The Female CEO Operating System

The last chapter, first

Every woman who lives long enough goes through menopause. Every single one, no exceptions. It is not a risk factor and it is not a subgroup: it is the entire female half of a workforce, on a schedule nobody can opt out of. And for the thirty or forty years before it, she is cycling. Two completely different sets of problems, and neither of them is nothing.

Both reach work. In the UK, 69% of working women with period symptoms say they have had a negative impact at work, and 49% never tell their manager when an absence is period-related.¹

And some leave. 17% of UK working women with menopause symptoms have considered leaving work for lack of support, and a further 6% have left.²

Beneath both run the levers every leader depends on, every day: sleep, energy, focus, judgement.

Nearly a third of UK organisations (29%) plan to introduce a menopause policy.³ A company that has written a menopause policy has addressed the last chapter of a book it hasn’t read.

Biology as technology

The Female CEO Operating System is designed around female biology.

Every woman can run her own experiments on her own data: a baseline, one change, a comparison. In one exercise she plans the state she wants to be in for the moments that matter most: a board meeting, an investor meeting, a hiring decision, a redundancy conversation.

Education, not clinical care: we describe the evidence and never make a recommendation. What each woman does with it, she decides with her clinician.

For women in leadership

Women who run a P&L, lead a whole function or founded their company, and women whose next move is into one of these roles. Self-funded, or paid for by the company they lead.

The market: nearly 15 million women are managers across Europe, the US and the Gulf, and 39 million worldwide.⁴ Our first market: the UK and continental Europe.

Close to launch

The learning platform is already built and the curriculum is drafted. First cohorts are planned for early 2027.

The plan: the first cohorts taught live and built with our first clients, then recorded teaching with live Q&A; each extra seat costs almost nothing to deliver.

Accepted into the OX1 (Oxford University) and London School of Economics Generate incubators for their 2026/27 cohorts.

Introductions, then reach

Introductions first: to women in leadership, founders included, for research conversations that shape the programme, and to companies that support the women who work in them and can sponsor their places.

Then the money, for reach: making sure the right women hear about it. The mentoring would sharpen that route.