Marian Steininger, MD

I meet people where they are.

I created this business on my own after working in corporate medicine for about a decade. The sphere of healthcare is so big, so impersonal. Corporate medicine is getting in the way of providers being able to just treat our patients, to just listen to our patients, to meet people where they are and hold their hand through their next steps. The thing I am proudest of stepping off the usual path and creating a company that allows me to cut through all of paperwork and just be present with people. I love using my knowledge to help women achieve a better quality of life.

Remember the practice of medicine always comes down to you and the person in front of you. Make choices that will allow you to sleep with a clear conscience.

When I was younger, I wish I had known how powerful networking is. I now know how important it is to continue those multi-generational relationships, to connect with mentors, to not be afraid to call upon them, and ask them questions, even later in life. I wish I could tell my younger self, don't be afraid to utilize that relationship, that wisdom. You are not a burden when you ask for help from somebody who's walked that path before.

Disseminating complicated information. I am very grateful for my colleagues who are in perimenopausal and menopausal medicine putting out incredible research. Especially in the last decade, there's been a lot coming out, and a lot of new tools that we can use. But all of that conversation takes time, and I realized as a mainstream OBGYN delivering babies on call, my schedule just didn't have time to have the in-depth conversations that were needed. The research is coming out so fast, which is beautiful and wonderful. It's like drinking from a fire hose because we're trying to catch up on 50 to 70 years of research that has happened in every other specialty of medicine but hasn't happened yet until now on menopause.

I want to leave the world slightly better for me having been in it.

I want each person I contact to have a slightly better day. I want each person to have learned something or grown. That's what Equilibrium Menopause is about, education and empowerment.

This fits perfectly with my two hobbies: Gardening and Non-profit work. It's all cultivating and nurturing something better. When I was at my lowest moment, when I didn't know if I was going to survive breast cancer or not, gardening fed my soul. It gave me such hope to plant things that could possibly outlive me, that could bear fruit in the future.

I am on the board of directors for Send Hope, a nonprofit that runs a children's home on the Mosquito Coast in Honduras. We help medically fragile children whose parents don't have the resources to care for them. We help babies who would otherwise die of a cleft lip and palate. We also run a nutrition program because we found that starving parents would preferentially feed their children until the parents died, and left the children orphans. In order to keep the number of orphans down, we started feeding the children so the parents could concentrate on feeding themselves and keeping themselves healthy to care for the children. We change lives. That's a powerful statement, and it sounds corny, but it's awesome.