COO of an R&D-stage company, her job is to turn uncertainty into momentum. She builds the systems, partnerships, and culture that let a small team move fast without losing sight of the people they are building for.
Through Pink Boss, she has elevated hundreds of women with workshops on confidence, freelancing, and being a mompreneur. She has spoken at Georgia Tech, General Assembly, Black Enterprise, the Tom Joyner Foundation, and in Kuwait to over 1,400 women from 65 nationalities.
Behind the scenes.
The messy, honest middle.
Fresh every session. Responsible by design.
Parents deserve ease.
Pumping parents are already juggling enough. The products they rely on should remove friction, not add to it.
Disposables should not be forever.
If something is designed to be used once, it should be made to return to the earth cleanly. End-of-life is not an afterthought.
Small details matter.
From the fit of the flange to the way a refill pack ships, every decision shapes how a parent feels in the middle of a busy day.
Here's to easier pumping, wherever life takes you.
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