Maria Carmen Punzi is a PhD researcher, consultant, and activist. Since 2017 she has worked to build bridges between the for-profit, the non-profit and the academic world to fight for gender equity.  In her research, she investigates the key role menstrual health can play to achieve gender equity and studies how different stakeholders organize around it. Maria Carmen translates insights from her academic work to media conversation and social change projects. She contributed to debates on menstrual leave and free period products in international media and her input was brought into Dutch Parliament, during the Kamervragen (Parliamentary Question time). In 2021, in collaboration with other stakeholders, she has advocated and obtained funding for free menstrual products in the university campus and continues her activism within and beyond the university. She is regularly invited by companies to speak on how to accommodate menstrual needs at work and does consulting work for institutional and nonprofit organizations on projects focused on the intersection between menstrual health, sexual and reproductive health and rights and gender equity.