Carolee first came to appreciate the importance of women’s health as a business owner. The founder and former CEO of Carolee Designs—one of the world’s leading brands in accessories for women in its day—Carolee led a staff of 300, 85% of whom were female. For her business to do well, Carolee understood her staff needed to be well.

“I knew from running a company how important it is to have healthy employees,” she says. “Investing in the health of women is not only a moral imperative; it’s economically sound.”

But she was also increasingly aware through her years of volunteering at the Breast Cancer Research Foundation of the disparities in healthcare research for men versus women. Historically, most research guiding health care decisions for women has been based on the model of a 175 lb. male. Not allowing for gender as a biological variable has resulted in limited understanding of the ways a woman’s body manifests illness or responds to medication differently, leading to sometimes harmful outcomes for women. At the same time, the amounts such agencies as the National Institutes for Health have historically budgeted for research into diseases that affect women has dawdled at a fraction of the amounts spent on understanding illness in men. This is despite the fact that women comprise more than 45% of the U.S. workforce and make 85% of the spending decisions for U.S. households.

“Why do we accept this?" Carolee asks.

She didn’t, and in 2020 she launched WHAM—short for Women’s Health Access Matters. WHAM is a 501(c)(3) dedicated to increasing awareness of and accelerating funding for research and investment in women’s health. For her contributions, TIME magazine named Carolee to its inaugural “TIME100: List of the World’s Most Influential People in Health” in 2024. She is also a Senior Advisor to the Milken Institute’s initiative on women’s health along with other efforts dedicated to changing how we think about research into women’s health.

Read more about this warrior for better medicine for everyone here.