NYWIFT Blog

By Ana Juanola

Welcome to NYWIFT, Dominique Debroux!

Dominique Debroux is a producer, entrepreneur, and nutritional chef whose work bridges storytelling, science, and women’s empowerment.

A former fashion executive turned filmmaker, she produced the documentaries 40 Weeks and recently Wise Women – Humanity’s Untold Origins, which reframes menopause as the evolutionary foundation of women’s leadership.

Partnering with Oscar-winner Jonathan Sanger and Madeline Di Nonno of the Geena Davis Institute, she advocates for rewriting women’s midlife narratives—on screen, in culture, and in how we nourish ourselves to thrive.

Could you give our readers a brief introduction to yourself?

I’ve had a winding path. For over 25 years I worked in the global fashion industry, directing U.S. divisions for European brands. It was meaningful work, but my real passion was always healing, wellness, and social change. At 50, I finally made the leap.

Since then I’ve been pouring my energy into the things that matter most to me. My latest documentary, Wise Women: Humanity’s Untold Origins, came out of my own menopause journey and a burning question: why do human females go through menopause and then live so long afterward? The science we uncovered completely reframes midlife for women. Alongside the film, I work directly with people on their health through food, through my brands and my YouTube platform Food Lady.

The throughline in everything I do now: how do we help women see this phase of life as the beginning of something, not the end?

What brought you to NYWIFT?

I had seen the great work NYWIFT did for years, but honestly didn’t think I qualified. I saw myself as someone who worked well alongside my filmmaker husband Christopher Henze and had a good head for funding.

What changed it was a moment in Jonathan and Carla Sanger’s kitchen (Jonathan is an Oscar-winning producer and Carla is a powerhouse in education). We were going step-by-step through Wise Women, pulling in other stories and projects to pressure-test our own, and at the end of it Carla looked at me and said, “You’re quite a producer.” Jonathan agreed. It took a woman with that kind of wisdom and standing to make me see myself with fresh eyes. This year I was connected to two wonderful NYWFT members, and I applied.

You are a producer, entrepreneur, and nutritional chef. How do these different areas influence one another in your work?

At the core, it’s all storytelling.

When someone’s health isn’t working, I ask them to look at their lifestyle like a story: where does the narrative break down, what doesn’t make work, what needs to shift? Building and running a company is the same thing. You’re constructing a story that connects and moves people toward something. And film is one of the purest forms of that exact same impulse.

The tools change but the question is always the same: what is the story, does it make sense, and is it moving people in a direction of growth?

Your projects 40 Weeks and Wise Women – Humanity’s Untold Origins center on women’s experiences and empowerment. What draws you to these stories?

Women are half of the world’s population, yet we are underappreciated for our labor, our capabilities, and our discoveries, while being held back from leadership positions. Women’s core journeys and capabilities need to be celebrated and seen as the extraordinary stories they are.

How do you approach blending storytelling with science?

Science’s methodology is storytelling. Much like a story, it starts with an idea, or hypothesis, and then the process is to see if all the steps make sense and fit together to prove that hypothesis true. If one of the steps doesn’t fit, you move back a few, or maybe all the way to the beginning, and start again.

When we started Wise Women, we wanted to know why an OB-GYN’s definition of menopause as “nature’s mistake” sounded so wrong to us. We followed the story and found new science.

What is a lesson you learned the hard way in your career that you wish you had known earlier?

Just go for it. Start filming, start writing, start telling your story. Especially now that the digital world makes it so easy to do. Momentum draws partners in, so we had faith in ourselves and created our own momentum.

Looking ahead, what kinds of stories are you most excited to continue exploring?

I will continue to move the human experience toward a better place, and for now that means empowering women. Imagine if a body were suffering the same kind of imbalance that humanity is: where half of its organs were being abused, suppressed, or undernourished. Imagine the level of disease that body would be dealing with. That is our world right now. We need all women to find their voice and be supported in using it, in order to get out of this crisis.

Connect with Dominique on Instagram at @debrouxdominique, YouTube at @foodlady-dominiquedebroux4426, and Substack @Wise Women… Forward. Watch her latest film Wise Women.

(All photos courtesy of Dominique Debroux)