Joanna Strober

Company: Midi HealthTitle: Chief Executive OfficerIndustry: Health careNotable in 2024: Strober earned critical support for her women's midlife care startup, Midi Health, raising a $60 million Series B funding round led by Laurene Powell Jobs' Emerson Collective, which also included existing investor GV, the venture arm of Google parent Alphabet.

Joanna Strober experienced firsthand how midlife women were being overlooked in the health-care system. Hormone therapy is safe and effective — so why wasn't expert care for women at midlife easily accessible and covered by insurance?

"I spent a solid year looking for solutions," she shared in a personal blog post. "Pretty quickly, it occurred to me: Someone needs to start a company to fix this."

Midi provides access to specialists and personalized health plans through a virtual clinic platform, covered by insurance.

By founding Midi Health in 2021, Strober was playing a key role in transforming health care for women over 40 — similar in some ways to fellow 2025 Changemaker Naomi Watts, whose Stripes Beauty also identified a huge gap in women's wellness related to menopause.

And like Watts, Strober's inspiration for Midi Health came from her deeply personal struggle, a frustrating journey to get treatment for perimenopause. Despite experiencing severe symptoms like weight gain, fatigue, trouble sleeping, mood swings, and hot flashes, doctors dismissed the possibility of menopause because she was still having her period. "No one said, 'Oh, it's menopause,'" Strober shared in an interview with Oprah Daily.

After a long search she found an expert provider, but it required driving an hour away and paying out of pocket. Accessible, insurance-covered care for midlife women simply didn't exist.

For Strober, pursuing entrepreneurial solutions born out of personal dilemmas is nothing new, nor is being on the forefront of technology and innovation in health care. When she co-founded Kurbo Health in 2014, it became the first digital therapeutic program for childhood obesity, filling a critical gap in pediatric health care. Her motivation was personal — struggling to find effective, accessible solutions for her own children, she built one herself. That startup was ultimately acquired by WW.

Strober's approach isn't just about delivering medical care — it's about changing the conversation about menopause and perimenopause care, and highlighting the lack of coverage offered by insurance. "That's still our goal today. Women should not have to pay an enormous amount of money to get care," Strober said in the interview with Oprah Daily.

According to the CDC, 75 million women in the U.S. are currently in perimenopause, menopause, or post-menopause, and only 30% of U.S. residency programs offer a formal menopause curriculum. The report found 80% of OB-GYN residents feel unprepared to discuss menopause treatment.

"Menopause care can change the world, because when midlife women succeed, we all do," said Strober in a speech at a Dial fellowship event, which is hosted by the Emerson Collective, the investment company started by Laurene Powell Jobs that led Midi Health's $60 million VC round last April.

Since 2021, the company has expanded insurance-coverage to all 50 U.S. states; secured deals with Fortune 100 employers to offer Midi as a health benefit to employees; and partnered with major health systems across the country, and other benefits providers focused on women's health, such as Progyny.

With its latest investment round, Midi plans to add more plans to its insurance partners across the U.S., hire 150 additional specialists, and scale its platform to be able to provide health care to over million women per year by 2029. "Women are well served when they are pregnant, want to become pregnant, or wish to avoid pregnancy, but multiple other needs go neglected. We are more than our fertility; we deserve care for our whole health," Strober said in a statement at the time of the investment round led by Emerson Collective.