Professional Biography
Kate Shepherd Cohen
Menstrual Health Pioneer | Founder & CEO | Educator, Writer & Menstrualist
Kate Shepherd Cohen is an award-winning menstrual health pioneer, educator, writer and speaker whose work connects menstrual health with healthcare, education, science, culture and wider social change.
She is Welsh and lives in Cornwall, mother to three daughters. She writes the Substack, Travels With a Menstrualist.
Innovation & Impact
As Founder and CEO of menstrual health tech Menstrual Cycle Support (MCS), Kate has pioneered menstrual literacy through NHS social prescribing. Following a pilot in 2021 and national launch in Parliament in 2022, MCS has supported thousands of people, with its digital educational programmes now available through more than 500 GP surgeries across the UK. Her work has received several international health innovation awards.
Research, Policy & Public Engagement
Kate contributes to national menstrual health research and policy through the UK Menstrual Health Framework Steering Group and the James Lind Alliance Steering Group for Heavy Menstrual Bleeding. She has undertaken master's-level studies in Contemporary Menstruation Studies under Dr Lara Owen and presented at major national and international academic conferences.
An experienced public speaker and media contributor, she has also delivered a TEDx talk and appeared on BBC, Financial Times, Huffington Post, radio, podcasts and other media platforms.
Beyond Menstrual Health
Before menstrual health, Kate spent a decade working in climate campaigns and international conservation, collaborating with Indigenous communities and locally led conservation projects around the world, from Scandinavia to Africa and Central and South America.
These experiences, spending time in different landscapes, learning from and living in a variety of communities and participating in rites of passage, continue to inform her ecological and cross-cultural approach to menstrual health.
Menstrualism & Creative Work
Kate identifies as a menstrualist, a term she has used since 2000. In 2017, she launched menstrualism.com to explore menstrualism as a way of bringing together the many voices and perspectives of the global menstrual movement.
Her creative work includes I Am a Menstrualist, an original spoken-word piece and song written in the aftermath of Covid, which she performed initially in 2023 and more widely in 2026, including at academic and cultural venues.
Travels With a Menstrualist
Through her free Substack, Travels With a Menstrualist, Kate invites readers to explore the menstrual cycle beyond biology, discovering its connections with science, nature, myth, art and culture.
Respecting Lineage
In gratitude to the teachers, thinkers and communities whose work has shaped and informed my path in the field of menstruality.
Teachers
Alexandra Pope & Sjani Hugo Wurlitzer of Red School & authors of Wild Power, whose pioneering work in Menstrual Cycle Awareness (and Conscious Menopause) opened my first doorway into menstruality (as a graduate of Red School) and continues to expand my sense of menstrual cycle potential. Alexandra is in the lineage of post-Jungian, dreamwork & process-oriented psychoanalyst Arnold Mindell.
Dr Lara Owen, Research Fellow at St Andrews University & author of Her Blood is Gold and Reorganising Menstruation & tutor/ongoing supervisor in my Masters-level research in Contemporary Menstruation Studies - Dr Owen has significantly deepened my critical understanding of the menstrual cycle in society.
Jane Hardwicke Collings, who has illuminated the spiritual dimensions of menstruation with clarity & integrity (and helped me to birth my first hoop drum). Jane herself was a student of Jannine Parvati Baker, one of the pioneers of the (western) menstrual movement in the 1970s.
Vanessa Tiegs, the visionary menstrual blood artist, whose mentorship and creative practice has broadened my sense of menstrual expression.
Justin Francis OBE, UK Government Advisor on Nature, whose guidance when we worked together shaped my understanding of whole-system responsibility. Justin in turn was mentored by social justice activist Dame Anita Roddick.
The Menstrual Cycle Support Team & Advisory Board, whose interdisciplinary guidance - spanning clinical practice, research, technology and organisational leadership - has strengthened the rigour of this work.
Celtic Folk Wisdom & Ancestry
As a Welsh woman living in Cornwall with Grandmothers from Scotland and from Ireland, I recognise the 'Celtic' imprint of a cyclical worldview - a reverence for natural rhythms, the turning of the seasons and the interconnectedness of all life.
The Celtic Wheel of the Year has been a quiet and steady teacher in my work in menstrual education - a framework through which I understand cyclical time, renewal and return. I also recognise and celebrate the ways the Celtic traditional rhythms meet and resonate with other wheels, other cosmologies and other systems of knowing.
Cross-cultural Influences & Commitment to Inclusivity
I acknowledge the influence of Indigenous ways of being, which have emphasised the significance of relationally, reciprocity and deep listening to the land, body and community.
I offer respect to the many cultural traditions and lineages whose teachings intersect with, and enrich, our collective understanding of the menstrual cycle experience.
I recognise that not all women have a menstrual cycle and not all those with a menstrual cycle identify as women.
I remain committed to inclusive intercultural dialogue grounded in humility, care and ethical engagement.
The Menstrualists
To all the menstrualists who have come before me, and to every person who has shared their menstrual story in interviews, workshops, circles and one-to-ones - thank you.
Your courage is the ground on which this work stands.
Work with intention
May I continue these lineages with the compassion, steadiness and kindness that I have received, and which have transformed my relationship with the menstrual cycle.
May I meet menstrual injustice with the strength drawn from my lineage and our community.