Hoda Kotb's wellness startup Joy 101 has signed its first major enterprise client, Ochsner Health, and announced plans to bring a new festival called Joy Fest to New Orleans in 2027 — the city where Kotb spent six years building her broadcast career long before she became a household name on national television.
The partnership makes Ochsner Health the first employer in the country, and the first health system, to offer Joy 101 as a free employee benefit, giving roughly 40,000 team members access to Kotb's daily wellness content, according to NOLA.com. Ochsner is Louisiana's largest nonprofit academic healthcare system, running 47 hospitals and more than 370 health and urgent care centers with over 40,000 employees, according to Ochsner Health. Joy 101 executives reportedly met with Ochsner CEO Pete November several months before the deal came together, per the report.
Kotb, who stepped away from her longtime role as Today co-anchor in January 2025 to spend more time with her children, framed the choice of New Orleans as a homecoming of sorts. She worked as a reporter and 10 p.m. anchor at CBS affiliate WWL-TV in New Orleans from 1992 to 1998 before joining NBC News, according to Wikipedia. “All roads lead to New Orleans,” Kotb said, per NOLA.com's reporting.
From Podcast to Full-Blown Wellness Platform
Joy 101 began as an idea Kotb unveiled in 2025 before growing into a subscription app offering bite-sized lessons on breathwork, meditation, stretching and other physical, mental and emotional wellness practices, per NOLA.com. Users can log their age, stress levels, goals and time constraints to personalize the content, and the platform is also available on televisions in Marriott hotel rooms. Membership costs about $17 a month after a free trial, or $100 for an annual plan, the outlet reports.
The company launched a companion podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb, in June 2026, and Kotb also started a mobile interview show called Joy Rides on the platform's YouTube channel in January 2026, which now has more than 200,000 subscribers. Joy 101 is overseen by Kotb and co-founded by Mike Xenakis, who serves as executive chair, and Karen Swensen, a former WWL-TV anchor. Swensen has said the app's exercises can help people in high-stress, high-performance environments perform better, according to the same NOLA.com account.
Backers Include Gayle Benson and Drew Brees
The venture has drawn financial backing from New Orleans Saints owner Gayle Benson, who is an investor in Joy 101 and has said the app gives people practical tools they can use every day, per the report. Former Saints quarterback Drew Brees serves as an adviser to the company, alongside musician Jon Batiste and author Arthur C. Brooks, both listed as contributors, while home-renovation star Joanna Gaines also contributes content to the platform.
Investment firm CapStone Holdings Inc. made a seed investment in Joy 101 in September 2025 after the app converted 40,000 sign-ups into 5,000 paying customers and secured $2 million in brand partnerships during its first week of operation, according to CapStone Holdings Inc. Benson's involvement in local healthcare extends beyond Joy 101 — she also backed the $300 million Benson-backed kids hospital that broke ground on Ochsner's main campus in April 2025 and is set to open by 2028.
Retreats Sell Out Fast, Fueling Festival Ambitions
Demand for Joy 101's live events has outpaced supply so far. Kotb said during a May 2026 appearance on NBC's Today show that the platform's wellness retreats sold out 250 spots quickly and racked up a waitlist of more than 7,000 people, according to Ground News. The company held a paid event in Scottsdale, Arizona, in February 2026 and has a fall retreat planned at a Ritz-Carlton hotel in Amelia Island, Florida, with tickets starting at $3,300.　Kotb has said her own first breathwork session produced transformative stress relief, an experience that helped shape the app's focus, per NOLA.com.
Joy Fest, set for New Orleans in 2027, is expected to draw between 1,500 and 2,000 people, according to the outlet's reporting. Kotb has said she wants Joy 101's growth to happen organically rather than through aggressive expansion, though the company also plans to add more enterprise partnerships with additional companies in more cities. The festival's concept was partly inspired by the Essence Festival of Culture, the annual July Fourth weekend event in New Orleans that draws more than 500,000 attendees to the Caesars Superdome and the Morial Convention Center, according to Wikipedia. Essence Fest began in 1995 as a one-time anniversary event before becoming a permanent fixture of the city's economy.
A Crowded, Fast-Growing Wellness Market
Joy 101 is entering a wellness industry that has ballooned since the pandemic, with the global market expanding roughly 35 percent to a valuation between $5.6 trillion and $6.8 trillion, according to Forbes. Competitors like Calm have reached valuations of $2 billion during the sector's boom. Kotb also published a book, Jump and Find Joy, in 2025, and appeared at a free retreat for New York City public school teachers that same year.
The Ochsner deal fits into the health system's broader push on employee and community wellness. Ochsner also expanded its behavioral health footprint in April 2026 with a new intensive outpatient program for mental health and addiction treatment at St. Charles Parish Hospital in Luling, offering group therapy and counseling services. Company staff, with roughly 20 mostly remote employees, will now be watching whether the enterprise model — and next year's festival — can turn a single high-profile partnership into a broader foothold across corporate wellness programs nationwide.
.jpg){kind=link}