How Consumer Understanding Shapes Baby Care Innovation

Over the years, Pampers innovations have been shaped by listening closely to parents, caregivers, nurses, and medical professionals — and by the people behind the work who are passionate about improving life for babies and families. From neonatal diaper design to scientific communications and product development, these innovators are combining expertise, empathy, and deep consumer understanding to help serve every baby and support families through every stage of their journey.

Amy Wiford: Supporting the Smallest Babies Through Innovation

For Amy Wiford, innovation in baby care is rooted in both professional expertise and personal experience.

Amy’s connection to premature baby care became deeply personal when her son Theo was born prematurely and spent time in the NICU. Experiencing firsthand the emotional and medical challenges families face during that time shaped how she approaches innovation today — with a focus on helping improve outcomes not only for babies, but for parents navigating incredibly vulnerable moments.

That perspective has helped inform her work supporting diaper innovations designed specifically for premature babies. Since 2025, Pampers has launched updated versions of its P2 and P3 preemie diapers and introduced its smallest preemie diaper ever earlier this year, helping better meet the needs of the tiniest and most medically fragile newborns.

For Amy, these innovations are about more than product performance. They’re about helping families experience moments of comfort, care, and normalcy during uncertain times.

Today, Theo is a thriving, happy and healthy five-and-a-half-year-old who has graduated from developmental therapies and is preparing to start kindergarten this fall — a milestone Amy says means everything to their family.

Through her work, Amy continues helping bring together science, empathy, and consumer understanding to support babies and the people who love them most.

Maria Striemer: Bringing Clinical Expertise to Baby Care Innovation

As a Registered Nurse and Senior Scientific Communications Manager for P&G North America Baby Care, Maria Striemer brings both medical expertise and compassion to her work.

For Maria, being “consumer first” means putting both babies and parents at the center of every decision — a perspective shaped by her years working directly with families as an RN. One innovation she is especially proud of is the development of Pampers Preemie Extra Extra Small (Pxxs) diapers, created to help meet the needs of micro-preemies born as early as 22 weeks gestation or weighing around 500 grams.

Maria explains that prior to this innovation, NICUs often lacked appropriately sized diapers for the smallest babies, requiring nurses to improvise solutions. Beyond addressing a clinical need, the innovation also helped create a meaningful emotional moment for parents — allowing them to diaper their newborn in a product designed specifically for them.

Her work is grounded in staying close to the real experiences of families. Through in-home testing, ethnographic research, consumer labs, and direct conversations with parents, Maria and the Baby Care team gather insights that go beyond data alone.

“We don’t just make diapers; we help improve quality of life for entire families,” she says. “That emotional connection reminds us that we’ve become part of their family journey.”

Mary Beth Davis: Designing Solutions with Empathy

For Mary Beth Davis, innovation begins with listening.

As part of Pampers R&D, Mary Beth focuses on understanding unmet needs from every angle — from medical realities to emotional experiences — and translating those insights into meaningful solutions for babies and caregivers.

One recent innovation she helped develop was the Pampers Preemie Extra Extra Small diaper, designed for babies born at the earliest gestational ages. Mary Beth explains that advances in neonatal care have led to more babies surviving at younger stages of development, creating new challenges for families and NICU professionals.

Working closely with nurses and medical professionals, Mary Beth and the team designed a diaper specifically created to support these fragile babies with softer materials, a more proportional fit, and features that help support comfort and healthy development.

But the innovation extended beyond the diaper itself. Understanding the emotional realities families face in the NICU, Mary Beth also helped create a keepsake-style package designed to provide parents with a small sense of comfort and normalcy during an incredibly difficult time.

“To hear nurses say, ‘You did it. This is a game changer,’ has been absolutely wonderful,” she shared.

Mary Beth says one of the things she values most about P&G Baby Care is its collaborative culture — where teams come together across disciplines to solve problems and create innovations that can make a real difference in families’ lives.

Bobby Fan: The Art of Meaningful Innovation

“Consumer first is easy to say, hard to do, but it's the absolute right thing to do,” says Bobby Fan, a veteran R&D innovator on our Baby Care team in China, instrumental in developing Pampers Prestige. This philosophy is at the core of his work, guided by a simple, personal rule: “If we can’t tell a noticeable difference in an innovation, it's highly likely a consumer can't either.”

This principle was put to the test during the development of Prestige’s signature softness. When early versions of the ultra-fine fiber were only marginally better, Bobby and his team refused to rush a launch just to be first. Sticking to the belief that innovation must be meaningful, they dedicated over three more years to iteration until they achieved a “melting softness” a parent could truly feel from the very first touch.

This commitment extends to a parent's perception, too. During the recent launch of the Pampers Ichiban diaper, the team developed an innovative back protection pocket with superior technical functionality. But, as Bobby notes, they had "overlooked the consumer's perceived functionality." When a leader pointed out the pocket appeared too narrow from arm's length to give her confidence, the team went back to the drawing board to find the perfect balance between what works in the lab and what feels right in a parent’s hands. For Bobby, whose work is driven by observing babies and advocating for their needs, it's this relentless pursuit of a difference you can see and feel that makes the work worthwhile.

Behind every baby is a network of people dedicated to helping families navigate both everyday moments and extraordinary challenges. Across P&G Baby Care, our innovators are helping shape products and solutions grounded in science, empathy, and real consumer understanding.