InvestHer Podcast

"It's very hard in the beginning, but as long as you move, it's possible."

🌍 Idea Alone Is Not Enough: Hellena Sailas and Emma Cochrane on Building Women Founders for Impact!

🎙 In this episode of the InvestHer Podcast, host Anne Ravanona speaks with Hellena Sailas & Emma Cochrane, Founder & CEO / Director of Strategic Projects, about building a circular-economy business from the ground up in Tanzania, the realities of fundraising as a young woman founder in an emerging market, and how the right ecosystem of mentorship, networks and skills training can accelerate women entrepreneurs from idea to investable business — and beyond.

🌍 Discover how Hellena Sailas turned a childhood dream of walking on a clean beach into Arena Recycling Industry after finding Dar es Salaam's coastline choked with plastic — and how Emma Cochrane has spent six years building HEC Paris's Women Entrepreneurs for Good program into a network of 1,000+ founders across 80+ countries, the very program that helped Hellena go from kitchen-table experiments to a half-million-dollar funded business.

💡 Don't miss this episode with actionable insights on:

• Starting a circular-economy company at 23 with no engineering background and no roadmap

• Moving from $5,000 grants to over $500,000 in funding — and what changed in between

• Handling biased investor questions about marriage and motherhood with confidence

• Why HEC's Women Entrepreneurs for Good is 100% free, online, and open to 80+ countries

• How a three-week customer-discovery sprint forces founders to validate ideas before building

• What investors really look for beyond the idea: team, systems, and ability to scale

Two women, two sides of the funding table, one powerful conversation about what it really takes to build and back women-led businesses in Africa.

🔗 Listen Now | 🎧 Apple Podcasts | Spotify | ▶️ Full Show Notes

Hellena Sailas is a Tanzanian social entrepreneur and Founder & CEO of Arena Recycling Industry, launched at 23 to transform plastic waste into eco-bricks, paving tiles, and decking — creating green jobs for women, youth, and waste collectors across Tanzania.

🌐 Website: https://www.arenarecycling.co.tz/

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hellena-sailas-00a157174

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamhelleny/

Arena Recycling Industry is a Tanzanian circular-economy company converting plastic waste into sustainable construction materials, with a network of collection centres spanning Dar es Salaam to Zanzibar.

Emma Cochrane is Director of Strategic Projects at HEC Paris's Innovation & Entrepreneurship Institute, where she founded and leads the Women Entrepreneurs for Good program — a free initiative that has trained women founders from more than 80 countries.

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emma-cochrane-1175b917/

HEC Paris's Institute supports entrepreneurs worldwide and was ranked the second-leading start-up hub in France by the Financial Times in 2026.

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📣 Want to suggest a guest for the InvestHer Podcast? https://www.investherpodcast.com/suggest-a-guest

#InvestHerPodcast #InvestHer #WomenFounders #FemaleFounders #WomenEntrepreneurs #CircularEconomy #PlasticWaste #AfricaStartups #Tanzania #SocialEnterprise #WomenEntrepreneursForGood #HECParis #GreenJobs #ImpactInvesting

"I didn't fail. I didn't understand the system that I was working in, and the system is broken."

💡 Stop Fighting a Rigged System: Allison Byers on Raising Capital on Your Terms!

🎙 In this episode of the InvestHer Podcast, host Anne Ravanona speaks with Allison Byers, Founder, CEO, and Author, about the systemic barriers underestimated founders face in fundraising, why venture capital was never designed for most of us, and how her new book Fundraising for the Rest of Us arms founders with the playbook, the language, and the mindset shifts they need to raise capital on their own terms.

🌍 Discover how Allison Byers transformed a deeply personal experience of watching the all-male team that acquired her MIT-spun medtech company raise $55M where she could not into a career dedicated to dismantling the systemic barriers in capital allocation — co-authoring California's landmark Fair Investment Practices by Venture Capital Companies Law, building Scroobious as a relationship-first capital access platform, and writing the fundraising guide that underestimated founders have always needed.

💡 Don't miss this episode with actionable insights on:

• Why venture capital was never designed to fund most innovators

• How familiarity bias quietly drives capital allocation decisions

• The Core 10 pitch deck framework and the risk each section must de-risk

• Reframing prevention-oriented questions into promotion-oriented answers in real time

• Building an Ideal Investor Profile before you ever open a pitch conversation

• Why silence from investors is data — and how to break through it with curiosity

• Choosing capital sources that match how you want to build

If you are building for a world that does not yet fully fund you, this episode is your next step.

🔗 Listen Now | 🎧 Apple Podcasts | Spotify | ▶️ Full Show Notes

Allison Byers is a founder, investor, and capital access advocate whose career is devoted to building a funding system that works for The Rest of Us. She is the Founder and CEO of Scroobious, a relationship-first platform connecting underestimated founders with aligned capital, and the author of Fundraising for the Rest of Us. Allison co-authored California's landmark Fair Investment Practices by Venture Capital Companies Law and serves on multiple boards shaping the future of equitable investing. She draws on her own experience co-founding a medtech company spun out of MIT, raising nearly $10 million, and bringing an FDA-registered product to market — and on the painful lesson that followed — to give every underestimated founder the knowledge and confidence to navigate the funding landscape.

🌐 Website: https://www.scroobious.com

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.allisonbyers.com

🎙️ Catch Allison's previous episode: https://bit.ly/InvestHerPodcastEp44InvestinginChangeAllisonByersScroobious

Scroobious is a relationship-first capital access platform designed to connect underestimated founders with the investors most likely to understand, champion, and fund them. The platform operationalises the principle that trust precedes capital — helping founders build the right relationships before they ever need to make an ask. Scroobious sits at the intersection of education, community, and deal flow, giving The Rest of Us the infrastructure the traditional funding system was never built to provide.

🌐 Scroobious — relationship-first capital access platform: https://www.scroobious.com

💼 Connect with Allison Byers on LinkedIn / personal website: https://www.allisonbyers.com

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#InvestHerPodcast #InvestHer #WomenFounders #FemaleFounders #WomenEntrepreneurs #FundraisingForTheRestOfUs #Scroobious #AllisonByers #FundingToolkit #CapitalAccess #StartupFunding #UnderestimatedFounders #InvestorBias #WomenInVC

"If you are a female founder and you've had this idea in the back of your head for a day, a week, a month, a year, 10 years — get off the fence and do something."

💡 Get Off the Fence: Renate Crollini's Blueprint for Women Who Are Ready to Build!

🎙 In this episode of the InvestHer Podcast, host Anne Ravanona speaks with Renate Crollini, General Manager of Tech Ready Women, about how Australia's leading accelerator for female founders is turning ideas into investment-ready businesses — in just eight weeks. Renate unpacks the startup and investment readiness programmes that have served over 6,500 women, the community that keeps founders supported between cohorts, and the practical, no-excuses philosophy that has seen 40% of programme graduates go on to raise seed funding.

🌍 Discover how Renate Crollini went from a 12-year career in sustainability and large-scale infrastructure in New York City to returning to Australia, finding herself hooked on the startup world, and ultimately stepping into the role of General Manager at Tech Ready Women, where her lived founder experience now shapes every programme she designs and delivers.

💡 Don't miss this episode with actionable insights on:

• How Tech Ready Women's eight-week model drives faster, more focused founder transformation

• Why connecting to your founder 'why' matters most before anything else

• Bringing tech back into Tech Ready: vibe coding, AI agents, and MVPs in two hours

• Knowing your numbers inside out — the non-negotiable for any funding conversation

• Building a warm-introduction culture in Australia's risk-averse investment landscape

• Why customer revenue is still the best funding you can get

• Creating community between programmes so no female founder has to go it alone

If you know a woman with an idea the world needs, send her this episode.

🔗 Listen Now | 🎧 Apple Podcasts | Spotify | ▶️ Full Show Notes

Renate Crollini is the General Manager of Tech Ready Women, where she leads the commercialisation and scaling of the organisation, overseeing founder programmes, partnerships, and revenue strategy. Her career spans engineering, large-scale infrastructure, corporate advisory, not-for-profits, and startups across Australia, New York City, and beyond, giving her a rare depth of lived experience she brings directly into every programme she designs. Alongside her role at Tech Ready Women, Renate is the Co-Founder of Adaluma, an ESG data-verification platform helping banks, corporates, and governments access real-time, audit-ready sustainability data. Known for translating complex data and policy challenges into clear, practical pathways, she is equally at home on a construction site, in a boardroom, or in a startup pitch room — and equally passionate about all three.

🌐 Website: https://www.techreadywomen.academy/

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/renatecrollini

Tech Ready Women is Australia's leading accelerator and education platform for female founders, having supported over 6,500 women across nine years of operation. Through practical eight-week programmes spanning startup fundamentals, AI enablement, and investment readiness, Tech Ready Women meets founders wherever they are on their journey — from first idea through to raising capital. Owned by Scalari Group, the organisation pairs award-winning online learning with live workshops, small-group coaching, and a growing alumni community called Female Founder Grow, ensuring no founder has to navigate the startup journey alone.

🌐 Tech Ready Women — Website: https://www.techreadywomen.academy/

💼 Connect with Renate Crollini on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/renatecrollini

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#InvestHerPodcast #InvestHer #WomenFounders #FemaleFounders #WomenEntrepreneurs #TechReadyWomen #Australia #FemaleFounderAustralia #StartupAustralia #InvestmentReady #AIForFounders #FundingReadiness #WomenInTech #StartupCommunity

"It's not about getting a yes; it's about getting an answer."

💣 Radical Truth: Robert Rubinstein Exposes the Impact Investing Illusion!

🎙 In this episode of the InvestHer Podcast, host Anne Ravanona speaks with Robert Rubinstein, Chairman of TBLI Group and Verdama Earth, about the radical truth behind sustainable finance — from the systemic flaws in ESG measurement and the fees-first culture of impact investing, to the extractive patterns inside venture capital and what founders, women investors, and retail investors can actually do about it.

🌍 Discover how Robert Rubinstein went from working on oil rigs in Iran and Texas to launching a bicycle magazine in Amsterdam, losing everything on a wholesome food publication, and ultimately finding his life's purpose: building the world's longest-running global forum for sustainable finance, influencing over $50 trillion in assets, and spending nearly three decades telling the financial sector things it doesn't always want to hear.

💡 Don't miss this episode with actionable insights on:

• Tying ESG fund fees to real environmental output, not assets under management

• Why access to the real decision-maker is the actual bottleneck, not buy-in

• How founders underestimate the true time cost of fundraising, from outreach to closing

• Bootstrapping all the way to a multi-billion-dollar exit, no outside capital needed

• Three questions to ask before taking any investor's money

• Why Robert's viral 'Impact Mafia' article struck a nerve with 150,000 readers

• Crowdfunding as a faster, more democratic path to capital for women founders

If you're ready to stop cutting ribbons and start getting things done, this episode is your permission slip.

🔗 Listen Now | 🎧 Apple Podcasts | Spotify | ▶️ Full Show Notes

Robert Rubinstein is the founder and Chairman of TBLI Group and the originator of the Triple Bottom Line (TBLI) investment framework — a pioneering approach that has influenced over $50 trillion in assets and channelled $1.3 trillion into sustainable investments over more than 28 years. He is the creator of the TBLI CONFERENCE™, the world's longest-running global sustainable finance forum, which has convened sovereign wealth funds, central banks, and major investment institutions across Europe, Asia, Latin America, and North America. Robert has advised the US State Department, the Dutch Ministry of Finance, and addressed institutions including Goldman Sachs, Blackrock, the World Bank, and the UN Environment Programme. Author of the forthcoming book Radical Truth, he is also the host of The Radical Truth podcast and the founder of TrustVC, a transparency platform for the VC and private equity industry.

🌐 Website: https://www.tbligroup.com

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertrubinstein/

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tbli/

🐦 Twitter (X): https://x.com/tbli

TBLI Group is the organisation behind the world's longest-running global forum for sustainable and impact finance, dedicated to educating and mobilising institutional investors, family offices, and asset owners toward Triple Bottom Line investing. Through its conferences, masterclasses, virtual mixers, the TBLI Circle private community, and the open-source Better World Prize database — which benchmarks ESG and impact measurement frameworks — TBLI Group has spent nearly three decades building the infrastructure, networks, and honest conversations that sustainable finance actually needs. TBLI Group also operates TrustVC, a Glassdoor-style review platform for venture capital and private equity, bringing transparency and accountability to how investors treat founders and emerging managers.

🌐 TBLI Group — Website: https://www.tbligroup.com

💼 Connect with Robert on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertrubinstein/

🐦 Follow TBLI on X (Twitter): https://x.com/tbli

📸 Follow TBLI on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tbli/

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#InvestHerPodcast #InvestHer #WomenFounders #FemaleFounders #WomenEntrepreneurs #ImpactInvesting #ESG #SustainableFinance #TBLIGroup #RadicalTruth #BootstrapFounders #VCTransparency #TrustVC #TripleBottomLine

"You've got to give the right network the right job to do."

🌐 Your Network Is Your Net Worth: Kelly Hoey on Building Social Capital That Works!

🎙 In this episode of the InvestHer Podcast, host Anne Ravanona speaks with Kelly Hoey, Author, about why women must build networks differently, how social capital translates directly into funding and business growth, and what the research on high-achieving women actually reveals about the structure of their networks. Kelly shares the thinking behind her new book The Social Billionaire, walks through her three-pillar framework of focus, grit, and networks, and gives women founders concrete, practical steps to audit their network, sharpen their asks, and show up authentically online in an AI-driven world.

🌍 Discover how a former lawyer who reinvented her career through the strength of her own networks — going on to lead a global business network for women, co-found a startup accelerator, angel invest, and serve as an interim CMO — channeled years of academic research and real-world masterminding into The Social Billionaire, a workbook-driven roadmap that gives women the tools to build, leverage, and protect the social capital that accelerates every ambition.

💡 Don't miss this episode with actionable insights on:

• Building both a broad network and a deep one, and knowing when to call on each

• Prioritizing networking with other women as a consistent predictor of achievement

• Building investor relationships long before your pitch deck is ready

• Replacing the vague goal "I need to get funded" with hyper-specific questions your network can answer

• Using AI to build a research dossier, then applying empathy and critical thinking to write a genuinely human message

• Why volunteering and community service count as networking

• Giving the right network the right job — social-emotional, professional, and industry networks each play a different role

If you have one takeaway from this episode, let it be this: your network is not a last resort — it is your greatest strategic asset, and the time to build it is right now.

🔗 Listen Now | 🎧 Apple Podcasts | Spotify | ▶️ Full Show Notes

Kelly Hoey is an author, networking strategist, and sought-after speaker on the transformative power of networks. Her first book, Build Your Dream Network (Tarcher Perigee/Penguin Random House), demystified modern connection for a broad audience, while her second, The Social Billionaire, reveals why women must build networks differently and how the right relationships accelerate every ambition. A former lawyer who reinvented her career through her own network, Kelly has led a global business network for women, co-founded a startup accelerator, angel invested, and served as an interim CMO — all testament to the principles she teaches. She has been recognized by Forbes as one of five women changing the world of VC and entrepreneurship, and by Inc. as one of the ten most well-connected people in New York City's startup scene.

🌐 Website: https://jkellyhoey.co

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellyhoey/

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jkellyhoey/

▶️Previous Episode with Kelly: https://bit.ly/Ep12InvestHerPodcast

The Social Billionaire is Kelly Hoey's second book and the definitive networking roadmap for women seeking to flourish and achieve more. Built around research on high-achieving women across industries and geographies, it introduces a practical three-pillar framework — focus, grit, and networks — and is structured as a workbook so readers can learn by doing, not just reading. Whether you are a founder navigating fundraising, a leader pursuing a board seat, or a professional in career transition, The Social Billionaire gives you the tools to audit your network, close the gaps, and deploy your social capital with intention and confidence.

🌐 Kelly Hoey's Website: https://jkellyhoey.co

💼 Connect with Kelly on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellyhoey/

📸 Follow Kelly on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jkellyhoey/

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#InvestHerPodcast #InvestHer #WomenFounders #FemaleFounders #WomenEntrepreneurs #NetworkingForWomen #SocialBillionaire #SocialCapital #FundingToolkit #WomenInBusiness #BuildYourNetwork #WomenLeadership #StartupFunding #KellyHoey

"The biggest mission is just to help women think bigger."

🌍 Global Sisterhood: Carine de Meyere on Trade Missions & Angel Investing!

🎙 In this episode of the InvestHer Podcast, host Anne Ravanona speaks with Carine de Meyere, Founder & CEO of Women of the World, about her remarkable journey from women's college graduate and Harvard gender equality researcher to founder, fundraiser, and angel investor — and how she has spent over a decade curating transformative all-female trade missions to Silicon Valley, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Japan, and soon China, connecting women entrepreneurs and investors across borders and building what she calls a true global sisterhood.

🌍 Discover how Carine's lifelong passion for gender equality — ignited at a US women's college in the late 1980s and deepened through graduate research on corporate board diversity at Harvard — shaped her decision to launch Women of the World in 2011, evolving the organisation from a fundraising platform for female founders into a global movement that combines immersive trade missions, angel investing, and cross-border community building to help women entrepreneurs access capital, markets, and their own ambition on a world stage.

💡 Don't miss this episode with actionable insights on:

• Launching Women of the World in 2011 after a stalled startup and one too many all-male pitch meetings

• Opening every trade mission with a cultural day — museums, temples, heritage sites — before a single business meeting

• Capping trade mission groups at 15 — big enough for diverse perspectives, small enough for real connection

• Running a talking stick ceremony at the start of each mission that turns strangers into a sisterhood

• Turning trade mission connections into angel investments, from Silicon Valley's Happyo to women's health company Naptah Health

• Women's health as Carine's sharpest investment thesis, and the growing wave of female angels backing it

• Why the 2% VC funding stat hasn't moved in 30 years, and what it will actually take to change it

If you're ready to think bigger, connect globally, and back women who are changing the world, this episode is for you.

🔗 Listen Now | 🎧 Apple Podcasts | Spotify | ▶️ Full Show Notes

Carine de Meyere is the Founder & CEO of Women of the World, a global advocacy and fundraising platform she launched in 2011 to accelerate women's access to capital, markets, and each other. Educated at a women's college in the United States and later at Harvard — where she researched gender equality in corporate boards — Carine describes herself as a conduit, an impact investor, and an activist for women's rights, climate, and sustainability. As an angel investor, she has backed women-led companies including Naptah Health and Happyo, and invests alongside Future Planet Capital, Antler, and Asterion Ventures, with a particular focus on women's health. She lives in the Netherlands, where she also serves as Netherlands Delegation Lead for the InvestHer Summit.

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carinedemeyere

📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/carinesigfrid

Women of the World is a global women's advocacy and fundraising platform founded in 2011 to connect female entrepreneurs, investors, academics, and executives across borders. The organisation is best known for its annual female leadership trade missions to destinations including Silicon Valley, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Japan, and — coming soon — China, each carefully curated to combine cultural immersion, high-level business access, and the kind of deep community-building that creates lasting global partnerships. Women of the World operates on the belief that when women think bigger and connect globally, they change the systems around them.

📸 Women of the World on Instagram: https://instagram.com/womenoftheworldglobal

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#InvestHerPodcast #InvestHer #WomenFounders #FemaleFounders #WomenEntrepreneurs #WomenOfTheWorld #AngelInvesting #WomensHealth #TradeMissions #GlobalSisterhood #Netherlands #WomenInvestors #GenderEquality #FundingWomen

"There is no financial logic why women only get two or three percent of venture capital. It just doesn't make economic sense."

🔑 Capital With a Conscience: Pierre Norman Rolin on Investing in Women Who Change the World!

🎙 In this episode of the InvestHer Podcast, host Anne Ravanona speaks with Pierre Norman Rolin, Founder of Ankh Impact Ventures, about what it truly means to align capital with purpose — and why he believes backing first-time women founders is one of the most compelling and undervalued opportunities in venture capital today. Pierre shares the personal, professional, and philosophical journey that took him from over three decades in global real estate to becoming an early mover in gender lens investing, and what he has learned along the way from the 40-plus ventures and funds he has backed across six high-impact sectors.

🌍 Discover how Pierre Norman Rolin — shaped by a mother who was both a Holocaust survivor and a corporate executive, galvanised by two private philanthropic foundations, and awakened to entrepreneurship through the innovation labs of USC, Caltech, and UCLA — came to believe that grants alone cannot create systemic change, and that the most powerful tool for transformation is intentional, mission-aligned venture capital in the hands of women founders building solutions to the world's most pressing problems.

💡 Don't miss this episode with actionable insights on:

• Backing women founders is not altruism — it is a clear market arbitrage that most of venture capital has failed to price correctly.

• Pierre decides to invest within the first or second meeting, reading character and grit long before evaluating the business plan or MVP.

• His three investment pillars: a woman agent of change shaped by adversity, a scalable solution to a pressing societal problem, and science or technology to measure impact.

• Philanthro-capitalism means profit and mission are not in tension — the companies Pierre backs never sacrifice returns to be green.

• Non-dilutive grants and pitch competitions are underrated — the people in the audience matter as much as the prize money.

• Getting into a reputable accelerator is an insurance policy against the 90% startup failure rate, not a concession on equity.

• The great wealth transfer — up to $200 trillion moving predominantly into women's hands within 20 to 30 years — will reshape how capital is deployed and what it prioritises.

If you have ever wondered what it looks like when decades of real-world capital experience meet genuine conviction about women-led innovation, this conversation with Pierre Norman Rolin is essential listening.

🔗 Listen Now | 🎧 Apple Podcasts | Spotify | ▶️ Full Show Notes

Pierre Norman Rolin is the Founder of Ankh Impact Ventures, a gender lens impact fund he established in 2020 after more than 35 years closing in excess of $19 billion in real estate investments and achieving a 20% net IRR for clients. His path into impact investing began in 2006 when he set up two private foundations — a British charity and a US 501(c)(3) — supporting gifted, underprivileged children through art, education, and music, which exposed him to the transformative work women were doing across the non-profit sector. Through consulting roles with women-led companies in Los Angeles from 2013 onward, Pierre became an early mover in gender lens investing, ultimately dedicating a permanent personal capital pool to backing first-time women co-founded and solo-founded startups as well as first-time women fund managers. Today, Ankh Impact Ventures has backed 40-plus ventures and funds across six strategic sectors, supported by an advisory board of 85 women and partnerships with seven leading universities including Imperial College London, Cambridge, Stanford, and Princeton. Pierre is also a sought-after voice on philanthro-capitalism, mission-aligned investing, and the coming wealth transfer that he believes will reshape global venture capital.

🌐 Website: https://www.ankhimpactvc.com

💼 LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/pierre-n-rolin

📸 Instagram: @ankh.impact.vc

🐦 Twitter (X): @AnkhImpactVC

Ankh Impact Ventures (AIV) is an early-stage gender lens impact fund founded in 2020 and dedicated to backing first-time women co-founded and solo-founded startups, as well as first-time women fund managers, at the pre-seed and seed stages. Named after one of the oldest recorded symbols in the world — the ancient Egyptian ankh, representing harmony between masculinity and femininity, transformation, and the key to opportunity — AIV invests catalytic capital across six strategic sectors: Inclusive Digital Economy, Sustainable Consumption, Climate Tech and Smart Cities, Healthcare and Life Sciences, Arts and Culture Tech, and Quantum Technologies. AIV's thesis rests on three pillars: a woman agent of change shaped by personal adversity, a scalable solution to an urgent societal challenge, and the science or technology to measure and grow that impact — without sacrificing financial returns.

🌐 Ankh Impact Ventures Website: https://www.ankhimpactvc.com

💼 Connect with Pierre on LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/pierre-n-rolin

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🗨️ LinkedIn: Anne Ravanona https://www.linkedin.com/in/anneravanona/

#InvestHerPodcast #InvestHer #WomenFounders #FemaleFounders #WomenEntrepreneurs #GenderLensInvesting #ImpactInvesting #AnkhImpactVentures #PhilanthroCapitalism #VentureCapital #EarlyStageInvesting #WomenInVC #MissionAlignedCapital #ClimateInvesting

"Dream big. There's never been a better time to not only dream big, but to actually bring those dreams to life."

🚀 Dream Bigger: Nikki Barua on Building an AI-Native Company Without Raising a Cent!

🎙 In this episode of the InvestHer Podcast, host Anne Ravanona speaks with Nikki Barua, CEO and Co-Founder of FlipWork, about why she is building her fastest-growing company yet without raising a single cent, how AI has fundamentally collapsed the cost and complexity of starting and scaling a business, and what it really takes — in mindset, identity, and strategy — for women founders to seize what she calls the greatest wave in modern human history.

🌍 Discover how Nikki Barua went from a front-row seat watching her mother bootstrap a business from nothing in India, to managing hundreds of millions in corporate accounts, to founding four companies and arriving at FlipWork — a fully AI-native transformation platform — armed with the conviction that the human being is the greatest technology on earth, and that women who lean into AI now will not just survive disruption but lead it.

💡 Don't miss this episode with actionable insights on:

• AI has shrunk the time humans have to adapt so radically that all old entrepreneurial playbooks are now dead.

• Women founders can build and scale without outside capital — and raise later from a position of strength, not desperation.

• A 29-question psychometric diagnostic can reveal your AI readiness and the precise bottlenecks holding you back.

• Encoding your unique human judgment into AI tools is the only way to differentiate your output from everyone else's.

• Identity can be shifted immediately, even when skills and confidence take time — so architect the person who wins first.

• Women are 25% behind men in AI adoption, creating a compounding career and business risk that is entirely reversible.

• First-principles thinking means refusing commonly held beliefs — because following the herd produces only common results.

This is your invitation to stop waiting for capital, permission, or certainty — and start building the future on your own terms.

🔗 Listen Now | 🎧 Apple Podcasts | Spotify | ▶️ Full Show Notes

Nikki Barua is a serial entrepreneur, bestselling author, and keynote speaker with over 25 years of experience guiding some of the world's most iconic brands through digital transformation, workforce reinvention, and organisational change. As CEO and Co-Founder of FlipWork, she is on a mission to ensure that humans co-evolve alongside AI rather than get left behind by it. Her personal journey from humble beginnings in India to building global companies has made her a sought-after voice on resilience, reinvention, and leading through disruption. Nikki has been featured in CNBC, Bloomberg, Fortune, and Forbes, and recognised as an EY North America Entrepreneurial Winning Woman, one of Entrepreneur Magazine's 100 Most Influential Women, and Entrepreneur of the Year by ACE.

🌐 Website: https://flipwork.ai

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikkibarua/

📸 Instagram: https://www.nikkibarua.com/

🐦 Twitter (X): https://x.com/NikkiBarua

FlipWork is an AI-native transformation platform helping organisations and individuals reinvent their culture, capabilities, and competitive edge for the AI age. Through a proprietary psychometric diagnostic and a personalised eight-week sprint guided by an AI change agent called Flippy, FlipWork extracts what makes each person uniquely human and encodes that judgment so they can amplify — rather than be replaced by — artificial intelligence. The result is a Reinvention Passport: each participant's AI twin, ready to deploy across any tool or workflow.

🌐 FlipWork — take the free AI readiness diagnostic: https://flipwork.ai

💼 Connect with Nikki Barua on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikkibarua/

🐦 Follow Nikki Barua on X (Twitter): https://x.com/NikkiBarua

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🗨️ LinkedIn: Anne Ravanona https://www.linkedin.com/in/anneravanona/

#InvestHerPodcast #InvestHer #WomenFounders #FemaleFounders #WomenEntrepreneurs #AIForFounders #AINative #FlipWork #NikkiBarua #HumanTransformation #FounderMindset #BootstrapWithAI #WomenInAI #ReinventYourself

"Food is infrastructure, and that's what we're building here: infrastructure for the future of clean and healthy food"

🌊 Proof of Concept, Proven: Megan Sorby Is Scaling Regenerative Aquaculture!

🎙 In this episode of the InvestHer Podcast, host Anne Ravanona speaks with Megan Sorby, Co-founder and CEO of Pine Island Redfish, about how she is building a circular, land-based regenerative aquaculture company in Florida — farming redfish sustainably, growing 50,000 mangroves a year from fish waste, and closing a $5.5M Series A to scale domestic seafood production across the United States.

🌍 Discover how Megan Sorby's two decades of commercial aquaculture experience — spanning broodstock management, new species development, and land-based facility design — led her and her co-founder husband Tom to return to the Gulf Coast of Florida and build something the U.S. seafood industry has long needed: a fully circular, recirculating aquaculture system that pairs responsible redfish production with coastal mangrove restoration, funded by the farm itself.

💡 Don't miss this episode with actionable insights on:

• The U.S. imports 80–90% of its seafood despite having vast coastlines and some of the world's highest-value fish species.

• Redfish was commercially fished to near-collapse in the 1980s, then America sent broodstock to Taiwan — and now buys it back with less traceability.

• Pine Island Redfish proved its full model on under $1.5M, deliberately staying lean before scaling rather than chasing large early rounds.

• Fish waste from their recirculating system feeds mangrove seedlings — turning a disposal problem into a self-funded nature-based restoration programme.

• Community came first: a single phone call to a former colleague connected Megan to Publix's seafood director, who visited the farm before committing.

• Growing fish in a fully controlled indoor environment produced a cleaner, more translucent fillet — opening redfish to crudo, ceviche, and sushi markets where it had never appeared before.

• A volunteer network of 300 people plants the farm's mangrove seedlings on local coastlines, and many of those same volunteers become loyal fish customers.

Megan Sorby is proof that the most powerful infrastructure investments don't always look like tech — sometimes they look like a tank full of redfish and a field full of mangroves.

🔗 Listen Now | 🎧 Apple Podcasts | Spotify | ▶️ Full Show Notes

Megan Sorby is the Co-Founder and CEO of Pine Island Redfish, a Florida-based regenerative marine aquaculture company cultivating redfish within a circular food system built to support coastal resiliency. She brings over two decades of commercial aquaculture experience across North America, with deep expertise in new species development, land-based facility design, broodstock management, and production planning to market. Megan holds a Master's degree in Sustainable Aquaculture from the University of Stirling in Scotland and a BSc in Marine Biology and Chemistry from the University of Miami Rosenstiel School for Marine and Atmospheric Science. A winner of the InvestHer Summit 2024 global pitch competition, she is widely recognised as one of the most knowledgeable and passionate voices in responsible domestic seafood production. Megan leads with both scientific rigour and a community-first mindset, building Pine Island Redfish into a model for how food production can simultaneously nourish people and restore the ecosystems they depend on.

🌐 Website: https://www.pineislandredfish.com/

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/megan-sorby-237b73159/

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pineislandredfish/

Pine Island Redfish is a land-based regenerative aquaculture company based in Florida, farming red drum — redfish — in a state-of-the-art recirculating system that gives fish their optimal environment year-round while capturing and repurposing every byproduct the process creates. The company's circular model transforms nutrient-rich fish waste into compost and liquid fertiliser used to cultivate mangrove seedlings, which are then planted by a growing volunteer network to restore threatened coastal ecosystems. Currently operating out of Mote Marine Laboratories Aquaculture Park, Pine Island Redfish supplies retail partners including Publix and distributes to food service and culinary markets across the United States, from the Southeast to Los Angeles, New York, and Washington D.C.

🌐 Pine Island Redfish — Website: https://www.pineislandredfish.com/

💼 Connect with Megan Sorby on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/megan-sorby-237b73159/

📸 Pine Island Redfish on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pineislandredfish/

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#InvestHerPodcast #InvestHer #WomenFounders #FemaleFounders #WomenEntrepreneurs #Aquaculture #RegenerativeFarming #CircularEconomy #SeafoodSustainability #MangroveRestoration #CoastalResilience #FoodSystems #WomenInAgriculture #DomesticSeafood

"If they don't give you a seat at the table, bring your own folding chair."

⚡ Tech Is Not Neutral: How Mara Bolis Is Building an Equitable AI Future for Women!

🎙 In this episode of the InvestHer Podcast, host Anne Ravanona speaks with Mara Bolis, Founder & CEO of First Prompt and Fellow at Harvard's Berkman Klein Centre for Internet and Society, about why women's hesitation toward generative AI is not a knowledge gap but a risk intelligence signal — and what women founders, enterprise leaders, and everyday users must do right now to claim their agency in one of the most consequential technological shifts in human history.

🌍 Discover how Mara Bolis's career arc — from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the U.S. Development Finance Corporation to Oxfam's women's economic empowerment programmes and Harvard Kennedy School — gave her a systems-level lens on inequality that she now applies directly to the AI era. This led her to found First Prompt, publish her 'Fierce Ambivalence' framework in Stanford Social Innovation Review, inspire an OECD expert focus group supported by the German Ministry of Labour, and co-host the Womansplaining AI podcast.

💡 Don't miss this episode with actionable insights on:

• Women use generative AI at work roughly 20% less than men — a gap that risks widening the pay divide.

• Why hesitation toward AI is a rational response to bias, privacy risk, and unequal judgment, not a lack of confidence.

• Mara's 'Fierce Ambivalence' framework: use AI passionately while holding it to the highest ethical standard.

• Every major AI tool hallucinates, and Mara shares which ones to trust and how to catch a fabricated answer.

• Why free AI tools make you the product, not the customer, and how to protect your data.

• The 'shadow usage' risk facing companies without a clear AI policy — and why silence lets bias creep in.

• How to turn AI into an investor-pitch coach that stress-tests your fundraising story before the real thing.

This episode is essential listening for every woman who wants to shape the AI era rather than be shaped by it.

🔗 Listen Now | 🎧 Apple Podcasts | Spotify | ▶️ Full Show Notes

Mara Bolis is the Founder and CEO of First Prompt, an equitable AI adoption lab, and a Fellow at Harvard's Berkman Klein Centre for Internet and Society. Her career spans the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, Oxfam America, the Harvard Kennedy School, and the role of Chief Strategy Officer at Moms First, giving her a rare systems-level perspective on how technology, finance, and gender inequality intersect. Her framework, 'Fierce Ambivalence', published in Stanford Social Innovation Review, directly inspired an OECD expert focus group on women's attitudes toward AI, supported by the German Ministry of Labour. A sought-after speaker and media commentator — interviewed by Bloomberg, CNN, the Washington Post, Reuters, and Forbes — Mara is also the co-host of the Womansplaining AI podcast. She holds an MBA from Johns Hopkins University and an MS in Foreign Service from Georgetown University.

🌐 Website: https://www.firstprompt.net/

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mara-bolis-z123/

First Prompt is an equitable AI adoption lab founded to ensure that women engage with generative AI on their own terms, at their own pace, and in community with peers. Inspired by the flat, peer-driven structure of women's savings groups, First Prompt runs learning programmes within organisations, advises leaders on inclusive AI rollout, and conducts research that connects women's lived experience of AI to policy recommendations at the national and international level. First Prompt's work sits at the intersection of gender equality, emerging technology, and systems change.

🌐 First Prompt — Mara's equitable AI adoption lab: https://www.firstprompt.net/

🎙 Womansplaining AI Podcast — co-hosted by Mara Bolis: https://www.womensplainingai.com

💼 Connect with Mara Bolis on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mara-bolis-z123/

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#InvestHerPodcast #InvestHer #WomenFounders #FemaleFounders #WomenEntrepreneurs #AIForWomen #GenerativeAI #GenderAndAI #FierceAmbivalence #FirstPrompt #WomensplainingAI #AIPolicy #EquitableAI #WomenInTech