Andrea Berchowitz is Co-Founder and CEO of Vira Health, a global employee health platform that supports women and men across life stages, from fertility through menopause. TELUS Health partners with Vira Health to provide their solutions to organisations and their employees, globally.
Andrea brings extensive healthcare expertise from McKinsey and the Gates Foundation. Her focus is on ensuring women can thrive at every life stage without sacrificing their careers.
A: I have worked broadly in healthcare for 20 years – first at McKinsey, then the Gates Foundation. I started Vira Health with Dr Rebecca Love in 2020.
It's so clear that people really struggle to access the care they need – especially when it is related to typically "female" conditions. Whether accessing fertility support, managing conditions like PCOS, or navigating menopause, women everywhere can face similar workplace impacts with vastly different support levels.
We built Vira Health to fill this gap. We started with a deep focus in menopause and are now really proud to support women across all life stages and increase our support to critical issues men face as well.
A: We partnered with TELUS Health in June of 2025 and work together to provide our products to employers around the world.
We chose TELUS Health because they recognise that women's health is fundamental to workforce wellbeing, not a niche benefit. Recent TELUS Mental Health Index data shows that women globally are unsatisfied with the health benefits their employers provide them.
One example of our great work together is our quarterly webinars which create safe, anonymous spaces for learning about sensitive topics. This combination of privacy, accessibility, and clinical quality makes meaningful support possible at scale.
A: The core focus of my role is increasing the number of people that have access to great women's health support through their employers.
A big piece of that is focused on increasing the understanding of the issue. Research like the TELUS Mental Health Index is super useful in this context. As mentioned, MHI data shows that globally, women are less satisfied than men with the health support that their employers provide. Women's mental health scores are also lower than men's across most countries.
Another big part of this role is making sure that our platform is useful to people and helps them understand their health, their options and ultimately supports decision-making at complex and difficult moments. I spend a lot of time reading the feedback from our members and reviewing the usage trends to understand how we can improve.
A: Our work through Vira Health and the TELUS Health partnership has a direct impact on women's lives.
1. Easy access to great information and care
We know the internet is full of health information. It's overwhelming and difficult to cut through all the noise. We make that so much simpler.
2. Supporting women to stay in their work longer and ultimately their long-term financial health
All the research shows that women's careers are affected by events like pregnancy, parenting and now perimenopause and menopause. We want to make sure that information and access to care supports people at each of those critical junctures so they can stay in their roles as long as they want to. Specifically with menopause – this usually corresponds to when a woman is earning her highest lifetime salary. Reducing hours, pulling back from promotion opportunities or even leaving work early are all major factors in the "pension gap" for women.
A: Many solutions focus on a single life stage – either fertility, pregnancy, or menopause. But we know the workforce is diverse and people need different things at different times. Our platform provides comprehensive support across fertility, hormonal health, pregnancy and parenting and menopause – all in one place.
Another big difference is that we are international at our core. We started Vira in the UK and quickly expanded to the US and South Africa. Realising quickly that our solution was needed globally, we have worked really hard to ensure our offering is relevant and useful to a global audience. We now have members in over 65 countries – and we are super proud of that.
A: My main message would be to take these topics seriously. For many companies, issues like parenting or perimenopause are covered through Employee Resource Groups or other informal efforts. This is entirely insufficient for the scale of the issues.
The numbers are compelling when you think about retention of senior talent. 57 per cent of employees have taken or would take a new job for better reproductive health benefits and 30 per cent of women have quit or considered quitting due to menopause symptoms.
Without proper support, women reduce hours, miss advancement opportunities, and sometimes leave the workforce entirely. This impacts not just individual careers but organisational performance.
The good news is that there are support options out there – we are super proud to work with TELUS Health to empower organisations to take on this challenge.
A: I've learned not to be too rigid with wellness regimens, and I'm careful about where I get my health information. There's so much noise online that can make you feel like you need to do a million things perfectly. I focus on trusted, evidence-based sources to understand what actually matters at my life stage—then I'm flexible with myself about getting it right. Some weeks I'm great with exercise, sleep and nutrition; other weeks I'm not, and I've stopped beating myself up about it.