Photos And Stories
Women-Owned Business on Mission to Create Sense of Confidence and Safety on the Run

Women-Owned Business on Mission to Create Sense of Confidence and Safety on the Run

Feb 20, 2026

Women runners under a bridge in half light in Central Park in 2025

One day when Ashley Raymond was in high school, she went out for a run. It was the middle of the day, in a safe neighborhood near her home, and she brought her large dog along for the run. Two men started following her. “They were yelling horrendous things at me and chasing me,” she recalled. “I really feared for my life.”

Ashley called the police, and the men ended up getting arrested for public intoxication. But the fear she felt in that moment stayed with her. “I kept running after that, but I still had this fear,” she said.

When Running Feels Unsafe

As a finance major at the University of Texas, Ashley met Meagan Doyle on a class project. Meagan wasn’t a runner, but two women in her family had survived physical assault, so she often thought about women’s safety.

“I grew up knowing it wasn’t always safe to be a woman,” she said. “It was something I always felt.” Though she enjoyed exercising, Meagan confined her workouts to the gym. “The idea of going outside and running never crossed my mind,” due to safety concerns.

Ashley, Meagan, and two other women on the class project bonded over feeling unsafe. Two students had been murdered on the UT campus the previous year, intensifying their feelings.

Tools to Empower Women

Ashley Raymond and Meagan Doyle at a Safely booth indoors with products and props.

Ashley Raymond (left) and Meagan Doyle at a Safely event with products and educational materials. Photo by Moments by Marcela.

After graduation, they founded Safely, a company with a mission to help women feel more confident and to create a safer tomorrow. Safely makes women's self-defense products including a pepper spray* and the Sidekick, a handheld device that combines a spray, flashlight, and alarm.

Safely consulted law enforcement and security experts to develop the products, which are brightly colored and include clips and wristbands. “Having something that’s in your hand or clipped to your body that’s visible can decrease the likelihood that you will be selected as a target,” said Ashley.

Toward a Safer Tomorrow

According to studies, the vast majority of women runners feel concerned for their safety and over half fear being physically attacked while running, compared to about a quarter of men. Safety concerns can lead some women to run less or even stop running altogether.

Sadly, women runners' fears around safety are well founded. Runner's World found in 2022 that 84 percent of women runners report being harassed while running.

Runners of all genders can do their best to follow general safety guidelines, such as running with others and during daylight, avoiding unpopulated areas, and not wearing headphones, but these practices don't guarantee safety and they may not align with all schedules, lifestyles, and preferences. A study published in Frontiers in Psychology in 2021 found that 73 percent of runners prefer to run alone.

While Safely's products, supporting educational materials, and messaging are also no guarantee against harassment or assault, they can help women feel more empowered and confident. “It makes you feel like you have control over something that is out of your control and that you can handle anything that comes your way,” said Meagan.

Conversations around women runners' safety can also normalize the topic, noted Ashley, helping women lose any sense of shame or blame. “We shouldn't have shame over being the ones who were targeted," she said. "It’s never, ever the victim’s fault. It is the person who committed the act against the individual.”

“We’d love for our company one day to not have to exist, to be completely honest,” she added. “That’s the overall goal.”

*When purchasing pepper spray ands other self-defense products, check your local and state laws for any restrictions.