HALLE BERRY'S GREATEST ACT

The Oscar winner, 58, is tackling the most important role of her career: founder of Respin, a menopause-focused startup.

- MAGGIE MCGRATH.

Halle Berry knows what you think of her. The first (and so far only) Black woman to win an Academy Award for Best Actress, the former model and fixture on "most beautiful people" lists is all too familiar with being best known for her performances and her looks. But these three words, shouted on Capitol Hill in May 2024 while surrounded by a bipartisan group of senators (all women), might change that: "I'm in menopause!"

"For so long people have put me in this sex symbol box," Berry says. "For someone like me to speak about going through menopause, which has been so stigmatized, if I can say, 'Hey, it's sexy to arrive at this time of our life, it's actually a privilege to age.' . . . I hope I'm giving [women] the courage to stand tall and accept that we don't have to stay eternally 30. I mean, who wants to stay eternally 30?"

SUMA KRISHNAN 60 COFOUNDER AND PRESIDENT, RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT, KRYSTAL BIOTECH

Trained as an organic chemist, Krishnan was in her late 40s when she had the idea for a topical gene therapy to treat a rare skin disorder called dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa, in which the skin becomes as fragile as butterfly wings. In 2016, at 51, she and her husband cofounded (and selffunded with around $5 million they had made mainly from previous biotech companies) Pittsburgh-based Krystal Biotech. Today, it's worth $4.3 billion (market cap) and has one FDA-approved therapy on the market, with others in the works. "You have to be brave and bold to do this," she says.