Lisa Lindahl

The first sports bra was invented by stitching two jockstraps together.

In 1977, Lisa Lindahl was running 30 miles a week. While wearing a regular bra.

She called her sister to complain.

So she told her: What if women had a jockstrap for their breasts?

Lisa didn’t laugh.

Instead, with her childhood friend Polly Smith and theater costume assistant Hinda Schreiber, they stitched two jockstraps together in a college costume shop.

They called it the “Jockbra.”

Then they renamed it: Jogbra.

It was the first sports bra in history.

By 1978, Jogbra was selling fast.

The market was starving for it.

And Lisa, who had paused grad school to invent it, stepped in as CEO.

She built the company from scratch: developed product lines, wrote the sell sheets, hired teams, raised awareness.

In 1990, Playtex bought Jogbra.

Lisa stayed on as Co-President.

One of her original Jogbras now sits in the Smithsonian.

Another in the Met Museum’s Costume Collection.

It helped drive the global rise of women athletes.

It removed a barrier Title IX couldn’t fix: the pain, self-consciousness, and discomfort that stopped girls from competing.

And it launched a multi-billion dollar industry that never existed before.

In 2001, Lisa teamed up with Dr. Lesli Bell to create the Bellisse Compressure Comfort® Bra: a patented compression garment for breast cancer patients.

And coined the term “truncal lymphedema” and created educational materials to raise awareness about the underdiagnosed condition.

And long before “inclusive health” became a buzzword, Lisa was fighting for it.

She lived with epilepsy since age 4 and spent nearly a decade as Senior VP of the Epilepsy Foundation of America, chairing their Task Force on Women and Epilepsy.

She created national initiatives.

Lobbied for research.

Spoke on national TV.

And in 1999, she received a Congressional Commendation for her work.

Today, she holds 10 patents.

She’s written multiple books, including Unleash the Girls, her business memoir.

And in 2022, she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.