S2E18: Equality & the Executive Suite: The Menopause Penalty Revisited
Welcome to Clearly Hormonal
(formerly Reset Recharge)
On Women's Equality Day, host Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia revisits an idea from an early episode of Clearly Hormonal: the menopause penalty, the disproportionate income loss, leadership attrition, and career disruption that midlife women face. This episode goes past the data to ask what it actually feels like to lead through sleep disruption, cognitive overload, and hormonal change while carrying the weight of an executive role.
Guest Dr. Brooke Buckley traces her path from a punishing early surgical practice through hospital operations, an MBA negotiated into her first CMO contract, and a system-level leadership role she stepped into during the pandemic. She speaks candidly about infertility and loss, being the only woman in her surgical residency class, and the coaching and community that carried her through. The conversation moves into trauma-informed leadership, why physiology cannot be negotiated away, and the hard pivot Buckley made in walking away from the operating room to protect her own health.
The Menopause Penalty Doesn't Care How Many Titles You Hold
By Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia, MD | Eastside Menopause & Metabolism
Today is Women's Equality Day, a day meant to ask how far women have really come, and where the work is still unfinished. One of the places that unfinished work hides in plain sight is the space where women's biology meets the structures we've built around work, leadership, and success.
Women run hospitals and companies now. We build careers that earlier generations of women were never allowed to pursue. But getting a seat in the executive suite doesn't mean the systems inside it were built around women's lives, or women's bodies. That gap is what I call the menopause penalty: the income women lose, the leadership roles they leave, and the careers they step away from in midlife, often quietly, often without language for why.
This episode revisits that idea with someone who has lived it from inside one of the country's largest health systems. Dr. Brooke Buckley is a board-certified general surgeon, a physician executive, and the current System Vice President of Medical Affairs for Henry Ford Health. She holds an MBA from Johns Hopkins, has served in national leadership with the American Hospital Association and The Joint Commission, and has become an influential voice on physician wellness and trauma-informed leadership.
Brooke's path was not a straight line. She burned out in an intensely demanding early surgical practice, moved into hospital operations almost by accident, and negotiated an MBA into her first contract as chief medical officer. She stepped into a system-wide leadership role at Henry Ford just as the pandemic was beginning, and she has been candid, in this conversation and in her writing, about the infertility and loss that shaped her alongside her career.
What stood out most to me was how Brooke talks about boundaries. She describes a mentor once suggesting she'd be treated more gently because she was a mother of three, and reframes that moment: any woman who shows up to a demanding leadership role already knows exactly what she can and cannot carry, simply because she showed up that day. That knowledge, she says, is not a limitation. It's a superpower.
We also talk about trauma-informed leadership, which for Brooke isn't a slogan. It means recognizing that everyone's physiology changes under stress and loss, whether or not they can name what happened to them, and building teams around that reality rather than pretending it doesn't exist. It means asking awkward questions with humility instead of assuming you already understand what a colleague is carrying.
And she is honest about the cost of leadership, too. Brooke hasn't been in an operating room since she became a CMO. That is a real loss, and she names it as one, but she also describes it as an evolution rather than a failure: a hard pivot she made deliberately, to protect her own health and show up fully for the roles she chose next.
If you take one thing from this conversation, let it be this: the choices that slow you down, that ask you to rebuild your career around your body instead of in spite of it, are not failures. They are pivots toward the next version of yourself.
Listen to the full conversation with Dr. Brooke Buckley on Clearly Hormonal, wherever you get your podcasts.
Follow Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia:@drpatilsisodia on Instagram and TikTok
This content is for educational purposes only and does not constitute personalized medical advice. Please discuss your specific health concerns with your own healthcare provider.