Episode 6 — Our Team: Taking This Journey With You: Inside Intake with Katy Brown

Season 2, episode 6. This episode shifts gears from surrogate stories to pull back the curtain on the process itself. Kayla is joined by Katy Brown, Reproductive Options' GC Intake Coordinator, who brings both professional expertise and personal history to the conversation — Katy was a surrogate herself roughly a decade ago, after a "why not me" moment that came out of nowhere even though she and her husband felt done having kids.

Katy walks through what actually happens from the moment someone takes RO's video-led quiz on the homepage through matching: the full application, medical and mental health history review, the surrogate profile and photo guidelines (a bathroom selfie won't cut it), third-party medical records review through Gather Records, and the final interview where sensitive matching preferences like termination stance, vaccination status, and location or travel get worked through honestly and without judgment.

Kayla and Katy also unpack two new additions to RO's benefit package: a short-term life insurance policy that now kicks in immediately at match, closing a gap during the early medication window before the longer 18-month, $500,000–$750,000 policy takes effect, and standard monthly mental health check-ins built into every journey at no extra cost to the surrogate. The two also get into RO's approach to matching itself — building each match around what the surrogate actually wants rather than working off a long intended-parent waitlist — and Katy shares the surprisingly relatable moment from her own match, nearly passing on a profile because the intended parents lived in France, before one Zoom call changed her mind completely.

In this episode:

• What actually happens step by step from application to match, straight from the person who runs intake
• Two new benefit updates: match-day life insurance and built-in monthly mental health support
• Why photos make or break a surrogate profile, and what actually works
• Termination stance, vaccination preferences, and why there's no wrong answer — just the right match
• Why it's always okay to say no to a first match call
• Katy's own path from surrogate to industry professional, and her personal match story