Company leader
Anne Fulenwider
Co-founder and co-CEO
Alloy
Anne Fulenwider is the co-founder and co-chief executive of Alloy, an online menopause clinic. She was editor in chief of Marie Claire for eight years before she left publishing to start the company with Monica Molenaar.
A career in magazines
Fulenwider worked in magazines for 25 years and ran Marie Claire as editor in chief for eight of them. She won Media Industry Newsletter's Editor of the Year award in 2013, judged the Pulitzer Prizes, and appeared as a mentor on Project Runway All Stars.
Under her, Marie Claire published a run of stories on women's health research, including a piece titled "Being a Woman is Killing You."
A turn toward women's health
Two family events pushed her further. Her mother died suddenly of a heart attack at 73 after being taken off hormone therapy, and her daughter went through a frightening emergency room visit with no clear diagnosis. Both made her see how little is known about women's bodies.
Molenaar then approached her about menopause content, and Fulenwider dug into the stigma and misinformation around hormone therapy. She left publishing to work on it full time: "I loved my journalism career, but I really, really love being on the front lines of trying to fix policy and health."
Building Alloy
Fulenwider and Molenaar founded Alloy in 2021 to connect women with menopause-trained doctors online. In the early days the two co-founders handled customer support and called every customer back themselves.
Alloy grew without large funding rounds and turned profitable before its Series A. Fulenwider counts that as proof that a "profitable, purpose-driven business" can serve women in midlife without compromising its values.