rora: Empowering Women through Menopause Awareness and Support

Menopause is a pivotal moment in a woman's life, yet remains difficult to discuss due to stigma and misinformation. This phenomenon creates a barrier for women to have an open and safe conversation about this universal experience. Neha Mehta, Kellogg ‘25 and Catherine Malloy, Kellogg ‘25, co-founders of rora and passionate advocates for women’s health, feel inspired to give back to a community that is so large yet faces disparities in terms of knowledge, awareness and cultural biases.

Neha and Catherine met in a class related to innovation and creating new ventures. “We were both extremely passionate about serving women’s health audiences. Menopause was especially intriguing for us, because people are generally in their mid-to-late careers and experiencing their developed lives, yet are going through a transition in their lives that really isn’t explained to them in a proactive way,” said Neha.

This sparked the idea for rora, aiming to solve women’s health challenges and support their transitional changes during menopause with care-oriented solutions.

Joined this summer by Katie Pimentel, McCormick & Kellogg ‘24, Greta Cunningham, Medill & Weinberg ‘27 and Meredith Bacine, McCormick ‘27, Neha and Catherine intend to raise awareness for menopause, addressing the silent suffering that women face during this biological process. In their research, the co-founders explored various business ventures to help menopausal women and conducted extensive customer discovery with over 100 women, doctors and industry experts.

“Eventually, we settled on a consumer product company, recognizing that symptoms like vaginal dryness were acute and painful but rarely discussed. Catherine and I felt drawn to these stigmatized topics because people don’t talk out in the open about such a shared experience amongst women,” shared Neha.

What is rora? rora provides intuitive products that support women in managing their menopause symptoms. rora focuses on helping women feel their best every day and navigate this transition with dedicated guidance. By providing easy to use and mess-free products like a hydrating mist to relieve external vaginal dryness, rora brings comfort to an otherwise painful side effect of this process.

In essence, rora aims to break the shame surrounding menopause and support women by creating an open environment for expressing and learning about this stage of life.

Neha and Catherine emphasized how the Jumpstart program has helped them become co-founders of a startup. They have learned from their peers who are on similar journeys of entrepreneurship, and they have also educated the other Jumpstart teams and The Garage staff about women’s health, spreading awareness about menopause.

Currently, rora aims to create products that feel intuitive and familiar, establishing a sense of normalcy, consistency and comfort. Long term, rora aspires to be the one-stop shop for menopause symptoms.

“In the future, we hope to understand our consumers more and figure out how to build trust with these women and what exactly they need in terms of specific products and other support,” said Catherine.

Inspired by the thousands of women who experience this universal yet stigmatized topic, Neha and Catherine hope to create a better tomorrow for menopausal awareness.

Stay tuned to learn more about Neha and Catherine’s startup journey!