The Power of the Pivot: How Nurse Practitioners are Closing Care Gaps for Women
November 20, 2025 | Women in Leadership, Women in healthcare, podcast, women's health
The career path of a Nurse Practitioner is often envisioned as a straight line: clinical practice, specialization, perhaps a supervisory role. But for two pioneering NPs, Laura Demuth and Jackie Gianelli, that line took them into the executive suite and a new era of care. Their journeys, shared in a recent conversation with Stacey Hughes, Vice President of Learning and Development at Medscape Education, reveal a shared passion for leveraging their clinical expertise to close some of the most profound, yet often-ignored, gaps in women’s health.
For Jackie Gianelli, a menopause expert and Clinical Director of the Carolyn Rowan Center for Women’s Health and Wellness at Mount Sinai, the problem is systemic. She explains that for two decades, following the Women’s Health Initiative study, menopause virtually “vanished” from medical and nursing school curricula. This created a profound knowledge vacuum, compounded by a “bikini medicine” approach that fragments women’s healthcare into simple systems. Gianelli states, “The reality is that women’s health is mental health… women’s health is cardiometabolic health, you know, and we are not small men.” She and her team are designing an innovative longitudinal care model, moving beyond one-off appointments to offer whole-person, holistic health through the profound hormonal transition of midlife.
Laura Demuth, Senior Vice President at the digital health company Curology, found her pivot when she realized the non-linear potential of her NP license. Starting as one of three clinicians, she helped scale the clinical team to over 150, wearing countless hats in operations, licensing, and people management. The company’s founding mission—making effective skincare accessible—deeply connected to her passion for serving women. Demuth highlights the often-underestimated psychological impact of skin conditions on women, calling it “one of the deepest joys of my professional life” to see smiles “get bigger over time” as their confidence grows.
Both women agree that their rigorous clinical backgrounds—particularly in high-stress settings like the ICU for Gianelli—provided the critical “life skills” to succeed in leadership. Gianelli cites references “calm under pressure” and the ability to work through complex, high-stakes problems as key takeaways. Demuth adds that the NP role trains you to be a leader by default: “You are the center of that patient… you are making things happen around for the betterment of that patient.” This cross-functional leadership and diagnostic ability translates directly to tackling a company’s biggest problems at a strategic roundtable.
Their advice to any clinician feeling burnt out or “boxed in” is clear: you have options. “Don’t feel pressured to get more certifications, but instead, focus on making your existing skills extremely marketable,” Gianelli advises. “Follow your curiosity,” and Demuth adds a critical caution: “If you hear no a first time, don’t take your first no for the gospel.” These working mothers prove that with tenacity and a vision for better care, the ceiling of the Nurse Practitioner role can be shattered.
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