The health pillar at The New Guard Summit opened with a confession and a call to action. Anne Fulenwider, co-founder and co-CEO of Alloy Health and former editor-in-chief of Marie Claire, took the stage to share the moment her own third act began: the death of her mother, a health scare with her daughter, and the realization that she had spent 25 years helping women present themselves to the world from the outside in. She wanted to spend the next chapter helping them from the inside out.
What followed was one of the most direct and practically useful conversations of the The New Guard Summit. Dr. Sharon Malone, Alloy Health's Chief Medical Advisor, New York Times bestselling author, and one of the country's most recognized voices in women's health, joined The WIE Suite founder and CEO Dee Poku for a conversation that covered the basics women were never taught, the longevity tools most are still leaving on the table, and why the future of women's healthcare is going to be built in the digital space.
Dr. Malone opened with the observation that animated everything that followed. Menopause is the one life transition that is universal for women, and yet for decades it was the one no one discussed.
"You may have PMS, you may get pregnant, you may not. You will go through menopause. For women to walk into this phase of life with no information has been unconscionable."
She has been having this conversation for 35 years. What has changed is not the medicine. What has changed is that the conversation is finally happening out loud, in rooms like this one, with women who are ready to advocate for themselves and for each other.
Anne's version of the same realization came when she first started telling people she was leaving the magazine industry to start a menopause company. A friend in fashion warned her that people would think she was in menopause. Her response now: it is coming for all of us. The question is whether women will enter that transition informed or not.
One of the session's most immediately useful moments came when Dr. Malone dismantled the most common misconception about timing. Menopause, she explained, is not something that happens to older women in a single moment. It is a years-long continuum, and it begins earlier than almost anyone expects.
"Perimenopause can start anywhere from four to ten years before the average completion of reproductive life, which is around 51. For some women, symptoms begin in the mid to late 30s."
The symptoms are wide-ranging and frequently misattributed: hot flashes, mood swings, sleeplessness, brain fog, hair loss, changes in libido, itchy skin. When women bring these to their doctors, the most common response is to ask when their last period was. If the answer is recent, they are told it is not menopause. But perimenopause is a clinical diagnosis. It does not require bloodwork, sonograms, or a missed period. It requires a doctor who knows what it looks like.
She was equally direct about the timeline for Black women, for whom the transition to menopause can take up to ten years and tends to begin earlier, a disparity that is underresearched and underacknowledged. Her message to every woman in the room: know the symptoms, know the timeline, and be prepared to educate your doctor if necessary.
The conversation shifted to what women can actually do, both the standard advice and the one intervention Dr. Malone argued has been systematically underused.
The foundations are familiar: exercise, sleep, reduced alcohol, a healthy diet. She was clear that doing everything right does not guarantee a smooth transition, and women should not feel like failures if they struggle despite healthy habits. But the more significant point was about what has been left off the table entirely.
"The biggest longevity tool that we have, and we've left on the table, is hormone therapy. For decades, women have been afraid to exercise that option. What I want you to know is that this is not just a lifestyle or quality of life issue."
The fear, she explained, stems from a 2002 study that has since been significantly recontextualized, but whose shadow has persisted in how both patients and physicians approach the conversation. The consequences of estrogen loss extend far beyond hot flashes. Estrogen affects every organ system in the body: brain, heart, bones, skin. Its decline is directly linked to increased risk of cardiovascular disease, type two diabetes, osteoporosis, and hypertension. The earlier a woman begins attending to this transition, the better positioned she is for the decades that follow.
The third thread of the conversation was about who gets to benefit from this knowledge, and how Alloy is working to close that gap.
Dr. Malone was candid about the structural failures at play. There is a shortage of OB-GYNs nationally. Of those in practice, a relatively small number are trained and current in menopause care. Geographic disparity is real, but even in New York City, she noted, women struggle to access qualified care. The result is that quality information has historically been dependent on proximity to the right physician.
"Digital health is perfect for this. Whether you live in upstate New York or rural Alabama, the message will be the same. You're not dependent upon just the person sitting in front of you."
Alloy's model is built on this premise: combine clinical expertise with digital access to reach the women who cannot get to a specialist, do not know what to ask for, or have been told by their doctors that what they are experiencing is not real. Anne described the founding of Alloy as an act of informed naivete, a willingness to jump into a space that the medical establishment had largely ignored, driven by a co-founder's pitch that was as simple as it was overdue: let's fix menopause.
She also pointed to something Dee named directly in the conversation: the estrogen patch shortage currently affecting the country. Dr. Malone's response was characteristically unsentimental. The demand was visible for years. The manufacturers were not paying attention. And anyone who is being told there are no options should know that patches are one delivery method among many: gels, sprays, pills, vaginal rings. A provider who says there is nothing else to try is a provider who needs a more current education.
Dr. Malone closed with the numbers that put everything else in context. In 2022, the NIH budget was $45 billion. Less than 11% of that went to conditions that primarily or exclusively affect women. Most of that went to breast cancer research. Conditions like menopause, polycystic ovarian syndrome, and the broad landscape of autoimmune diseases that disproportionately affect women received a fraction of what the scale of the problem demands.
"We have got to demand more. For those of you in positions of influence, for our legislators, for policy, even in the workplace, these are things we have to speak up about."
Her final message to the room was the one that connected most directly to the Summit's theme. The third act, the fourth act, whatever chapter comes next, is only available to women who are well enough to inhabit it. That requires starting the work now. It requires knowing what is happening in your body, advocating for the care you deserve, and using whatever platform and access you have to make the same possible for other women.
