Women Disrupting Tech

Only 2% of VC funding reaches female founders. Nithya Ruff argues the problem doesn’t start at the pitch table. It starts with how girls are raised and who gets to make investment decisions. In this episode of Women Disrupting Tech, host Dirkjan Hupkes talks with Nithya Ruff, former Head of Open Source at Amazon, chair of the Linux Foundation board, and LP in funds focused on South Asian women and...

More than 90 FemTech companies in the Netherlands are working to close the gender health gap. Most didn’t know the others existed. In this episode of Women Disrupting Tech, I talk with Maaike Steinebach and Sophie van Dijk, co-founders of FemTech NL, the organization connecting FemTech companies across the Netherlands. We talk about why the ecosystem has been so fragmented, and what FinTech has al...

Most fitness apps are built to track everything. That's exactly why people stop using them. In this episode of Women Disrupting Tech, I talk with Zoe Pineau, co-founder of Fitly AI, about how she lost 150 pounds through macro tracking, spent six years building a traditional fitness app that didn’t break through, and then rebuilt from scratch in one month using AI. We explore why friction kills...

Most founders build their financial position in the wrong order. By the time the exit arrives, the decisions that mattered most have already been made under pressure. In this episode of Women Disrupting Tech, I talk with Ana Herrero-Wallace, financial independence coach, former US-licensed equities trader, and founder of AdaInvest, about why financial independence is not an exit outcome but a tool...

Most brands are optimizing for search engines that fewer people are using. Rachel Gilley, CEO of Clarity Global, is tracking what happens when your customers stop Googling and start asking AI instead. In this episode, Rachel breaks down Generative Engine Optimization: why it matters, what it costs brands that ignore it, and how a consistent message across every touchpoint is now a technical requir...

FemTech represents a trillion-dollar opportunity. So why do all-female teams receive just 2% of early-stage venture capital? Beata Wandachowicz-Krason has spent years researching what is holding FemTech back — the funding gaps, the cultural taboos, and the structural misalignment between how healthcare systems are built and what women’s health actually requires. In this episode, she breaks down wh...

The solar panels going up on rooftops everywhere are solving one problem, and quietly creating another. This episode is for female founders, women in tech, and anyone building at the intersection of sustainability and deep technology. Host Dirkjan talks with Andjela Bozinac, co-founder and CEO of Renovo Recycling. Andjela is building a modular, chemical-free system that uses Physical AI and roboti...

Most fertility apps look at your past cycles and make a prediction. Sabrina Nowicki built something different. Sabrina is co-founder of Cyclisity, the digital companion to Taking Charge of Your Fertility — the bestselling book written by her aunt, Toni Weschler. What started as an annual lunch celebrating her first period became a mission to bring body literacy to women worldwide — and to build an...

“I don’t need to be an expert on any of these topics… that’s what I have my colleagues for.” — Izzy Sayers What if the real obstacle for female founders isn’t a lack of knowledge, but the idea that they have to know it all themselves? This episode is for female founders and women in tech who want to scale without needing to know everything themselves. Host Dirkjan talks with Izzy Sayers, who leads...

How do you build the next generation of global gold standards in women’s health, and why is it one of the biggest economic opportunities of our time? In this episode, Carmen van Vilsteren — healthcare innovation leader, angel investor, and one of the Netherlands’ most experienced medical device executives — shares her mission to fund and coach seven female founders toward creating seven new gold s...

What if three wall plugs could transform how night nurses care for an entire nursing home floor? Femke Delissen is the co-founder of PAVA, a Dutch startup using a combination of Wi-Fi sensing technology and AI to help nurses in elderly care work more efficiently — without cameras, without wearables, and without sacrificing the privacy and dignity of residents. In this episode, Femke shares how she...

How do you build a tech company that prioritizes real human connection over the endless swipe? In this episode, female founder Marsha Goei, Head of Brand at Breeze Social, shares her journey of disrupting the dating industry. By removing the chat function entirely, Marsha and her team have created a platform that skips the small talk and goes straight to face-to-face dates. We dive deep into the p...

Every visionary founder needs a disciplined operator to translate "big ideas" into functional reality. In this episode, host Dirkjan Hupkes sits down with Eliza Moore, EVP of Client Experience & Operations at Prizeout, to deconstruct the unique mental models required to scale a startup from the ground up. Eliza shares her journey from New York financial services to the fast-paced wor...

Whoever controls the narrative holds the power to influence others. But for female founders, storytelling isn't just about marketing — it's a leadership tool that can reshape how you're seen, heard, and followed. In this episode of Women Disrupting Tech, I talk with Jennifer Cloer, founder of Story Changes Culture and creator of the Chasing Grace Project, about why storytelling is a le...

What people lose first after a brain injury isn't intelligence. It's confidence, autonomy, and dignity. In this episode of Women Disrupting Tech, I talk with Faviola Dadis, CEO and co-founder of BrainBoostXR, about how she's building AI-powered virtual reality rehabilitation that restores dignity for people recovering from acquired brain injuries. Faviola explains why traditional cogni...

Most startups hire fast. But is that the right hiring strategy? In this episode of Women Disrupting Tech, I talk with Relinde Boerman, lead recruiter at PolarSteps. This travel app startup scaled from 20 to nearly 100 employees while maintaining the culture that made it special. We explore why PolarSteps ignores time-to-hire as a metric, how they assess culture fit beyond vague feelings, and what...

Most people think technology is neutral. It’s not. In this episode of Women Disrupting Tech, I talk with Dr. Christine Miller, Professor of Design Management at the Savannah College of Art and Design, and author of “Tools, Totems, and Totalities.” She studies how power and cultural values get embedded into the technology we use every day. We explore why so many modern tools feel like systems we ha...

Burnout doesn't happen because people work too hard. It happens because half their work is invisible. In this episode of Women Disrupting Tech, I talk with Jamie Albaum, co-founder of Kellotime, a platform that helps organizations understand how their teams actually spend their time. We explore how invisible labor — the operational work, coordination, and care tasks that keep companies running — q...

Starting a tech company is hard. Starting one during a war requires a different kind of resilience. In this episode of Women Disrupting Tech, I talk with Oryna Starkina, founder and CEO of Starksoft, a mobile development company she built during the pandemic and has kept running through the war in Ukraine. We explore how distributed teams create operational resilience, why the pandemic was actuall...

Burnout isn't about working too hard. It's about working against yourself. In this episode of Women Disrupting Tech, I talk with Alice Pavin, a Business and Life Coach for female founders navigating the gap between external success and internal alignment. We explore what happens when everything looks perfect on paper, but something still feels off — and what it takes to listen to the whisp...

What if women's health is not a niche, but infrastructure? In this episode of Women Disrupting Tech, I talk with Ida Tin , the woman who coined the term FemTech and co-founder of Clue, one of the world's leading women's health apps. Together, we unpack why innovation in women's health has stalled, what a missing data set is costing us, and why fixing it may be the highest-return investment in the...

Most AI companies are built to scale fast. Melissa Solis built hers to last. In this episode of Women Disrupting Tech , I talk with Melissa Solis , founder and CEO of Inbenta , about AI leadership, customer-centric AI, inclusive leadership, and what it really takes to build an AI company that creates long-term value. Melissa has spent three decades leading AI companies through rapid industry chang...

In this episode of Women Disrupting Tech, I talk with Philipp Omenitsch, co-founder of Sequel, creator of PitchLeague.ai and The Founder Files, and former startup CTO, about what actually gets funded in venture capital. Philipp has analyzed 17,000+ pitch decks through the Founder Files. This conversation cuts through fundraising advice and looks at patterns in the data. You'll learn: - Why pri...

Why do so many international hires look great on paper, only to leave within a year? In this episode of Women Disrupting Tech, we look at why international hiring fails without proper relocation and what a real soft landing looks like in practice. My guest is Judith Roetgering, managing director of Rehive People. After more than 16 years in global fashion and founding a recruitment and relocation...

AI implementations rarely fail because of the technology. They fail because of people, incentives, fear, and organizational blind spots. In this episode of Women Disrupting Tech, I talk with Sophia Zitman, Director of AI Projects at Kickstart AI, about what actually makes AI work in real organizations. From starting with the why instead of the tech, to navigating politics, resistance, and design c...