About AVA | Advocacy for Vital Aging

At AVA, we believe midlife is not a decline but a powerful turning point. Founded by Alexandra Maxi, a Midlife Innovation Advisor and advocate for women’s wellbeing, AVA was created to help women and organizations navigate one of the most underestimated phases of life with clarity, confidence, and vitality. Alexandra has also completed advanced training in menopause and midlife health through programs with the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point and the Mayo Clinic, equipping her to bridge scientific knowledge with real-world understanding.

For too long, conversations about midlife and menopause have been either clinical or quietly avoided. AVA exists to change that. We bring evidence-based education, emotional insight, and organizational strategy together to support women and the systems that serve them. Whether through workplace consulting, menopause awareness workshops, or one-on-one guidance, our mission is simple: to help women feel seen, supported, and strategically prepared for every chapter ahead.

Alexandra’s work blends professional insight with human understanding. She draws from real stories of women who are redefining what it means to age well, and from her own lived experience of reinvention. She understands that thriving in midlife is not just about health or hormones, but about identity, purpose, and belonging.

Through AVA, she partners with healthcare professionals, corporate leaders, and midlife women themselves to build cultures that recognize the full value of women in transition. From the boardroom to the break room, AVA helps organizations create spaces where midlife women can lead, innovate, and feel valued for their experience rather than sidelined by it.

We believe vitality is not something you lose with age. It is something you learn to cultivate with wisdom, honesty, and courage. And that begins with advocacy — for your health, your career, and your story.

Welcome to AVA. Where vitality meets advocacy, and every chapter is met with audacity.

Why work with AVA

Evidence Builds Confidence &Trust

AVA translates the latest research on menopause, aging, and workplace wellbeing into practical strategies your team can use immediately. Every recommendation is grounded in data, not trends, ensuring your policies and people practices are credible, inclusive, and future-ready.

Midlife Deserves Better Design

We help individuals and organizations redesign systems that actually reflect how women live and work in midlife. From flexible structures to leadership pathways, AVA’s approach moves beyond awareness toward sustainable change that supports vitality, not decline.

Culture Shifts Start with Conversation

AVA creates safe, informed spaces where difficult topics become shared understanding. Our workshops and consultations help leaders, employees, and communities talk openly and act decisively about menopause, mental health, and midlife transitions.

Work With AVA

AVA partners with individuals, teams, and organizations ready to lead the change in how midlife is understood and supported. Whether you are navigating personal transition, designing inclusive workplace policy, or seeking expert insight into menopause and vitality at work — our programs are built to meet you where you are.

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Global Declaration for Menopause

Equity and Dignity in Health and Work

We, the undersigned, affirm that menopause is a normal life stage and a critical public health, economic, and human rights issue. Around the world, millions of women in their 40s, 50s, and 60s sustain families, workplaces, economies, and communities while navigating menopausal transition with inadequate recognition, support, or protection.

Global estimates suggest that over one billion people will be postmenopausal by 2025, representing a significant share of the global workforce and caregiving labor. Yet menopause-inclusive care, data, and workplace policies remain inconsistent and, in many countries, absent.

We believe this is not a “women’s wellness perk.” It is an overdue requirement of modern health systems, labor standards, and gender equity.

Our Principles

Dignity as a baseline

Every person experiencing menopause has the right to be treated with respect in clinical settings, workplaces, and public institutions, without ridicule, dismissal, or career penalty.

Recognition in global health agendas

Menopause and midlife hormonal health must be explicitly integrated into global health strategies, noncommunicable disease frameworks, universal health coverage planning, and healthy aging agendas, reflecting WHO’s acknowledgement that support in this phase is essential to long-term health.

World Health Organization

Evidence-based care for all

People in menopause are entitled to access accurate information, trained providers, and safe, evidence-based options, including non-hormonal and hormonal therapies, without discrimination based on age, race, income, geography, disability, or gender identity.

Workplaces that match reality

As global consensus statements already recommend, employers should integrate menopause into occupational health, equity, and inclusion frameworks. Menopause-responsive policies are a driver of retention, productivity, leadership continuity, and economic resilience.

PubMed +2

Australasian Menopause Society +2

No penalty for telling the truth

No one should be pushed out of work, passed over, or shamed for requesting reasonable adjustments or medical support related to menopausal symptoms.

Intersectional and lived-experience informed

Policy and practice must reflect how menopause interacts with race, class, disability, migrant status, precarious work, and unpaid care. Those most affected must have a seat at the table as experts of their own experience.

Data, research, and accountability

Governments, employers, and health systems must collect better data on menopause-related outcomes, invest in research beyond the most privileged populations, and publicly report progress.

Our Calls to Action

Global Health Leadership

We call on the World Health Organization and global health partners to:

Establish clear, practical guidance for integrating menopause into primary care, occupational health, and healthy aging policies in all regions.
Encourage member states to include menopause services, counseling, and medications in universal health coverage benefits.
Promote research and surveillance that capture menopause’s impact on health, employment, and economic security, with disaggregated data.

National Governments & Parliaments

We call on national governments and parliaments to:

Recognize menopause as a key life stage within health, labor, and equality legislation.
Embed protection from discrimination on the grounds of menopause-related symptoms or treatment.
Incentivize or require employers to adopt menopause-supportive policies, including flexible work options, access to occupational health advice, and training for managers.

Employers, Unions & Professional Bodies

We call on employers, unions, and professional bodies to:

Adopt written menopause policies developed with input from affected staff.
Provide training so leaders can respond with competence, not stigma.
Ensure health benefits, sick leave structures, and performance processes do not punish workers managing menopausal symptoms.
Recognize that retaining experienced midlife workers is a strategic advantage, not a concession.

Healthcare, Education & Regulators

We call on healthcare systems, educators, and regulators to:

Integrate comprehensive menopause education into medical, nursing, and allied health curricula.
Expand access to specialized menopause care and culturally competent services in urban and rural settings.
Address misinformation and commercial exploitation with clear public education.

Our Commitment

By signing this Declaration, we:

Affirm that menopause equity is a measurable, achievable standard of modern societies.
Support AVA and aligned organizations in presenting this Declaration and its signatures to WHO, UN agencies, governments, employers, unions, and health systems.
Commit, within our own spheres of influence, to ending the silence, redesigning systems, and honoring the expertise and labor of those in midlife and beyond.

ADVOCACY FOR VITAL AGING

About AVA