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The femtech founder’s stress toolkit: how to make wellbeing a non-negotiable

By Kate Hesk, founder and CPO at Cognomie

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Stress – as anyone in femtech will know – manifests in many forms. As humans, each of us has different triggers, vulnerabilities and tolerances to it.

And while many of us will claim to “thrive under stress” (hi A-types, I see you), we know that too much will flood our nervous systems, accelerate burnout, and ultimately, lead to longer-term health issues if left unchecked.

Recent HSE figures found that 51 per cent of the 1.8 million work-related illnesses in Great Britain are a result of stress, depression or anxiety. An estimated 17 million working days were lost due to work-related stress, depression, or anxiety in 2021/22.

As female founders, we’re excellent at investing our time and energy in the vital work of supporting our teams, building our businesses, keeping investors happy. Often taking on more stress as a result.

You know the saying “You can’t pour from an empty cup?” How can you manage stress levels as a female founder, doing All The Things, while staying replenished and in touch with your own wellbeing?

Perspective as a superpower

Harnessing your perspective as issues arise can help you create distance from stress – or stressful situations. Notice when it’s happening, pause and try to delineate your thoughts and response.

When you step back, and look inwards, you can acknowledge the situation rather than be consumed by it. Know you are not your thoughts.

Connection plays a huge part in perspective. Invest in connections with peers and likeminded founders to build community, support and accountability. The femtech community is a hugely supportive one – reach out, build those links.

Understand your stress

Where does your stress come from? Is it environmental – the expected pressures of building a business and all that comes with it? Or could it be physiological? For instance, could it be the reality of peri/ menopausal symptoms adding another layer of stress?

While femtech is a brilliant example of the strides made in the menopause conversation, we can’t underestimate how it impacts our emotional, mental and physical health. Investing in coaching and wellbeing support to create a personal plan is a powerful way to navigate this transitional time.

Seeking support as radical courage

You know the deal. As women, there’s a legacy of nurturing others while putting our own needs to the bottom of the list. Between team check-ins, investor updates, and life admin, it can feel uncomfortable to ask for something for yourself.

Years of coaching has taught me that overwhelm is a fast-track to burnout. And because it’s cumulative, it compounds everything we’re dealing with – breaking points can happen in the boardroom or the playground.

Stress is not a failing, it’s a normal part of a full life. Take courage in asking for help.

Build your own trusted support team. Engage coach or a thinking partner who is committed to holding space for quality conversations helping you support and expand your own self-awareness, understanding and personal development.

Come back to your values

Reconnecting with values is a huge part of the resilience work I do with clients. When stress escalates, we need to get back to our why, and refocus on our sense of purpose.

Start small, perhaps by setting a daily intention aligned to your values. Then build this into your working day. Ask: what do I want from this meeting? What can I bring to this conversation? What’s the one thing I need to accomplish today?

Break it down into micro-steps. What’s the next positive step I can take to bring me back to my goals?

Anchor into your own wellbeing

Making wellbeing a non-negotiable can be one of the most powerful things you can do – especially as a femtech founder.

Identify your personal wellbeing pillars – hydration, meditation, 10k steps, a weekly yoga class, 9pm bedtimes – with the knowledge these will vary from season to season.

Heading into summer, I’m committing to more white space in my day, building in thinking and creative time. Choose what works for you. Attend to it daily.

Embodying wellbeing as a femtech founder shouldn’t be considered a privilege; it’s neither frivolous or a nice to have. It’s how we shape new possibilities for what we’re building with our companies, helping us all to be more authentic and whole in our work.

This isn’t about adding yet another “to do” to the list. It’s how you access powerful resources to support you through the sticky, stressful moments that come with the founder territory.

A bonus is that modelling this behaviour for your team means you can give the people around you permission to do the same, and reset the culture around stress at work.

Kate Hesk is the founder and CPO at the HRtech platform Cognomie. Prior to Cognomie, Kate’s career spanned 15 years in leadership development and coaching consultancy after 12 years in management and leadership roles in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry.

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Condé Nast to close women’s health magazine after 47 years

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Condé Nast will close its women’s health publication Self after 47 years, with unprofitable editions of Glamour and Wired also set to shut.

In a memo published on the magazine giant’s website on Thursday, the media company’s chief executive, Roger Lynch, said: “As audience behaviours shift, we have not seen a path for Self to continue in its current form as a digital publication.”

“Going forward, health and wellness content will be integrated into our other brands, including Allure and Glamour,” Lynch said, referring to Condé Nast’s other beauty and wellness titles.

Self, which moved to an online-only format in 2017, still reaches more than 20m people each month.

The publication has also earned significant recognition over the years, including a National Magazine award and a Webby’s People’s Voice award.

The closure is part of a wider set of operational changes across the company. Lynch also announced the end of Wired’s Italy edition, noting that while the brand “remains a strong global brand, the Italian edition has not kept pace with growth in our other markets”.

Condé Nast will also wind down Glamour’s publishing operations in Germany, Spain and Mexico.

Lynch said: “Taken together, Wired in Italy, Self and the affected Glamour markets represent a little over 1 per cent of our overall revenue.

“They also remain unprofitable, and continuing to operate them in their current form limits our ability to invest in the ideas and areas that will drive future growth.”

Beyond editorial changes, the company is also restructuring internally to adapt to technological shifts.

Lynch said Condé Nast would make “changes within our technology organisation, reflecting the rapid advancement of AI and its impact on our ability to innovate and build products faster”, adding: “Teams will be restructured to be more agile and to work more closely with our brands and customers, reducing barriers to execution.”

The latest moves follow a series of transformations at Condé Nast in recent years.

Glamour ended its print edition in 2018, followed by Allure moving to a digital-only format in 2022.

In 2024, music publication Pitchfork was folded into GQ, the company’s men’s style magazine.

More recently, last November, Vogue, one of Condé Nast’s key revenue drivers, announced it would absorb Teen Vogue to create a more “unified reader experience across titles”.

The media industry has been shrinking steadily over the years.

From 2010 to 2017, the industry lost an average of 7,305 jobs annually, according to data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas published in December 2025.

Since 2018, the average number of job cuts in the industry has risen to 14,298 a year.

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Insight

GSK ovarian and womb cancer drug shows promise in early trial

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GSK said its ovarian cancer drug shrank or cleared tumours in more than 60 per cent of patients in an early trial as CCO Luke Miels pushes faster development.

The company said that in an early-stage trial, Mocertatug Rezetecan, known as Mo-Rez, shrank or eliminated tumours in 62 per cent of patients with ovarian cancer after chemotherapy had failed, and in 67 per cent of those with endometrial cancer.

Hesham Abdullah, GSK’s global head of cancer research and development, said: “Treatment of gynaecological cancers remains a major challenge, with a pressing need for new therapies that offer improved response rates.

“With Mo-Rez we now have compelling evidence of a promising clinical profile.”

GSK acquired the Mo-Rez treatment, an antibody-drug conjugate, from China’s Hansoh Pharma in late 2023 and has trialled it in 224 patients around the world, including the UK, over the past year.

Only a few patients needed to stop treatment because of side effects, the most common being nausea.

It is given every three weeks by intravenous infusion, meaning directly into a vein.

Combined with data from a separate intermediate trial in China, the results have given the British drugmaker the confidence to go straight to late-stage trials, with five clinical studies planned globally in the next few months, including on patients in the UK.

Speaking to journalists before the conference, Abdullah described Mo-Rez as a “key asset” in the company’s growing cancer portfolio.

It is expected to be a blockbuster drug, with peak annual sales of more than £2bn, which GSK hopes will help it achieve its 2031 sales target of £40bn.

A few years ago GSK did not have any cancer drugs on the market, but it now has four approved medicines and 13 in clinical development.

Last year, oncology generated nearly £2bn in sales, up 43 per cent from 2024, with sales of its endometrial cancer drug Jemperli rising 89 per cent.

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Insight

Self-employment linked to better cardiovascular health outcomes in Hispanic women

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Self-employment is linked to lower rates of high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, poor health and binge drinking in Hispanic women, research suggests.

The findings, published in the peer-reviewed journal Ethnicity & Disease, suggest work structure may be related to cardiovascular disease risk among this group.

Dr Kimberly Narain is assistant professor of medicine in the division of general internal medicine and health services research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, senior author of the study, and director of health services and health optimisation research for the Iris Cantor-UCLA Women’s Health Center.

She said: “Hispanic women experience a disproportionate burden of heart disease compared to non-Hispanic women. This is the first study to link the structure of work with risks for heart disease among this group of women.”

The researchers examined 2003 to 2022 data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System to assess the association between self-employment, cardiovascular disease risk factors and health outcomes for Hispanic women.

The data included 165,600 Hispanic working women. Of those, about 21,000, or 13 per cent, were self-employed rather than working for wages or a salary.

Overall, the researchers found that self-employed women were less likely to report cardiovascular-disease-associated health problems.

They were also about 11 per cent more likely to report exercising compared with their non-self-employed counterparts.

Specifically, they found that self-employed Hispanic women had a 1.7 percentage point lower chance of reporting diabetes, roughly a 23 per cent decline.

They also had a 3.3 percentage point lower chance of reporting hypertension, roughly a 17 per cent decline.

The study also found a 5.9 percentage point lower chance of reporting obesity, roughly a 15 per cent decline.

It found a 2.0 percentage point lower chance of reporting binge drinking, roughly a 2 per cent decline.

It also found a 2.5 percentage point lower chance of reporting poor or fair overall health, roughly a 13 per cent decline.

The relationship between heart disease risks and the structure of work among Hispanic women was not driven by access to healthcare or differences in income, Narain said.

In fact, the decrease in high blood pressure linked to self-employment was nearly as large as the decrease in high blood pressure linked to being in the highest income group.

The study has some limitations.

The researchers relied on self-reported outcomes, which might be less reliable among ethnic and racial minorities and those from a lower socioeconomic background.

In addition, the researchers’ definition of poor mental health does not entirely match the accepted definition in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

They also did not have data allowing them to examine the specific types of occupations held by the women.

The study design also cannot prove any causal relationship between self-employment and cardiovascular disease risk, which is a subject the researchers will explore.

“The next step in the research is to conduct studies that are able to better assess if the structure of work is a cause of higher heart disease risks among Hispanic women.”

Narain said this.

Study co-authors are Lisette Collins, who led the research, and Dr Frederick Ferguson of UCLA.

Grants from the Iris Cantor-UCLA Women’s Health Center-Leichtman-Levine-TEM program and the UCLA National Clinician Scholars Program supported the research.

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