The Harvard Engineer Redesigning Girls’ Sports — and Running Marathons While Doing It
THE RUNNING EFFECT PODCAST
Dominic Schlueter
4.9 • 821 Ratings
🗓️ 22 November 2025
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Meet the Harvard engineer who’s running marathons, building companies, and rewriting the future of girls’ sports.
Sara Falkson is the Founder and CEO of Robyn / Robyn Athletic, a Sports-bra and body-confidence brand built “by athletes, for athletes,” focused on helping girls stay in sport, which started as a thesis project for her but is now a full-time gig.
She also co-founded Reliable Maternity, a lactation-care and equipment company; she is credited as a design lead and co-founder, focused on digital experience and brand.
Sara graduated from Dartmouth College in 2022, while being a four-year varsity field hockey player during her time there. She was a two-year captain, Academic All-Ivy and on the NFHCA National Academic Squad.
She has also dabbled in distance running and is quite good at it. She has a marathon PR of 3:32:41 ( which she ran at the 2024 TCS New York City Marathon); she has also had a half-marathon PR of 1:41:59 from 2023.
She is completing her Harvard Masters Degree in Design Engineering (MDE) while training for her next marathon.
From the labs at Harvard to the streets of New York and the fields of Dartmouth, Sara’s mission is clear: give girls the confidence to stay in sport—one athlete, one team, one conversation at a time.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Girls are also specializing in sports in way earlier ages than what I ever did. |
| 0:06.2 | And they all had this common feedback that that first sports bra experience is so flawed. |
| 0:14.2 | And it's whether girls have athletic parents and they're able to go to aix sporting goods and check out the array of bras there. |
| 0:22.9 | That's a great starting point. But I found that a lot of girls had no guidance into the sports |
| 0:29.9 | bra world and they were looking inside the locker rooms to try to figure out like, okay, well, |
| 0:35.4 | she's wearing a cupped bra. She's not wearing a bra. And I'm probably |
| 0:38.7 | going to go to the bathroom stall and change in there because I have no idea what's going on. |
| 0:43.3 | And it prompted me to continue all of this when it came to the sports bra. And I launched |
| 0:48.9 | Robin, a sports bra brand designing bras for every body in every sport. |
| 1:05.1 | That was Sarah Falkson today on the Running Effect podcast. |
| 1:08.2 | I'm privileged to welcome on a good friend and someone who is doing |
| 1:11.0 | big things in the world. She's a remarkable individual and she's building a company called Robin, |
| 1:17.5 | Robin Athletic, which is a sports bra and body confidence brand built by athletes for athletes. |
| 1:22.3 | And it's focused on helping girls stay in sport, which started as a thesis project for her, |
| 1:26.6 | but is now a full-time |
| 1:27.7 | gig. And they're launching very, very soon, hopefully by the end of next year. In today's |
| 1:32.8 | conversation, the first half is kind of focused on lighthearted subjects around the love of running, |
| 1:37.9 | which I always love talking about, because Sarah has a background in field hockey. She played |
| 1:41.6 | for Dartmouth in college and grew up playing that sport. |
| 1:44.5 | But recently I started to run more and run marathon. She recently ran the New York City |
| 1:48.1 | marathon. So the first half of the conversation is focused on running and her journey in the |
| 1:52.1 | sport, which is always a delight hearing about people's introduction to the sport of running. |
... |
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