A Conversation about Women in Business, Menopause and the Machines That Think They Know Us, but do they really? Moderated by Bridget Jackson of Nexus PR— storyteller, PR consultant, and a fierce Black femme of many seasons who knows that leadership is what happens when grace meets grit. She's thrilled to dig into this juicy convo!
A chef, a chiropractor, & technology strategist sit down with a PR consultant to talk about cougar puberty, midlife, & the growing intersection of artificial intelligence & women’s health. Buckle up for this honest, funny, & fiercely intelligent discussion...
Because this is what the next era of women in business looks like & we want you to be a part of that era, all of you!

Look who's talking now...

Mel – A chef and restaurant owner in Portland, Oregon, originally from California with roots deep in original Mexican land. She runs Bar Carlo, a warm, Latin-inspired neighborhood restaurant where community is the currency and every dish carries a story.

Dr. Montserrat – An afrolatine sports chiropractor from Mexico City by way of Chicago and Albuquerque, loving life in beautiful Portland, OR. She founded and clinically directs Hey Doc Clinic, an integrative healthcare practice centering queer and BIPOC people while serving the community at large through chiropractic, acupuncture, fitness, physical therapy, pelvic floor health, massage and mental health mental health care services.

Rose - An early 40’s technology strategist from a melange of eastern and western roots including Sephardic Jews, Spicy Sicilians and Ukrainian Bubbies. She helps small and mid-sized companies navigate artificial intelligence with integrity and inclusion as she builds Business 4 Good . She brings over 15 years of successful leadership as a entrepreneur conceiving of, building teams for and scaling impactful businesses for the current world. Eighty eight percent “tech- positive,” Rose has pulled back that last twelve percent in light of growing data privacy issues — especially around women’s health and wearable technology.

What’s a Gal to Do?
Bridget:

Let’s start where the sparks fly — menopause, or “cougar puberty,” as y’all so joyfully call it. What’s your relationship with technology in this stage of life — as professionals, as leaders, and as women?

Mel:
I’m curious about tech — but my eyebrows are definitely up.
I’ve built my life around this idea that food is for sharing, pleasure and not just fuel. Food can enrich your life, if you get it right.

But midlife is a whole new landscape.

Covid showed me how fragile the systems are. Fear around tariffs has now joined up the reality of food benefits getting cut.
I’m seeing worry on the faces of the people in my community, and it feels way too familiar. That changes the value of what I offer, how I price it, and who it’s for.Could technology help?

Maybe. I’d love something that helps me know what people crave when stress is high, or what to order when prices swing.
But I don’t know if AI can understand that cooking for my community is both a service and a labor of love.
I’m open to it — just still a little skeptical.

Dr. Montserrat:

I hear that. Many people, including myself, are skeptical of the true privacy safeguards found in technology and especially in healthcare software… 23andMe anyone?

Or how our government may disregard healthcare privacy like their desire to access information about menstrual trackers on people’s phones. I use technology, but I keep it in its lane. It’s great for scheduling, research and keeping my team organized.

I see people at this stage of life whose bodies are speaking louder than ever.

People are looking for answers. Social Media and AI are providing a treasure trove of information to people at 2am as they scroll in bed. It’s informing them that a perimenopause symptom can present at a much earlier age than they might have thought, increasing their confidence in HRT, and giving them the talking points to start conversations with their healthcare providers.

It has been so empowering for so many people that may be mismanaged in healthcare. It creates an avenue for people that have had hysterectomies, nonbinary folx, trans people or people that have had a medical condition that affects the experience of perimenopause to get any questions answered in a non-judgementle way. The challenge is who to believe, who to trust and who is preying on a group of people that are thrilled to be getting information they have been starving for.

In the last few years I have seen wearable tech really help patients get answers they deserve. Tools like fitbits and aura rings can help track patterns which is amazing because the studies show that women’s experiences are frequently not believed by healthcare providers, but everyone loves data! Walking in with data about your menstrual cycle or sleep patterns and so much more can really help providers pay attention in a different way.

Rose:

I come from the other end of the spectrum. I live in tech — and I love it- most of the time. But I also see its blind spots up close and have been raising my eyebrows more and more since my very first trip to the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) as a young creative technician some 20 years ago.

Here’s the part that keeps me up at night: for most of modern neuroscience, men's brains have been studied as the model for the “human brain.” Women were only included in large-scale brain studies regularly starting in the 1990s.
And that was largely white women’s brains.

That means, for decades, our understanding of the brain’s wiring, chemistry, & function has been based entirely on men.

Now, artificial intelligence is built on something called “neural networks,” which are modeled after the brain, the white man' s brain. If our scientific model of “thinking” was built on male brains, then our machines — the ones that are supposed to “think” — are reflecting that bias. There is just no way around that, it is inherent.
We’ve built digital intelligence based on an incomplete understanding of human intelligence. And more alarming to me, based on just seven men’s understanding of what technology can do. And if I’m considering the future of tech, which I do daily, then the number of human brains that seem to be in charge of our collective future paired with this dinner reservation should be ringing alarm bells for everyone who likes to breath clean air, eat food that tastes good and drink water that won't kill us.

As a woman in her theoretical 'midlife', or as I am embracing as my cougar puberty, I feel that gap in every system I touch and I’m a white appearing woman. I have much empathy for my sisters of darker skin color; not just as this tech revolution unfolds, but for the various waves of ‘progress’ that have not acutely included all of us!
I wouldn’t call AI evil exactly — it’s just a very primordial prototype of what this kind of tech can be harnessed to do. That is, it's missing each of you~ Bridget, Mel and Dr. Montserrat. And until we safely feed it our experiences whilst protecting our sovereignty, it will keep serving the same defaults.

That’s why I’ve slowed down my enthusiasm — really more a pause for the cause of caring about who's data, how that data is used and ultimately who benefits from its extraction, especially with all these new wearable tech launches. I don’t want devices mining my hormones ~ or scanning my cortisol face~ lols. There is much to be done to get solid & ethical data protections in place.
And that's a major part of my work.

Bridget:

That lands, Rose. And absolutely understand Abuela wisdom, Mel.
Dr. Monstserrat, so much of what we call “innovation” is really just renovation on a house that was never built for us. Let’s talk about that gap — between what’s promised and what’s possible. What are you seeing in your practice as women and femmes’ bodies change?

Dr. Montserrat:
Whew, how much time do we have? What I am seeing is a group of people that are not willing to settle for how things have been. We are not settling for being disregarded over the course of the 10+ years of perimenopause. Thankfully, the era of grin and bear it is getting further and further behind us. Gen X and millennial folx are in research, in healthcare and patients themselves, and we are not settling for unmanaged depression, hot flashes, musculoskeletal symptoms, frozen shoulders, osteoporosis, brain fog…

It's a bit disheartening to understand that we are just now catching up to the advances being made nearly 20 years ago.
Of great note, the 2002 Women Health Initiative (WHI) data was inaccurately interpreted causing a huge scare that set us back 20yrs on the advances being made in hormone replacement therapy (HRT).
Here we are now, and knowledge is spreading so quickly amongst friends, heavily aided by social media, and supported by the healthcare providers out here working as quickly as they can to get people the support they need and deserve.

Menopause or as Rose loves to call it 'cougar puberty' is absolutely at a crossroads — physical, emotional, spiritual. And every path is different. I see women coming in with hips that ache, joints that don’t bend like they used to, muscles that refuse to recover.

I see anxiety sitting in the shoulders, grief tucked into the jaw. And it is not as simple as boiling down to “just hormones.”

It also includes decades of doing too much and feeling too little. This is what is finally coming to the surface.

Menopause is an invitation to listen to your body and learn to give it what it needs.

Bridget:

Whew, say that again for the folks in the back — new leadership!!!
Mel, you’re leading a business, a kitchen, and a community.
What’s shifting for you as you walk through this stage of life?

Mel:

Honestly? Everything’s changing.

Running a restaurant means running on adrenaline — but menopause has made my nervous system less forgiving.

My body’s all over the place, and my mood's are even worse.

I’ve started noticing how stress impacts the vibe at the restaurant. My mood literally changes the temperature in the room.

My team feels it, my guests feel it.
I used to think that part was easy to control, but I simply can’t work a brunch rush when my hormones are making me visibly annoyed.

That’s not hospitality, and it destroys connection.

So yeah, I’ve messed around with tech. I even asked an AI system for a menopause plan — I called it The Robot Recipe.
It gave me this perfect little list: start the day with a walk, Rhodiola after breakfast, Maca at noon, Collagen at night, and plenty of sleep. Smart, sure — but there’s no room in it, at least not for a restaurant owner whose life is never routine.

Do you want to know what I did? I took the ingredients and turned them into ritual. Things that feel like care and scaffolding instead of rules and timetables. The machine gave me a list. Then I empowered my human nature to rework it and turn that list into little rewards.

Bridget:

And that’s the bridge right there. Tech can’t feed the soul — it needs us for that. Rose, how do we make this next generation of technology less sterile, more human?

Rose:

We start by giving it better teachers — us. Women’s data, women’s cycles, women’s realities — we’ve been left out of the training set. The future won’t change until we’re the ones shaping it. And if you really think about it, the reason these 7 tech bros - who from a democratic health perspective are morbidly rich - are hustling to get more data from each one of us is because they legit do not have access to it unless we give it to them, or rather unless they continue to take it from us.

They not only don’t have the lived experience or neural networks as more feminine amongst us have, they also simply do not have that data set because women have historically been written out of history. Ya’ll it is called HIS~ story for crying out loud.

I know the women sitting around this table of boss energy are all very well aware of this PSA and I'll still share: the fact that you and your aunties, grandmas and mamas have experienced that patrilineal ,white washing more than my powdery, white lineage has witnessed is wrong. And that we still see this happening and that some people don't realize it's a thing, well that’s beyond f*ed up and again, a foundational part of my work a creative technician who sees herself as a change architect more than a consultant.

Diversity is not an add-on, a box to be checked or a program to line item; it’s the operating system of humanity.

The more perspectives the system learns from, the smarter it becomes. And that’s science ya’ll.

Please please please, if you take anything away from my piece of this conversation, please know and understand your data is sacred. Those who are building tech need that data to fuel 'progress'. And that's a fact. Before you share anything — your cycle, your sleep, your stress, your location, your address at home or on your computer — please ask yourself:
Who owns this? Who profits from this? What does consent mean here?

If AI is going to understand us, it has to start by respecting us.

Dr Montserrat: Aaaaaaand, let’s also work to have these bots trained in the varied experiences of people including non-binary, trans, cancer survivors whose experiences can be vastly different due to radiation and chemo, professional athletes, folx that have had hysterectomies etc. There are so many people whose experiences have been invisible to the healthcare models that AI could integrate so quickly and that would be an incredible use of this technology.

Bridget:

Boom.That’s it — respect before extract. I love it! Alright, queens of code and cortisol, let’s close this out. Final thoughts — and tell folks where to find you when they need what you’ve got.

Mel:

Feed yourself first — your body, your spirit, your curiosity. You can’t pour sauce from an empty pan.
Eat with me: Swing in for breakfast starting at 7am M-F and brunch Saturday & Sunday Bar Carlo in Southeast Portland
~ what Latin-inspired, home-cooked, healing food really feels like and tastes so good!
Come hungry, leave grounded.

Dr. Montserrat:
Get yourself the support you deserve by finding a provider near you at The Menopause Society’s Directory.
Three amazing providers here in Portland are:
Dr Mary Afsari-Howard, D.O.
Erica Simonich NP
Christina Cameli CNM.
Or maybe you want the feeling of a big sister cheering you on, then read The Menopause Unicorn by Kim Stegeman, founder of the Rose City Rollers. All of the science was verified by Christina Cameli CNM that are linked above.

If you want to watch the trailer and/or support an incredible documentary currently in production by Alicia Rose, MENOPUNKS will pull the veil back explaining how we got here! Menopunks a documentary shattering decades of misinformation with interviews debunking the persistent falsehoods surrounding HRT, and featuring intimate portraits of five celebrated Portland musicians navigating midlife. They also just started a podcast. Come see us at Hey Doc Clinic in inner Southeast Portland.
~ where you can take your pick of healthcare modalities you prefer, and you can come as you are.

Rose: Artificial intelligence isn’t the enemy — masculine amnesia is. Human Intelligence is what will ultimately write the future, not coding, not robots. It's us humans, it's us women who are being called to help conceive & push forward this next epoch. Don’t forget that the future is being orchestrated right now, and your input really does matter.
Work with me: Build to integrate technology safely into your business and life anywhere in the world with women
~ who are creating a steady diet that won’t make you, or the world, run hot.

Bridget:
Cougar puberty, y’all — it’s not the end; it’s the remix.
It’s that moment in life when your hormones and your hustle both start demanding honesty. And if we’re smart — and I mean the kind of smart that comes with stretch marks and soul — we’ll use this moment to rebuild everything: our bodies, our businesses, our belief in what’s possible.
That's absolutely what my team and I at Nexus believe to be true as we push women's success stories in business and beyond to the masses with our agency. If you're in need of a messaging pro who is passionate about helping clients maximize their brands, Look to Nexus Public Relations .
These women prove it: the future of intelligence is not artificial. It’s embodied. It’s communal. It’s deliciously alive.

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