This Almost Didn’t Happen

When I was 18, I was diagnosed with my first autoimmune condition: ulcerative colitis. Amidst adjusting to my freshman year of college, I was suddenly navigating the reality of living with a lifelong autoimmune condition. In the eighteen years since I’ve received two additional autoimmune disease diagnoses (Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and Lichens Sclerosis), and a formal diagnosis of PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome). All of these conditions independently are challenging, and can be extremely overwhelming in combination.

In 2021, despite my rigorous efforts to avoid it, I tested positive for COVID after my insurance company forced me to come in person to get a prescription refill. I was two weeks shy of being able to get vaccinated. While I was very worried about contracting COVID, I had no idea the reality that was about to set in. The acute symptoms lasted six weeks, and then a new set of symptoms emerged. My autoimmune conditions flared aggressively and all at once. My nervous system was on edge. I began experiencing daily panic attacks, sometimes six a day, and it continued for months. It took nearly a year for those symptoms to start improving, finally.

It is difficult to explain the extreme medical and health challenges I experienced. Explaining to someone how you go from managing chronic illness with a degree of understanding and sustainability to being in total freefall. Even four years later, I am still dealing with lingering effects. I’ll never be the same person I was before COVID, and in many ways, I don’t want to be. It gave me tremendous perspective on health, life, work, and gratitude. And simultaneously, I yearn for the person I was and the body I appreciated before it permanently impacted my life.

And yet, amidst all of my significant health challenges, I am happier, healthier, and more fulfilled today than ever. I finally have a treatment plan that works, and my autoimmune conditions are all in remission. My quality of life has dramatically improved, and I’m genuinely unfazed by getting a year older (my 36th birthday is tomorrow). I started my consulting firm last year and am having the time of my life building my career and exploring my many passions. It feels like a turning point — not just in my health, but in how I show up as a leader. Everything I’ve learned about persistence, boundaries, and care now informs how I lead and the cultures I help shape.

And yet I keep returning to this thought: this almost didn’t happen. One right decision or a luck of chance on a good day, over and over again brought me to today. So much has culminated in where I am:

• My dedicated partner selflessly cares for me at every stage of my conditions. I will never take for granted the difficulty of watching someone you love suffer.
• An employer that made the space I never knew I needed to survive, thrive, and live again. Cypress, you literally saved my life by showing up for me when I needed it.
• Financial stability and independence that supported the care choices most people could never afford: out-of-network providers, concierge medical services, copays, and medical bills.
• And my own persistence. I refused to accept that this would be my life. I researched on PubMed, got second and third opinions, trusted my instincts, advocated for myself, and never gave up — even when I had every reason to.

And while all of that is worth celebrating, it also makes me angry. Because none of it should come down to luck or privilege, we should not have to cobble together survival in a system that makes health feel optional. We need to design better: for women, for AFAB (assigned female at birth) individuals, for anyone living with chronic conditions.

Because right now, the leadership pipeline has a health problem — one that’s especially steep for AFAB individuals. We are statistically more likely to develop chronic illnesses, more often misdiagnosed, and more deeply impacted by hormonal and reproductive changes across our lifespans: menstruation, pregnancy, postpartum, perimenopause, and menopause.

And we’re still navigating these complexities within systems that weren’t designed to support us fully. Drug trials often lack diverse representation, especially for AFAB individuals. Funding for research on conditions that primarily impact women continues to lag. Diagnostics aren’t always calibrated for our symptoms. And many workplace norms haven’t evolved to reflect how health intersects with long-term professional growth.

These gaps don’t just affect care; they shape careers. They determine who gets to stay in the game and who quietly exits. And for too many AFAB individuals, that exit isn’t a choice. Instead, it’s a consequence of systems not built with our bodies or realities in mind.

What My Health Taught Me About Culture

While working at Cypress, the support I received from the team changed the trajectory of my healing. I wasn’t expected to minimize my symptoms or push through at the expense of my well-being. I could recover and be fully present with my health while staying deeply engaged with my work.

That kind of trust and flexibility was exponentially powerful. It allowed me to lead from a place of stability instead of survival. And the way the team led me — with clarity, compassion, and flexibility — reshaped how I think about work culture. Not just as an HR executive who helps build it, but also as an employee experiencing it firsthand. It became a case study of what it looks like to truly support people through uncertainty, not by lowering expectations but by adjusting systems so people can stay engaged and well.

And it also showed me something I hadn’t believed was possible: that I could be successful at work and prioritize my health. I experienced growth, development, and progress in my career in a material way.

For most people, that’s not how it works. Focusing on your health often comes at the expense of your career. You’re seen as less committed, less promotable, less present. It’s usually treated as a tradeoff: health or ambition. But in this environment, I learned that prioritizing health wasn’t a liability. It was part of how I succeeded.

We need work cultures that don’t wait for crisis to justify boundaries. We need leadership models that understand that health is part of the equation, not a disruption to it. We need to stop treating health as a liability. It’s a leadership asset, and one we ignore at our collective cost.

When I began consulting in 2024, I spoke with other senior leaders working fractionally, mostly AFAB. Almost every conversation circled back to health. And it was humbling to hear how so many of these leaders were silently navigating tremendous health struggles from chronic illness to severe pregnancy conditions, post-partum depression to chronic panic disorder, all without taking any leave or time away for their health. We weren’t edge cases. We were a pattern.

What Needs to Change

If we want more AFAB individuals in leadership, we need to stop designing workplaces around uninterrupted, invisible bodies. That starts with acknowledging that health isn’t a private matter, it’s a structural one.

Here’s where companies can start:

• Ditch tenure-based parental leave. If you’re serious about attracting top talent, especially during pivotal life and career moments, your benefits must reflect that. Many people won’t leave a job, no matter how compelling the opportunity, if they’re in the middle of family planning or expecting a child and would lose their eligibility for parental leave. Tying something so critical to tenure creates unnecessary friction and limits your ability to bring in the right leaders at the right time.
• Model medical care from the top. Leaders should be able to say, “I’m offline for a doctor’s appointment,” without hesitation or coded language. The more visible this is, the more permission it gives others to prioritize their own health without guilt or secrecy.
• Make flexibility a default. Flexibility shouldn’t be reserved for exceptional cases. When baked into a company's operations through async work, remote options, and absolute schedule autonomy, it enables better performance and longer-term retention.
• Build benefits around real complexity. Stop centering benefits around acute, short-term issues: design for chronic care, hormonal shifts, fertility, mental health, and long-term support.
• Rethink performance. Stop rewarding performative presence. The people constantly in meetings, sending late-night emails, and pushing through burnout aren’t always the ones driving the most impact. Shift your lens from hours and visibility to output, clarity, and how someone enables others. Sustainable performance is strategic, and it’s what keeps leaders in the game long term.

It’s about designing leadership structures that actually reflect the people in them.

Where We Go From Here

This almost didn’t happen. That’s what I keep coming back to. Everything I’ve described — the recovery, the remission, the clarity — was possible because of a few right conditions at the right time. Some of it even came down to listening to a podcast that prompted me to realize my symptoms weren’t normal. What if I hadn’t found that podcast episode, or listened to it too late? What if I hadn’t joined Cypress? What if I didn’t have financial stability? What if I didn’t have a loving partner? Too many coincidences, too much luck.

We can’t continue to rely on chance to make health survivable. It has to be structured into how we work, lead, and build companies. Let’s build systems where health doesn’t derail a life or a career; instead, it fits within them.

It shouldn’t take privilege, persistence, or a perfect storm. It should just be possible, by design.