Kate Shepherd Cohen, Founder and CEO – biography
Kate Shepherd Cohen is a multi-award winning menstrual health pioneer, credited with being the first to provide menstrual health literacy on social prescription. She won an innovation award at the International Social Prescribing Awards and is recipient of the Millennium Unltd Award for Social Entrepreneurs. Kate is a regular media commentator for the BBC and others, has delivered a Tedx Talk, facilitated numerous workshops and public speaking events on the menstrual cycle for companies, schools and healthcare providers, including speaking at Australia’s first Period Summit, the Police Health and Wellbeing Conference and NHS Trust UK and in South Africa.
Kate sits on the James Lind Alliance Steering Group for Problematic Bleeding (identifying top research priorities) and is a member of the Social Prescribing Academy (Scotland / England), the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research and the College of Medicine and Integrated Health. She has presented abstracts at the Menstruation Research Network and the 4Ms conference (menstrual /mental health).
Early Career
Before launching into the menstrual health space nearly a decade ago, Kate spent her early career working on global conservation projects led-by or serving many indigenous communities, in Europe, Africa and South America. Her experience working with varied international community-and-landscape-focused ecosystems shaped her holistic, systems-thinking approach centred on women’s leadership and education. By age 29, she became the Editor of Green Europe (Sawdays/Penguin, 2009), solidifying her commitment to sustainable practices. As a dedicated environmentalist, Kate also helped lead a UK society-wide climate change campaign and participated in interfaith and intercultural global sustainability communications campaigns, travelling to Mexico for the Universal Forum of Cultures (2007). Her interfaith interests led her to travel extensively in and become Editor of Morocco (Sawdays/Penguin 2010) with its North African intersectionality of indigenous and muslim communities.
Academic Research
With a degree in Italian from the University of Bristol, Kate is fluent in the language. She studied Philosophy, Ethics, and Semiotics at the University of Bologna in the department of renowned author Umberto Eco and worked with the British Council in rural Southern Italy. She is Editor of Italy (Sawdays/ Penguin 2007).
Italian activism continues to shape her worldview today, including her current academic research into the global menstrual movement (or, as she calls it, ‘menstrualism’), under the supervision of leading menstrual academic, Dr Lara Owen.
PMDD and Menstrual Cycle Awareness
Her own experience with PMDD fuelled nearly a decade of research into menstrual health from a sociological and historical lens. Since 2017, following an apprenticeship with the architects of the practice of ‘menstrual cycle awareness’, Alexandra Pope and Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer, Kate has been a passionate educator, writer, and advocate, blending clinical menstrual health literacy with holistic perspectives to transform how menstrual health is understood and supported across healthcare, education, and workplaces—empowering people and reshaping conversations in the UK and beyond.
Cornwall home
She lives in Cornwall, UK, with peace activist, Simon Cohen, and their three daughters. She is an active member of the Surf Lifesaving Club as a qualified surf lifeguard and is on the local surf boat rowing crew. Kate is currently learning Cornish (kernowek) and is a member of the Cornish Language Fellowship and the International Endangered Languages Project.