#WCW: Angela Wells & the Vibrant Team

Three principles guide the work of the team at Vibrant: always sell body-safe products, always be inclusive, and always support Planned Parenthood. And they do it ALL with heartfelt intentions and a solid dose of feminist sass. Before launching Vibrant, Angela Wells (a.k.a. Vibrant CEO and #momboss) was the Senior Vice President of Business Development and Administration at Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains (PPRM). Vibrant started out as an in-house project at PPRM in 2014. Officially launched two years later, Vibrant and the creative team behind the brand are teaching folks about body-safe toys and empowerment through pleasure and body autonomy. 

While at PPRM, Angela consistently worked to find ways to reduce expenses without compromising care. When it came to finding additional revenue streams, Angela and other staff involved in the creation of Vibrant got creative. Today, Vibrant continues to provide funding to support PPRM in providing healthcare and the fight for reproductive rights.

“A lot of people have no idea that sex toys are not regulated in the US, so we wanted to take the fear and uncertainty away,” Angela says. Vibrant doesn’t just sell sex toys – they vet them, check out the ingredients, and offer customers all of the information they need in making choices about their sexual pleasure, all the while working toward an overarching goal of normalizing conversations about sex and promoting sex positive ways of thinking. 

At Vibrant, sex toys serve purposes beyond the pursuit of feeling great sexually, they also serve to provide education and empowerment. “Young people don’t know there’s any shame or stigma around the topic of sex until an adult puts that into their thoughts, so it’s really up to adults to make it a normal and healthy concept for young people,” says Angela. That’s where Vibrant can really make a difference – with youth, as well as with communities such as the LGBTQ community, that have historically been left out of these conversations. “It’s so important to make conversations about sex and pleasure normal. That’s where you remove fear, stigma, shame, and the hate that comes with that.”

Vibrant’s work toward dismantling the stigma surrounding sexual pleasure complements and reinforces the work of PPRM. Whether teaching sex education in the classroom, or serving patients in our health centers, PPRM works every day to advance the conversation about sexual and reproductive health and bodily autonomy. Giving more people access to sexual pleasure with body-safe toys is definitely empowering. We can’t wait to see what the future holds for Angela and the Vibrant team!