We all want to belong, particularly in the workplace. But how do you fit into a world where topics that matter to you are not discussed?
And what is the price you pay when you try to fit in anyway?
Veroniek Vermeulen thought she was fitting in just fine as an engineer in a male-dominated corporate environment, only to find out that she was very good at adapting herself.
That realization, that she was more of a chameleon, inspired Veroniek to build Silatha, a company dedicated to creating psychological safety and supporting women’s health in the workplace.
In episode 172, Veroniek joins us to talk about:
- Why women’s health still gets treated as a private matter, and what that silence costs
- Building psychological safety and shifting workplace culture so women can bring their health to the office
- How her AI-powered tool NURA can support organizations navigating women’s health.
Plus, why agency and belonging turn out to be at the center of it all, and what that has to do with why women are more vulnerable to burnout.
Above all, our conversation is a practical look at what it takes to build a workplace where women don’t have to leave their health struggles at the office door.
You can listen to the episode by pressing play below.
Building Psychological Safety for Better Women’s Health at Work with Veroniek Vermeulen – Women Disrupting Tech
Or keep reading for practical takeaways, highlights, and trends from the episode.
Practical Takeaways for Founders
Many companies, large and small, see health as something private. Yet, for women, health-related issues often take place during their fertile years when their health directly impacts their productivity at work. For founders who want to normalize the conversation around health in their team, here are three practical ways to do so from the episode:
Make room to disagree, without a penalty
She gets concrete fast about what founders can do from day one. In her words: “make it clear that people can raise concerns, ask for support, and disagree respectfully, so there’s not a fear to be judged or penalized. And then put women’s health on the agenda intentionally rather than waiting for a crisis or a single awareness day.”
Treat cycle-related symptoms as plannable
This recommendation is clear: know your team’s cycles. “We think that women and women’s health is unpredictable,” she said. “It’s very predictable if you track it.” If a founder knows someone on their team reliably gets a bad headache the day before her period, that becomes planning information, the same way any other known, recurring constraint would be.
Design your policy for the 99 percent
When you add flexibility to work schedules to support women in dealing with health issues, you also introduce the possibility that people take advantage of it. Veroniek points out that “there will always be one or two that maybe take advantage of this.” However, we both feel that policies should reflect the 80 percent, or in this case the 99 percent, who act in good faith.
For founders who want to take women’s health seriously, none of these require board meetings or a bigger team. All these takeaways can be implemented within days.
🤗 Know a founder or manager who is trying to normalize conversations around women’s health in the office but doesn’t know where to start? Use the share buttons below to share the episode with them.
Or scroll down for magic moments.
Highlights and timestamps
| Time | Highlight |
|---|---|
| 00:00 | Introduction: Women’s Health, Psychological Safety & Silatha |
| 02:11 | Meet Veroniek Vermeulen and Silatha |
| 02:42 | From Corporate Engineer to Founder |
| 05:03 | Fitting In vs. Adapting at Work |
| 06:41 | Burnout, Belonging & Being Valued |
| 07:53 | Purpose, Viktor Frankl & Letting Go of Control |
| 13:38 | How Silatha Evolved from Wellbeing to Women’s Health |
| 17:41 | Why Psychological Safety Matters for Health at Work |
| 19:59 | Breaking the Taboo Around Women’s Health |
| 25:59 | How Organizations Build Lasting Support |
| 27:02 | Nura: Private, Always-On Health Support |
| 32:15 | Privacy, Trust & Responsible Health AI |
| 38:10 | Men’s Mental Health and Inclusive Health Conversations |
| 41:00 | The Cultural and Business Impact of Support |
| 43:50 | Women’s Health at Work: Regional Perspectives |
| 46:14 | How Founders Can Build Psychologically Safe Startups |
| 55:15 | Advice for Founders Navigating Perimenopause |
| 56:47 | Priorities, Pressure & Getting Important Work Done |
| 1:01:26 | Finding Purpose Through the Work |
| 1:01:58 | Designing Safer Founder Communities |
| 1:04:06 | Where to Connect with Veroniek Vermeulen and Silatha |
| 1:04:40 | Closing and Episode Outro |
The Episode In an Infographic
3 Magic Moments In The Episode
At the start of the conversation, she shares her learning from reading the book ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ by Viktor E. Frankl. She emphasizes that “we can always choose how to respond to what is happening.” This sets up a conversation about purpose, agency, and empowerment. Three moments from this conversation are worth hearing in their own words.
The Four Thousand Weeks reflection
After we discuss the Viktor Frankl book, Veroniek refers to the LinkedIn post of our mutual friend Michiel about another book: Four Thousand Weeks. The number 4,000 stands for the number of weeks in an average human life, and what matters is how we make them meaningful: “Life really matters when you’re emotionally touched, when all the groceries and all the standard work things, they don’t mean anything. It’s just when you are touched, and you can live from your heart, and you can live from the relationship that you have with others.”
Taking a lead from sports
Right after she describes sending people home when they’re not feeling well, she reaches for a comparison: “Look at sports. You cannot always be a winner, always be performing. You need to take that rest. And I think when it comes to the cycle, as women we need to learn that sometimes in the month we need to take that rest, and take care of ourselves, so we can perform and take care of others all the other time.”
The surprising openness of male leaders in the Middle East to women’s health
When I ask her how leaders in the Middle East respond to women’s health as a topic in the workplace, Veroniek said that “The response from men is very positive, and very much like please tell me more, because this is a topic that I have not heard about and I would rather learn […]” She sees leaders who really see this as a work issue that extends into their personal life; they care about the women in their life.
These moments take women’s health beyond the policy or a checklist, to what return on investment is really about.
🗣 What was your magic moment of the episode? Was it the openness of male leaders in the Middle East, the 4,000-week realization, or another moment entirely? Let me know by sharing your favorite moment in the comments.
Or scroll down for my favorite quote from the episode.
The Quote from the Episode
We spend quite a bit of time exploring the tendency of women to control how others see them and to avoid being seen as weak. That part of the conversation ends on this quote:
“As long as I believe I’m doing the right thing and it adds to my values, that gives me a reason to live and add something to the world.”
— Veroniek Vermeulen - founder Silatha
💡 Feeling inspired by this quote? Feel free to share it with someone else who could use the inspiration as well.
Or learn about 3 trends I noticed across episodes below.
3 Trends I’m Seeing Across Conversations
For every episode, I compare themes or topics that overlap with what we have discussed in other episodes. These three themes from this conversation showed up before on the podcast:
Keeping health out of the office
Silatha starts with Veroniek’s realization that "I learned so many topics about their miscarriages in the office bathroom. They kept on working while they were in the hospital because they didn't want to be seen as weak." Possibly related to this is that managers are rewarded based on “visible output, constant availability and short-term performance," which "can make health conversations feel risky for employees." In episode 155, Beata Wandachowicz-Krason describes a similar scene, adding that “when we talk about professional careers, we only try to keep that mask of being a professional and then we don't really disclose what's happening in our lives.” And in episode 159, Maaike Steinebach opens up about women telling her to: "please don't go and talk about menopause... We really worry that if we now start to talk about all these personal issues in the workplace, that it will affect our career opportunities."
Agency over body, health and responses
The theme of agency runs through the episode. As Veroniek puts it, “I cannot control what's currently happening in the world. But I can control how I go about it.” This mimics something we heard from Oryna Starkina in episode 142. When sharing how she deals with the war in Ukraine while building her software company, she talks about “balancing of [accepting] reality, controlling these small parts of it and just living through it." Later, in the episode, we also discuss agency in the context of your body and responses. In episodes 164 and 165, we learned from founders who’re building solutions that give women agency over their bodies and health. In episode 164, Mirjam Weemhoff and Bart van Diepenbeek share how their adaptable pessary gives women back control over their pessary and, with that, over how they participate in daily activities. In episode 165, Sophie Haccou talks about how Cuphub’s product Casey enables women to go to school, work and social activities, regardless of where they are in their cycle.
Privacy as a prerequisite for trust
Like many other founders, Veroniek feels that it should be up to the individual to share health information with their manager. It’s why she opted for a phone app over a Teams integration because “you still have the fear that maybe your manager somehow will read it.” It’s also the reason that her AI assistant Nura answers from Silatha’s own medical database, and this information is not shared with the big AI models. Back in episode 153, Sabrina Nowicki made a similar decision. Her fertility app Cyclisity sits on a woman’s phone and does not even share data with the company. And in episode 168, Karianne Kraaijesteijn shares how Adaptive will be permission-based so that it is clear to users upfront what their data is and is not used for. All three see it as a way to establish trust.
For founders building a team or a product, these episodes leave one practical question: when a woman decides what to share about her health, what have you built that makes that choice safe?
🗣️ What was the value you got from listening to this episode? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.
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Coming Up On Women Disrupting Tech
Within about ten years, a single knee replacement went from two weeks in acute rehab to a double knee replacement done as outpatient surgery. Occupational therapist Dr. Ashley Blackington watched that shift from inside the hospital, and saw that the demands on family caregivers rose while the infrastructure around them stayed the same.
In episode 173, she walks through what happens to the people who take over care at home, and why the family caregiver ratio of seven to one today is heading toward three to one by 2040.
She also explains how Dovetail, the app she founded, lets a family build a flock around a care recipient and control who sees which piece of information, and how its AI summaries turn a caregiver's notes into something a clinician can use at the next appointment.
The clip above comes from the part of the conversation about the day someone leaves the hospital. Inside the hospital, she describes a well-oiled machine: case management handles insurance, home modifications and outpatient care, while therapists each cover their own piece of getting someone up, dressed, and in and out of a car. At discharge, the family receives a list of follow-up calls and prescriptions to fill, and home care arrives 24 or 36 hours later. Listen to what that handoff contains, and what it leaves out.
Curious how Dovetail helps families provide home care without burning out? Leave your email below to find episode 173 in your inbox on 22 October at 8:00 CEST.
Until then, as always, keep being awesome,
Dirkjan
What I Want to Leave You With
In this episode, we talk about women’s desire to control how people see them and not being seen as weak. Now, one of the reasons I think women are more vulnerable to burnout is that, like a chameleon, they’re constantly adapting to circumstances they cannot change. As a result, they copy behaviors men are exhibiting to show their strength.
At the same time, men’s mental health is a big taboo topic in and outside the workplace. This is possibly because men don’t want to be seen as weak either.
That made me wonder about these questions that I want to leave you with:
- Could opening up conversations about women's health also create space to talk about men's mental health, and would that make for better overall performance?
- Do we need policies to have these conversations, or should we simply allow ourselves to talk about (health) topics that affect our work performance?
If you have strong views about this, feel free to add your perspective in the comments or on one of the Women Disrupting Tech socials.
Listen to the full conversation with Veroniek Vermeulen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube. And if you are a female founder navigating a funding conversation, take a look at FundingCoach.ai.
About Veroniek Vermeulen
Veroniek Vermeulen is the founder of Silatha, a company helping organizations build psychologically safe workplaces around women's health. She trained as an engineer, then spent almost 20 years in global marketing and innovation roles in FMCG, running businesses with P&L ownership across local, regional, and global teams.
Ten years ago, she shifted toward meditation and coaching, becoming an ICF-certified coach and living in several monasteries along the way, a path that eventually led her to found Silatha. Her work has been recognized with the Influential Leader Award from Brainz Magazine's Brainz 500 Global list.
You can connect with Veroniek on LinkedIn.
About Silatha
Silatha helps organizations build psychologically safe workplaces where employees don't have to hide their health or leave parts of themselves at the door.
Their core offering is an 8-month training program that addresses bias and workplace taboos, from monthly cycles and fertility to menopause and neurodiversity, across an entire organization, followed by 12 months of ongoing support through peer-to-peer networks, mindfulness coaching, workshops, and direct access to their group of experts.
Programs run in Europe under Silatha.com and in the Middle East under SilathaJourney.com. Companies that complete Silatha's programs report a 93 percent increase in engagement and a 92 percent improvement in psychological safety, with a return of five to eight times the program cost within the first year.
You can learn more on the websites of Silatha for Europe and the Middle East. And you can follow the Silatha journey on Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube.
Listen to Episode 172 on Spotify, Apple or YouTube
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