Michelle Reiss
HELLOJADEY.COM
a resource for women navigating cancer
Michelle grew up in Chappaqua, went to Greeley and then on to Brown University, and has a successful career working in hotel development. By all appearances, she and her husband Michael Reiss and their four year old daughter Lucy seem like the idyllic young family living their best life at the end of a typical Bedford cul-de-sac…
But, quite extraordinarily, in March 2024, when Lucy was two and Michelle was pregnant, Michelle was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma…
And, somewhat consequently, Michelle has now launched the website HELLOJADEY.COM as part of a broader intended platform called Jadey, to be the key resource - that she didn’t have - for women diagnosed with cancer and for the people who support them.
“My life, and our life as a family, was completely interrupted,”Michelle reveals.
“I was 34 and the first in our friend group or in my immediate family to be diagnosed with cancer. I had a 12cm mass in my chest! I was suddenly confronted with the immediate necessity of discontinuing my pregnancy, and all the decisions and requirements involved in fertility preservation. We had to figure out how to talk with our two-year-old about what was happening, and Michael and I were trying to process it all ourselves. …Our whole vision of our family was - at least for a time - shattered. Cancer was always on our minds. All I wanted was to get my life back! To return to where I was the day before the diagnosis! …I went through six months of chemotherapy, followed by ten rounds of radiation…and although I’ve yet to receive the ‘all clear’, I’m very happy to report that the tumor is disappearing…and that I’m now pregnant!”
“When I was diagnosed, I couldn’t find any significant modern resource that spoke to a woman navigating cancer in the prime of her life,” Michelle says candidly. “There was no source for advice on the psychological and emotional side of things, or even a reliable reference for practical answers about things like foods that I should or shouldn’t eat, therapy and other treatments beyond the chemo and radiation, what kind of skin care would be safe to use during treatment, what to ask at my first oncology appointment, where to find stylish head coverings, and how to navigate treatment while raising a young child. I was also trying to figure out how to manage changes to my body, my confidence, and my sense of self. There was an abundance of medical information out there, enough to overwhelm anyone, but nothing in one place that felt personal, trustworthy, and reflective of what I was actually going through - support that I critically needed.”
“I co-founded Jadey, together with my long-term partner in business and friend, Shiry Zofnat Yosef, who has been supporting her brother through stage four colon cancer treatment over the past three years,” Michelle says. “More and more people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s are being diagnosed with all kinds of cancers, and the resources haven’t kept up. With Jadey, we’re primarily concerned with helping women navigate cancer in the prime of their life.”
“We also have a fantastic and indefatigable Editorial Director, Maggie Lange, who is a New York Times journalist, and also a cancer survivor,” Michelle relays. “A lot of what we’re doing is filling in the gaps, addressing the emotional and lifestyle shifts that don’t always get talked about, alongside clear and practical information about what to expect and how to react. We’re particularly focused on the intersection of a woman’s family, career, and a diagnosis—how all of those pieces continue to exist at once. Everything we publish is grounded in lived experience, but also held to a very clear, science-based editorial standard. Each piece is reviewed by our medical advisory board, and we include perspectives from multiple experts wherever possible. A gift registry is intended to help friends and family offer meaningful support, and an anonymous community space called ‘Between Us’ allows visitors to communicate. We’re very intentional about our language, avoiding the whole ‘fighting a battle’ analogy, and include comments from multiple medical experts wherever possible.”
“We launched Jadey in October 2025 and have already seen that there’s a real need for this resource,” Michelle continues. “So many women have reached out to say ‘I wish this had existed when I was first diagnosed’,... We use Instagram @hellojadeyofficial for outreach, but our growth is really going to come from word-of-mouth and referral from doctors and care teams treating cancer patients. We’re building-out local guides to connect people with trusted resources, like therapists, integrative treatments, and programs like the Yablon Cancer Center for Wellness at Northern Westchester Hospital in Mt. Kisco, which offers free individual and group therapy, and free acupuncture and massage, to people being treated with cancer. …And, going forward, we want Jadey to be centrally involved in creating communities for women - who may be at different points in their journey than others - to come together and benefit from the collective experience.”