Since graduating from the GSB, Monica Molenaar has had a successful career as a serial entrepreneur, launching a scheduling app aimed at parents and a retail, and wholesale business selling artisanal sesame-based products. But a health scare would change everything — and lead Monica to her most personal venture yet.
In 2020, Monica co-founded Alloy Health, a direct-to-consumer digital health company that connects women with the information and personalized care they need to thrive during perimenopause and menopause. It all began after Monica was found to have a BRCA mutation at the age of 40, meaning her odds of developing cancer were markedly higher than average. She had her ovaries removed to limit her risk and entered into surgical menopause overnight, suffering from sleeplessness, weight gain, and irritability. Yet, “Nobody talked about menopause,” she recalls on the “Let’s Talk Menopause” podcast. “Everything was about avoiding breast cancer, and nothing was about managing my life once I had the surgery.” It was a years-long, dizzying journey to find answers, but once she found them in the form of hormone replacement therapy, Monica decided to leverage her entrepreneurial experience to help ease the path for other women.
Now, as Alloy Health’s co-CEO, Monica has gathered an expert team of menopause-trained physicians who can prescribe FDA-approved hormone therapy, along with solutions for skin, hair, gut, weight, and sexual health. “Alloy has done tremendous work to bring menopause out of medicine’s shadows, democratizing access to a broad variety of important treatments and therapies,” says Alden Mitchell, MBA ’03. It is the only platform of its kind, giving women across the country 24/7 access to board-certified doctors and convenient free delivery of medications and products — and it has already served more than 70,000 customers. “The need Alloy is meeting is revealed in its explosive growth,” says Andrew Jones, MBA ’03. “Monica has found her professional passion and is building one of the great GSB success stories before our eyes.”
