“This affects half my team. If I’m not speaking up about it, I’m failing them.”
Dan Simons, a prominent restaurateur in the Washington D.C. area, marvels at how naturally his three sons, ages 21, 19, and 16, discuss topics like sexuality and pronouns.
“They don’t even think about it,” Simons, 54, tells TODAY.com. “It’s entirely different from when I was growing up. My kid is like, ‘So-and-so is coming over and she’s bringing her girlfriend.’ They’re my role models for what happens when you move from stigmatizing to normalizing.”
Now, Simons’ passion is normalizing the conversation around menopause.
Simons, co-founder of Farmers Restaurant Group, which employs 1,400 people, is a vocal advocate for mental health. He pushes for strong support and open dialogue across his workforce, an approach he credits with the company’s high retention.
“My team is used to me talking about my eating disorder, my anxiety, my depression,” Simons says. “I’ll ask, ‘Who’s got Zoloft?’ Before we dive into a meeting about food costs or new recipes, we start by checking in: How are you today? It helps everyone get present, acknowledge whatever stress they’re carrying, and then we can get to work.
Most recently, Simons has turned his attention to menopause. “If something affects or will affect 49.6% of the population, we should understand it, right?” he wrote in a 2023 blog post.
“About 50 percent of my employees are women,” Simons says during his conversation with TODAY. “So this affects half my team directly. If I’m not speaking up about it, I’m failing them. I’m a culture builder. My partner and I built a $100-plus-million-a-year enterprise not by chasing profit first, but by caring for people and letting the humans bloom.”
Simons began educating himself on the topic when his wife Suzi, mother of their three sons, began experiencing symptoms. Menopause — typically occurring between ages 45 and 55 — is defined as the point when a woman has gone 12 consecutive months without a period, according to the National Institute on Aging (NIH). It happens because the ovaries gradually produce less estrogen and progesterone, the hormones that regulate the menstrual cycle.
Menopause side effects can include symptoms such as hot flashes, night sweats, weight gain, hair thinning, joint aches, anxiety, depression and more.
“I was stunned by my own cluelessness. I mean, I knew the word menopause. But what did it really mean?” Simons says, half-joking that he once thought of it as, “men pause” — as in, hands off. He purchased “The Menopause Manifesto” by Dr. Jen Gunter and began to delve deeper into the subject.
Simons wanted to understand how it was affecting Suzi, now 55, physically, mentally, sexually and emotionally, because, as he puts it, “If you’re in a good, real relationship, you’re both going through it.”
Recognizing that many men and women were equally uninformed, Simons began initiating conversations about menopause at work. He’s also brought in speakers for sessions attended by everyone from dishwashers to leadership.
Kelly Lindner, 59, director of business development for catering and events at Farms Restaurant Group, says she would have benefited from Simons’s focus on menopause at a previous job. She, like many women, was at the peak of career when she experienced her first hot flash, and had no idea what was happening.
“I thought I was having a heart attack,” Lindner tells TODAY.
She began having sleep disruptions, a common menopause symptom caused by hormonal changes.
If an exhausted Lindner took an extra hour before coming into the office, she would fib and say one of her kids had an appointment. At Farmers Restaurant Group, however, “People will call Dan and say, ‘Hey, I’m having a hard morning and I need some time off,” she says.
She recognizes that being able to speak openly, without fear of judgment, is a rare thing in most workplaces.
“There have been times in my career when I wouldn’t have dared mention something I saw as a professional handicap, because people weaponize it — particularly men, no offense,” Lindner says.
Lindner, like Simons, believes that mental health and menopause are deeply interconnected. She’s now volunteering to lead a group discussion on menopause, hoping others won’t feel as uninformed as she once did.
“I can share what I went through and what they might expect, so they have a resource, and the knowledge keeps growing,” she explains.
Two years ago, at a speaking engagement, Simons mentioned menopause, as he often does. Afterwards, a woman approached him with tears in her eyes. She had gone through menopause at the peak of her career and felt completely derailed.
“She said, ‘I’ve never heard a man say the word menopause — not at home, not in my life, and certainly not at work,’” he recalls. “Menopause had turned her life upside down in a negative way. Hearing me say the word gave her hope that other women won’t have the same experience.”
