Soleil Teubner Boughton is Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary of Hims & Hers, overseeing legal, compliance, and public policy activities. Ms. Boughton has been with Hims & Hers since October 2018, and brings over 16 years of healthcare law experience to the company. Ms. Boughton was in-house healthcare counsel for Google’s Cloud Healthcare & Life Sciences from October 2017-October 2018. Prior to that, Ms. Boughton was a Partner in the Healthcare & Life Sciences group of Jones Day, where she represented digital health companies, hospitals, health systems and other healthcare and life sciences companies across all aspects of a company’s life cycle. Ms. Boughton holds a B.A. in Public Policy Analysis/Anthropology from Pomona College, and a J.D. from the University of California Los Angeles School of Law.

How did you become an executive in the health care industry? Did you always have an interest in health care?

​​​​​Healthcare has always been a passion. I originally thought that would mean becoming a physician, but during college I realized that what I really wanted to do was focus on the socio-cultural aspects of health and medicine and find ways to address some of the challenges in the healthcare system that I had seen friends and family face.   

After a number of years at Jones Day, you transitioned to Product Counsel at Google Cloud Healthcare and Life Sciences before joining Hims & Hers. What inspired this pivot towards digital health?

Digital health had actually been my primary area of expertise even prior to moving to Google. I went to law school knowing that I wanted to work in healthcare, and spent my early career developing broad experience as a transactional and regulatory healthcare attorney. I was drawn to digital health fairly early on, as it really reflected the potential for transformation that drew me to healthcare in the first place.

By the time I moved to Google, I had spent quite a few years primarily focused on representing digital health companies across various aspects of their formation and development. When I was approached by Hims & Hers, the opportunity to help build a company that embodied the kind of change in healthcare I have always been interested in was something I could not pass up.

You joined Hims & Hers just a year after its launch in 2017. How has your experience as part of a fast-growing startup influenced your leadership style and goals for the future?

One of the things that attracted me to Hims & Hers was its ability to execute very quickly and effectively. That kind of execution and pace requires that the legal team be just as agile, while also effectively managing and educating the business about risk. I’ve learned that it’s a balancing act that can only be achieved if your team members are equally engaged and motivated to support the speed and creativity of the business. People have to actually like the work and enjoy what they are doing every day. So my focus in building out the legal team has been not only to identify people who are excited about that kind of environment, but to also do my best to make them feel supported and valued by me and the company as a whole. That means keeping an eye on their day-to-day enjoyment of their job, understanding their long term goals, and making sure that they know the role they’ve played in making the company a success. I have no doubt I still have plenty to learn on this point, but it’s definitely my guiding principle.

In January, Hims & Hers went public through a SPAC merger with Oaktree Acquisition Corp. What made this preferable to a traditional IPO? What was the process of going public like for you as CLO? 

Going public was something we always knew was in the cards, it was just a question of when and how. The ability to partner with an incredible institutional investor like Oaktree, as well as the opportunity to accelerate our ability to invest in growth and condition expansion were some of the reasons why we chose to do it through a SPAC merger. 

The process was both intense and extremely rewarding. It was a ton of work and long days (and nights), but really satisfying to come out on the other side. It was definitely never boring!

Personally or professionally, what might the WBL network be surprised to know about you?

Two years into my career, I was at a bit of a crossroads trying to figure out if I could make the kind of impact in healthcare that I wanted to without moving more directly into the public policy arena. So I left my job as a lawyer to work as a legislative aid for the San Francisco County Board of Supervisors, thinking that I likely would not return to the practice of law. I ultimately decided to return to the law, but almost ended up going in a different direction.