Kate Ryder, Founder and CEO, Maven Clinic Joanna Strober, Founder and CEO, MIDI Moderator: Maria Aspan, FORTUNE
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00:00 Now, we want to talk about something that's not talked about enough.
00:04 Something that affects or will affect
00:07 just about every single person in this audience at this summit in some way.
00:12 Menopause.
00:14 Right now, more than 50 million women in the United States
00:17 are over the age of 51, the average age that menopause hits.
00:22 And for some, menopause symptoms start even earlier, around the age of 40.
00:27 According to a recent study by the Mayo Clinic,
00:30 the US economy is losing more than $26 billion a year
00:35 due to lost productivity and health expenses
00:38 as women in the workforce deal with menopause symptoms.
00:42 The study also says menopause costs American women
00:45 nearly $2 billion in lost working time per year.
00:51 Those are not the kind of data points we like to hear.
00:54 But this isn't just about dollars and cents.
00:57 It's about health equity as well.
01:00 Our next two guests are leaders in this space
01:03 and say we need more research, more effective treatments,
01:06 and better benefits packages at work that include menopause care.
01:10 Kate Reiter, founder and CEO of Maven Clinic,
01:14 the largest women's and family health telehealth network globally.
01:18 And Joanna Strober, founder and CEO of MidiHealth,
01:22 a virtual care platform for women in pre-menopause and menopause.
01:26 Fortune's Maria Aspin will lead this conversation.
01:30 Please welcome them to the stage.
01:32 (applause)
01:34 âȘ
01:48 I think we love the T-shirt.
01:50 (laughter)
01:51 Menopause is hot.
01:53 I have to say, throughout this event,
01:56 everyone I told about which sessions I was moderating was like,
01:59 "This is going to be a good conversation."
02:01 So thank you guys for making the time.
02:05 And maybe to start off with your T-shirt,
02:08 women have been going through menopause since the birth of humanity.
02:13 Why is it so hot right now?
02:14 Yeah, why are we finally talking about it, right?
02:16 I mean, the reality is we are talking about something
02:19 that is derailing women from their careers and potential
02:22 for a very long time, and it's been very secret
02:25 because people have been embarrassed.
02:27 So, I mean, the reason I'm wearing T-shirts like this
02:29 is to bring it out in the open and kind of shout from the ceilings
02:32 that all these things that are happening to your body
02:34 during this time of life are very normal, can be treated,
02:38 and don't need to derail people's lives.
02:41 And so that's really the...
02:43 I think it's just super important that the conversation is starting
02:46 and that people are talking about it.
02:47 And the more that they talk about it,
02:48 the more they'll start looking for treatments
02:50 and the more they'll start feeling better.
02:53 Kate, anything to add?
02:54 Yeah, sure.
02:55 So, at MAVEN, we cover not just menopause,
02:59 but pregnancy, fertility.
03:00 So we've been kind of seeing for the last nine years,
03:03 a lot of these subjects that have been heavily stigmatized and taboo
03:06 kind of come out of the shadows.
03:08 And so for fertility, like 10 years ago,
03:10 people were suffering in silence.
03:11 They're in fertility journeys with no support.
03:14 Pregnancy, whether it's miscarriage or postpartum depression.
03:17 And it took menopause quite a few years to now then come on the map.
03:22 I think the pandemic kind of disrupted some of that.
03:24 But for our client, when I think about our platform,
03:27 we have over 30 different types of specialists.
03:29 And the two specialists that are the most passionate
03:32 and the most kind of enraged at the lack of care for women
03:35 in certain areas are our pelvic floor specialists
03:38 and our OBGYNs that specialize in menopause.
03:41 And I think it's because they just see women suffering
03:44 and they say, "There are treatments. It's simple."
03:46 Whether it's HRT, just little things that you can do
03:50 to alleviate a lot of these symptoms.
03:52 And so for us, we have a client advisory board
03:55 across a lot of these other products,
03:56 and we would ask our clients every year,
03:59 "Would you buy a menopause product?"
04:00 And the answer was always like, "Oh, we're prioritizing other things."
04:03 And then about a year and a half ago, in early 2022,
04:07 we said, "What about menopause?"
04:11 We always kind of talk about what's on our product roadmap
04:13 at the beginning of the year.
04:14 And all four of them, which are Fortune 50 companies, said,
04:17 "Oh, yeah, my employees in the UK are talking about it."
04:20 Because the conversation really started in the UK in 2021
04:22 in like a big way.
04:24 And so when we launched our product at the end of last year,
04:27 it's the fastest selling product in the history of Maven.
04:31 Like these other categories, which also are deeply underserved,
04:34 it took years to kind of bring them out of the shadows.
04:37 And 300 clients have now adopted menopause in the last year alone.
04:41 And it's like an incredible...
04:43 And yeah, everyone is like, "Menopause, like, you know,
04:46 tell me what's really going to happen."
04:48 Or like, "This was my experience."
04:50 And so it's great to have the conversation finally.
04:54 - With menopause, as with many things, women's health,
04:58 there's the existential question of how do you make men care?
05:03 How do you make investors care?
05:04 How do you make the CEOs of employers,
05:07 who are still 90% of Fortune 500 companies, care?
05:10 And I'd love to hear, you know, with this stigma,
05:13 or with this historical stigma,
05:15 maybe, Joanna, from the investor standpoint,
05:18 and Kate, from the employer standpoint,
05:20 like how do you have those conversations with people
05:24 who haven't traditionally had to think or talk about it?
05:27 - So I mean, there's obviously two parts of this.
05:31 I get on LinkedIn messages from men every day
05:34 asking how to help their wives.
05:35 So I actually think men do care.
05:38 They're seeing that their wives are suffering
05:40 and they're seeing that their wives are having challenges
05:43 and they actually really want to help them.
05:45 With regard to making investors care,
05:47 that's really about growth.
05:49 And the reality is we're just growing incredibly quickly
05:51 because there is a lot of desire for menopause care.
05:54 And so investors are responding to the demand
05:58 and there is finally a lot of demand from women
06:02 saying that they deserve great care and they can get it.
06:06 And so that, I think there's a new generation of women
06:09 who are not interested in suffering silently.
06:11 Instead, they're looking for treatments.
06:13 And so the male investors are responding to that.
06:18 - Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
06:19 I mean, I'm also surprised sometimes
06:21 when a man will pull me aside in one of our client meetings
06:25 and he'll say, "My wife suffered so much
06:28 "and I'm so happy to see something."
06:30 So definitely that's a big thing.
06:33 I think one of the things that when one of our clients,
06:37 she was going through menopause
06:39 when she kind of brought on our products.
06:40 So she tried our product
06:41 and so she was really, really amazed at like,
06:46 actually, wow, like I can have symptoms alleviated
06:49 and not actually do that much in my really busy life,
06:51 just get, whether it's HRT or something.
06:53 And so she's like, in our communications then
06:56 to the company, she actually wanted us
06:58 to kind of really go deeper
06:59 on what the menopause symptoms are.
07:01 So all the men at the company could learn a little bit more,
07:04 even at the launch.
07:06 And I thought that was just very,
07:08 there's just a lot of people really eager to talk about it.
07:11 I think the celebrity endorsements that have come as well
07:14 have been amazing that celebrities are talking about this
07:17 on social media and lots of people are now viewing it.
07:20 And so I think just the overall conversation,
07:23 there's just so many people contributing to it.
07:25 And I think more men, probably men don't wanna talk
07:28 about their wives' journeys,
07:30 but certainly have been really supportive in the background.
07:33 - I wanna open it up to audience questions in a minute,
07:35 but the celebrity endorsement factor brings up,
07:39 menopause treatment has historically been
07:42 in this weird space where HRT has been stigmatized.
07:47 Now there's this gold rush, but some of the treatments
07:50 are more healthcare based than others.
07:53 How do you separate, maybe starting with Kate,
07:56 how do you separate like the real treatments
07:58 from what I'll call the snake oil?
08:01 - Well, this is happening everywhere
08:02 in every category of health.
08:03 We're seeing it a lot in the fertility industry
08:06 as well at the moment.
08:07 And so I think what is just so important is that,
08:11 you have the right treatments
08:12 and you have the right doctors.
08:14 Like for us, when we talk about our product,
08:16 like we don't just, someone comes to us,
08:18 we don't just give them HRT the second they come to us
08:20 because they're asking for it.
08:22 We actually have like a whole clinical protocol
08:24 around what do you need, if you need a drug,
08:27 what type of drug do you need?
08:29 And so I think providing that access to specialists
08:32 is so critical to kind of combat some of this misinformation
08:35 and then just talking about it more openly.
08:37 I mean, I think we were just hearing some of these
08:40 amazing talks today about just the social media advertising
08:43 and pharmaceuticals and how, what that does to people.
08:46 And so I think it's really important to just continue
08:50 and why telehealth is so important in this
08:52 is to continue to educate patients and empower them
08:55 so that they actually can separate fact from fiction.
08:58 And I think our chief medical officer
09:00 is very passionate about not over-prescribing HRT,
09:04 that HRT is really important and there's been a huge,
09:07 huge issues with access, but it's also important
09:09 not to just kind of peanut butter spread everyone,
09:12 give them hormones because that's now
09:14 what everyone's asking for because of some ad they've seen.
09:17 - How do you navigate this as the founder and owner
09:21 and CEO of a company that is offering treatment?
09:24 - Yeah, it's interesting you asked about celebrities.
09:26 I think the fact celebrities are talking about this
09:29 is great because it's brought a lot of awareness,
09:32 but a lot of why they're talking about it
09:33 is because they're pushing certain supplements
09:35 that they're working for and that's a problem.
09:37 So what Maven is doing, what we're doing
09:40 is we have trained providers who are medical experts
09:43 who are taking care of people.
09:45 This is a medical issue.
09:47 It is not something that can necessarily be solved
09:49 by a supplement that you read about on TikTok.
09:51 It is a real medical challenge
09:53 and it needs to be solved by experts.
09:55 So we spent a year building this thick pile
09:59 of care protocols for all the things
10:01 that women are going through and now we have
10:03 this mini university where we train all of our providers
10:07 to do this level of care and it's really that knowledge
10:10 that has been missing from our industry.
10:12 When you go to your doctor, they usually spend
10:14 about two minutes with you and in that two minutes
10:17 you're not gonna get through your joint pain
10:18 and your lack of sleep and your painful sex
10:20 and your anxiety and your sleep issues.
10:22 And that's just five of the 32 or 64 symptoms
10:27 that are related to menopause.
10:28 So you have to have experts and so this is really all about,
10:31 for both of us, training the experts
10:33 to give really high quality care to women.
10:37 You're not finding that with the supplements
10:39 that you're seeing on TikTok or on YouTube.
10:41 It really is medical care and offering women access
10:46 to really high quality care.
10:48 - Do we have any questions?
10:49 Yes.
10:51 - So actually that's a perfect lead in to my question.
10:54 So--
10:55 - And sorry, could you tell us--
10:56 - Oh sorry, Linda Finley, CEO of Blue Apron.
10:59 I really love the fact that we're seeing
11:01 so much more awareness of menopause
11:03 but I'm a breast cancer survivor
11:04 and from my conversations at this conference,
11:06 certainly not alone.
11:07 And I am in medically induced menopause for treatment.
11:11 And I find that the swing to really talking about menopause
11:15 has left that group a little bit out
11:20 and feeling like all the conversations around HRT
11:23 are around not demonizing HRT, which I totally appreciate,
11:27 but for those of us who can't actually do it,
11:29 it still feels a little bit lost.
11:31 And there also does seem to be this sort of weird world
11:34 in between of your oncologist versus other doctors
11:38 and how they can actually help across different treatments
11:40 and triangulating that.
11:41 How are you thinking about that fairly large population
11:44 of breast cancer survivors or ovarian cancer
11:48 or anything else where hormones are critical?
11:50 - So Dr. Mindy Goldman is our chief clinical officer.
11:53 She is the head of UCSF Survivorship Clinic
11:56 and this has been her entire career.
11:58 For 30 years, she's one of the first people
12:00 who started focusing on what all the treatments are
12:03 that are available for women who had breast cancer
12:06 because you can't take hormones.
12:07 So what are the options?
12:08 What are the supplements that are appropriate and tested?
12:11 And what are the non-hormonal medications that are tested?
12:15 We have an entire survivorship clinic that we have launched
12:18 for women who had breast cancer,
12:20 have concerns about breast cancer,
12:22 and we have trained providers who only do that.
12:25 And it's a really important issue
12:28 that we care really deeply about.
12:30 So that is access in all ways to great care
12:35 is how we think about this.
12:37 And so we do have an entire survivorship clinic.
12:40 - Yeah, I think it's the one-to-one, right?
12:42 It's not the one-to-many.
12:43 So you see a lot of women's health journeys,
12:47 they're non-linear except we've reduced them to,
12:49 oh, menopause is when you don't have your period anymore.
12:51 And that's the kind of common understanding of it.
12:54 Or pregnancy, having a baby,
12:55 it's just nine months you're pregnant, you're fine.
12:57 Go back to work.
12:58 And so it's through a lot of the one-on-one conversations
13:02 with providers that you can really start to unpack
13:05 kind of how you're coming to the table with your symptoms,
13:09 your needs, your personal medical history.
13:11 So it's why access to care is so critical
13:14 in I think a lot of women's health journeys.
13:16 And we don't get enough in our actual
13:19 like in-person physical system.
13:22 One of the statistics that I think is wild too
13:25 is so two of three women between the age of 40 and 64
13:29 don't talk about menopause symptoms to their provider.
13:31 Of the one out of three that do talk about menopause,
13:34 75% are told to just get on with it
13:36 because it all happens to all women.
13:38 So there's just a huge problem of lack of training
13:42 which Joanne is talking about in the system
13:43 where it's so important for,
13:45 if we have these access to specialists
13:47 that you are training them
13:48 and you're providing that one-to-one.
13:50 In this age of AI and everyone's talking
13:52 about all the AI bots again.
13:54 It's really critical as well to keep
13:58 so many of these providers at the front and center
14:01 of a lot of these very underserved issues
14:03 where there's not as much data
14:05 and you can't train, maybe one day,
14:08 but not anytime soon.
14:09 And so it's just really important for reasons like that.
14:12 - A corollary, I would like to ask you both briefly.
14:16 We started off this conversation
14:17 by talking about the impact on the US economy
14:20 of menopause symptoms in the workplace.
14:22 Brief advice for those of us in this room
14:25 on how to broach this topic at work
14:27 and have that conversation.
14:29 - Yeah, I mean I think if you are someone
14:31 suffering from menopause, you should just,
14:34 it's hard, but talk about it.
14:37 Because I think you are putting an example
14:40 for women who are gonna come after you.
14:43 I think a lot of HR leaders are hearing
14:45 about menopause benefits like ours in the market.
14:47 So a lot of companies are under pressure
14:50 to actually, if their peers have launched
14:51 a menopause benefit, then they might have to too.
14:54 If you're in a leader where you buy benefits,
14:56 I think menopause has become just as much
14:59 a health equity issue as so many other parts
15:02 of healthcare benefits in the workplace.
15:04 So there's always doors that open
15:07 and close when you're trying to help
15:09 kind of underserve populations and create new categories.
15:12 But in this market, the door's open right now.
15:14 And so this is the time to kind of be more vocal.
15:19 - Yeah, so we host-- - Last words, 10 seconds.
15:21 - Webinars where we have our doctors come and talk.
15:24 And we did one this week that had 3,500 employees
15:28 from one company.
15:29 And what then you see on the side,
15:31 all the questions that are coming in
15:32 and they're pouring in to ask what to do about things.
15:35 And the message we got afterwards
15:37 was that people felt so much less alone
15:39 because they saw other people were asking
15:41 the same concerns they had.
15:43 - Joanna, I'm sorry to cut you off,
15:44 but that's all the time we have.
15:45 Thank you both so much.
15:47 (audience applauding)
15:50 [BLANK_AUDIO]