For years, I was dismissed, misdiagnosed, and told that what I was experiencing wasn’t real. I was a high-functioning HR professional, a psychology graduate, and I was still falling through the cracks of a healthcare system that did not know how to see me.
That changed when I was finally diagnosed with PMDD — Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder. A condition that affects millions of women and is still largely unknown to the employers, managers, and HR teams responsible for their wellbeing at work.
I didn’t just survive that experience. I built a practice from it.
Célia Manuel is a Strategic HR and Women’s Health Consultant with over 10 years of senior experience across the NHS, social impact, and commercial sectors. She holds an MSc in Psychology from the University of East London and a BA in Human Resource Management.
She is one of the UK’s few consultants who specialises in women’s health as a workforce strategy issue — working with corporates, NHS trusts, and NGOs to build psychologically-informed, evidence-based HR policies that reduce attrition, improve engagement, and address the measurable productivity cost of unmanaged women’s health conditions.
As a British-Angolan professional fluent in English and Portuguese, she also consults for organisations operating in Sub-Saharan Africa and Lusophone markets — bringing cultural intelligence and lived understanding that international consultants rarely offer.
Célia Manuel is a Strategic HR and Women’s Health Consultant with over 10 years of senior experience across the NHS, social impact, and commercial sectors. She holds an MSc in Psychology from the University of East London and a BA in Human Resource Management.
She is one of the UK’s few consultants who specialises in women’s health as a workforce strategy issue — working with corporates, NHS trusts, and NGOs to build psychologically-informed, evidence-based HR policies that reduce attrition, improve engagement, and address the measurable productivity cost of unmanaged women’s health conditions.
As a British-Angolan professional fluent in English and Portuguese, she also consults for organisations operating in Sub-Saharan Africa and Lusophone markets — bringing cultural intelligence and lived understanding that international consultants rarely offer.
