Health

‘It was very scary’: Entrepreneur Olivia Lovenmark-Hay on her battle against cervical cancer

Lovenmark-Hay, the founder of Coupe Beverages—which makes Duchess Cocktails—details her experience getting diagnosed with cervical cancer

By Nathan Caddell /

Three months before getting diagnosed, Olivia Lovenmark-Hay knew something wasn’t right. After experiencing a large amount of pain and discomfort following the birth of her son, Lovenmark-Hay was referred to a gynecologist. “They sort of disregarded my symptoms as being not as serious as they could have been, or that they ultimately were,” she says. A new doctor was able to meet with Lovenmark-Hay in person and ultimately diagnosed her with Stage 3 cervical cancer in June.

Lovenmark-Hay founded Coupe Beverages and its main product, Duchess Cocktails, in 2019. Coupe also runs a co-packing business in which Coupe works with other beverage companies. The diagnosis threw a huge wrench into everything she had built.

“As a founder, especially when you have a business that you’re self-funding and there are peoples’ jobs that depend on you, and of course being a new mom, it was very scary,” Lovenmark-Hay says. “In hindsight, I wish there had been a bit more information available around cervical cancer because I could have found it at an earlier stage instead of being diagnosed at Stage 3.”

Lovenmark-Hay ended up undergoing severe treatment, including radiation and chemotherapy and had to take a pause from the business. All this while raising a baby. “As a business owner, you can get in the weeds of being focused on thinking you can do everything yourself, especially if you’re self-funded,” she says. “This was a strong wakeup call. You can’t scale by yourself—you can’t grow a company without people that are smarter than you, you need to bring people in.”

Lovenmark-Hay has since expanded the team to eight people. Coupe had just two staff at this time last year. During that past year, Coupe has doubled the business and is currently moving into a bigger facility in East Vancouver. As for her own health diagnosis, Lovenmark-Hay has her final scans in February. “It’s still in limbo, but it’s looking good,” she says. “My doctors expect me to get the all-clear.”

She feels “pretty back to normal,” but hopes that women and especially women entrepreneurs, can take something from her story: “Prevention and detention are critical. Get a Pap test, take HPV vaccines—there are ways to beat this and prevent this before you have to go through the full totality of what I went through. If I can help one person, it’s a gift.”