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 you build while building your company. Ana is also the author of ‘Still Thinking? Act., a smarter money guide for women.'

We explore how money mindset shapes the way founders price, fundraise, and negotiate, and what it takes to move from overthinking to action.

If you're a female founder, entrepreneur, or woman in tech who wants to understand how financial agency changes the way you build, fundraise, and choose investors, this episode is for you.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• Why the fundraising ask most founders make is shaped by what they think investors will accept, not what they actually need
• How to build a personal financial floor in parallel with your company, and why liquidity matters more than home equity for founders
• What the Dutch pension gap reveals about a system that rewards part-time work without accounting for its long-term cost
• Why moving from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset is less about attitude and more about having a clear financial plan
• How unpaid labor has real financial value, and why women can and should negotiate for it to be recognized
• What "playing to win" looks like in practice, and why most women are socialized into a defensive financial posture before they ever start a company
• Why the goal of fundraising is agency, not validation, and how that difference changes the way you negotiate

Connect with Ana Herrero-Wallace and AdaInvest:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ana-herrero-wallace/

AdaInvest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/adainvestco/

Website: https://adainvest.co/

Still Thinking? Act.: https://mybook.to/rypMMkA

About Women Disrupting Tech
Every week, Women Disrupting Tech covers the decisions, patterns, and structural realities that female founders and investors in HealthTech, FinTech, ClimateTech, and AI rarely discuss in public but run into every time they meet. Follow Women Disrupting Tech on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube to get it in your feed.

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 requirement, not a communications nice-to-have.

She also makes a sharp distinction between mentoring women and sponsoring them, and why only one of those actually changes who gets funded.

What you’ll learn:

• Why LLMs treat inconsistent brand messaging as noise — and simply ignore it
• What Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is and why it matters more than traditional search rankings
• How a deliberate GEO strategy drove a 300% increase in AI citations for Monday.com
• Why the human layer — strategy, nuance, reading a room — is the one thing AI cannot replace
• The difference between mentoring women and actually sponsoring them
• Why fewer female unicorns is a capital routing problem, not a capability problem

📋 Full episode notes + Rachel’s bio: https://womendisruptingtech.blog/2026/06/11/episode-156/

Connect with Rachel Gilley
🌐 clarity.global

🔗 linkedin.com/in/rachelgilley

Surfacd — track your brand in AI search:

🌐 surfacd.com

About Women Disrupting Tech

Every week, Women Disrupting Tech covers the decisions, patterns, and structural realities that female founders and investors rarely discuss in public but run into every time they meet. Follow to get it in your feed.

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 why the relatability gap between female founders and male investors is one of the biggest blockers in the sector, and what founders can do about it right now.

You’ll hear why pitching FemTech as a social cause is the wrong move, how to pivot from risk-based investor questions back to growth, and why male allyship is not optional if the sector is going to scale.

What we cover:

• The funding paradox: 85% female-led ventures, 2% of VC funding
• Why 90% male VC decision-making creates a structural relatability problem
• Cultural taboos around menopause, miscarriage, and chronic pain — and how they suppress both patient voices and founder credibility
• How healthcare systems optimized for acute care create a prevention gap that FemTech is trying to fill
• Why AI tools are censoring the very medical terms that took decades to legitimize
• How to build a data-driven, economically aggressive pitch that moves FemTech out of the wellness niche
• The pivot technique: answering risk-based questions without losing the growth narrative
• Why male allyship — done right — accelerates the sector rather than co-opting it
• Data privacy in women’s health: why the taboo is a bigger barrier than the technology
• Practical tools for combating gender bias in the funding process

About Beata Wandachowicz-Krason
Beata is an executive at Organon and a researcher focused on the systemic barriers holding FemTech back. She works at the intersection of women’s health, venture capital, and ecosystem building.

Resources mentioned in the episode:

• Funding Coach: ⁠fundingcoach.ai⁠
• Pieter van Keep and early menopause research: ⁠https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9089556/⁠

Related episodes:

• Sabrina Nowicki
• Carmen van Vilsteren
• Femke Delissen
• Ida Tin
• Sara Okhuijsen

Connect with Beata: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/beata-wandachowicz-krason/⁠

Find the show notes: https://womendisruptingtech.blog/2026/06/04/episode-155/

Follow Women Disrupting Tech on Spotify and Apple Podcasts for weekly conversations with the women reshaping technology and healthcare.

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 robotics to deconstruct end-of-life solar panels and recover high-value materials like aluminum, silicon, and glass.

Andjela's path combines mechanical engineering, intellectual property thinking, and a black belt in Taekwondo. She applies the same discipline she learned on the mat to building deep tech: showing up anyway, treating failure as feedback, and designing not just for what works in the lab, but for what gets adopted in the real world.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• Why solar energy is scaling fast while quietly creating a waste problem we don't know how to handle yet
• How Renovo's "vending machine in reverse" approach recovers materials without crushing or chemicals
• Why getting technology to work is only 30% of the journey — and what the other 70% actually requires
• How to sell urgency in deep tech without selling the future
• Why regulation in climate tech is a market, not a barrier
• Why now is the moment for women to enter AI and robotics, while the rules are still being written

Andjela also shares hard-won lessons from her first startup, TreeBlock, and how shifting from building the solution to building the right path to adoption changed everything about how she runs Renovo.

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

03:00 Andjela’s Founder Journey

06:02 Engineering Background and Its Impact on Entrepreneurship

08:40 Lessons from Previous Ventures: TreeBlock Experience

11:38 The Problem of Solar Panel Waste and Recycling Challenges

14:38 Identifying the Core Issues in Solar Panel Recycling

17:34 Innovative Solutions for Solar Panel Deconstruction

20:20 Modular Systems and Their Advantages in Recycling

21:19 Targeting Solar Installers: A Strategic Approach

23:51 Current Status and Future Plans for Renovo Recycling

24:02 The Role of AI in Physical Recycling

27:18 Preparing for the Solar Waste Surge

30:23 Fundraising in Deeptech

34:50 Convincing Stakeholders of Urgency

37:38 Regulatory Support and Compliance

39:04 Expanding Beyond Solar Panels

40:58 Practical Insights for Founders

45:30 Empowering Women in Tech

49:37 Building a Supportive Funding Ecosystem

Connect with Andjela Bozinac and Renovo Recycling

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bozinac-andjela24/

Website: https://www.renovo-recycling.it/

Renovo on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@renovosrl

Check out the show notes on https://womendisruptingtech.blog/2026/05/28/episode-154/

Women Disrupting Tech on Substack

https://open.substack.com/pub/womendisruptingtech/p/episode-154?r=2v0lts&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Enjoyed this episode?

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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 app that teaches you to read your own body instead of outsourcing that knowledge to an algorithm.

What you’ll learn

• The 3 biomarkers at the heart of the Fertility Awareness Method and why each one tells you something different
• Why the 28-day cycle myth is holding women back — and what stress, travel, and lifestyle really do to your cycle
• Why Sabrina’s husband, a trained physician, was never taught any of this in medical school
• The data privacy risk most women don’t know about when using free health apps
• Why self-funding was a values decision, not just a financial one

Chapters

00:00 The Influence of Family Legacy on Innovation

03:08 Understanding the Fertility Awareness Method

06:10 The Basic Principles of the Fertility Awareness Method

11:53 Cyclisity: The Role of Education About Women's Health

14:47 Challenges and Learning Curves in Fertility Awareness

17:55 The Importance of Personalization in Health Apps

20:47 The Future of Women's Health Research

23:58 Data Privacy and Women's Health

29:44 Protecting User Data and Future Studies

32:21 Impact of Roe v. Wade on Privacy

35:05 The Advantages of Low-Tech Tracking

38:01 Self-Funding and Business Strategy

41:10 Leveraging Complementary Skills in Founding

44:09 Designing for Correct Use and User Experience

46:57 The Evolution of Cyclisity's Name

50:23 Empowering Female Founders through Investment

📋 Full episode notes + Sabrina’s bio: [link to blog post]

Connect with Sabrina:
🌐 cyclisity.com

📱 TikTok & Instagram: @wanderingSabrinaThe book behind the app:
📖 Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler → https://amzn.eu/d/0cX3icbH

If this episode made you think differently about your body or your health data, hit follow so you never miss a new episode.

“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 the Emerging Giants team at KPMG Netherlands. Izzy helps startups and growing companies tackle tricky challenges like tax, finance, risk, and expanding internationally—areas that can make a big difference to a company’s success.

Izzy didn’t follow a typical path into tech. Her history degree turned out to be her “secret weapon”—not because it made her a technical expert, but because it taught her to ask good questions, connect ideas, and bring the right people together. This approach also helped her handle imposter syndrome, focusing on where she adds value instead of trying to know everything.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

• Why knowing when to outsource is one of the most underrated founder skills

• How to recognize the moment when complexity starts slowing you down

• What post-COVID networking has cost the startup ecosystem, and how to bring serendipity back

• Why women in tech often stay in the facilitator role, and what it takes to step forward

• How safe spaces help female founders ask the questions that actually move them forward

Izzy also talks about getting ready for motherhood while working in a fast-paced environment, and how this change is teaching her to manage her energy, be more selective, and think long-term.

Chapters:

00:00 — Introduction

05:17 — The history degree as a secret weapon

08:12 — Techstars NYC and the intensity of New York

11:20 — Transitioning from TNW to KPMG

14:05 — Overcoming imposter syndrome in a new role

16:18 — When and what to outsource as a founder

22:12 — How networking became transactional after COVID

25:04 — Strategies for better event attendance

33:22 — Safe spaces for women in the startup ecosystem

36:21 — Why women stay in the facilitator role (and how to step forward)

41:07 — Navigating motherhood and the startup world

46:30 — What makes a meaningful connection

Connect with Izzy Sayers and KPMG Emerging Giants

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/izzy-sayers/

KPMG Emerging Giants: https://kpmg.com/nl/en/home/industries/private-enterprise/emerging-giants.html

Check out the show notes on

Women Disrupting Tech Blog:

Substack:

Enjoyed this episode?

Follow Women Disrupting Tech on Spotify so you never miss a conversation with the women and ecosystem builders shaping the next generation of technology.

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 standards in healthcare.

Having spent decades at Philips developing cardiovascular imaging systems now used every second of every day in hospitals worldwide, Carmen is done advising from the sidelines. She’s getting her hands dirty — investing, coaching, and building the ecosystem that women’s health has always deserved.

We dive deep into what it actually takes to create a global gold standard in healthcare, why women’s health represents a $1 trillion untapped economic opportunity, and how Carmen is shifting the conversation from niche issue to societal imperative.

By listening, you'll learn about:

1. The Seven Gold Standards: From microsurgery robotics to advanced breast reconstruction — why these innovations are poised to reshape global healthcare.
2. The $1 Trillion Market Failure: Three times more money is spent on solving erection problems than on all women’s health issues combined. Carmen explains why that’s not just a gender issue — it’s an economic one.
3. How to Build Credibility with Doctors: The three-level key opinion leader strategy that gets medical innovators from prototype to global adoption.
4. Angel Investing as a Multiplier: How strategic early-stage investment helps female founders reach the inflection points that unlock serious venture capital.
5. Shifting the Advocacy Language: Why framing women’s health as an economic opportunity — not a fairness issue — is the most effective way to move male-dominated Venture Capital.

Connect with Carmen van Vilsteren:
Connect with Carmen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carmen-van-vilsteren-a069a49/

Resources mentioned:

Fe+Male Tech Heroes: https://femaletechheroes.com/

FemTech NL: https://www.femtechnl.com/

Borski Fund: https://borskifund.com

Health Holland: https://health-holland.com

Carmen's co-authored publication in The Lancet titled ‘Why investing in women's health is a societal imperative’: ⁠https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(26)00404-6/fulltext⁠

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction and Background in Tech and Healthcare

03:57 Why Healthcare Became Carmen’s Passion

07:24 Development of Imaging Systems for Cardiovascular Applications

09:07 What Goes into Developing a Global Standard

14:43 Carmen’s Ambition to Fund Seven Global Healthcare Standards

17:01 Innovations in Preclinical and Clinical Imaging

19:08 The Role of Acceptance and Credibility in Healthcare

23:07 The Seven Golden Standards in Healthcare

32:50 Changing the Healthcare Ecosystem and Gender Balance

40:39 Women’s Health as a Societal Imperative

44:21 Engaging Men in Women’s Health Advocacy

49:24 Impact of Women’s Health on Society and Personal Life

54:00 Angel Investing and Supporting Female Founders

58:35 Paying Forward and Building a Support Ecosystem

01:10:47 Netherlands as a Global Center for Women’s Health

01:17:08 Vision for the Future of Healthcare and Innovation

01:21:32 Advice for Female Founders and Investors

01:22:48 Connecting with Carmen on LinkedIn

About Women Disrupting Tech: Hosted by Dirkjan Hupkes, Women Disrupting Tech features female founders, tech leaders, and women in STEM who are building the next generation of technology. We provide the actionable strategies and proven frameworks female entrepreneurs use to succeed.

👉 Subscribe to Women Disrupting Tech on Spotify and Apple Podcasts for weekly insights from women reshaping the industry.

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 and her co-founders turned an AI master’s project in Amsterdam into a full-time startup, why they’ve stayed committed to healthcare despite the temptation of faster markets, and what top-level sports taught them about building a resilient founding team.

You’ll hear about:

• How Wi-Fi signals through a wall plug can tell a nurse whether a resident is asleep, in the bathroom, or wandering a hallway — without a single camera
• Why Femke calls elderly care a “double problem” — and why solving it requires both technical innovation and a moral compass
• The “first save” moment that proved their system worked, during a live night shift at their first paying customer
• How all three founders’ sports positions still define how they lead today
• What female founders get wrong about the funding journey in healthcare (hint: investors need numbers before they’ll listen to your vision)
• Why Femke says she’d “lose faith in society” if they pivoted to energy savings just because it was easier

Whether you’re building in healthcare, navigating slow decision cycles, or looking for proof that you don’t always need a breakthrough invention to solve a real problem — this episode is for you.

About Femke Delissen
Femke Delissen is the co-founder and commercial lead of PAVA, a remote monitoring startup for elderly care based in the Netherlands.

She holds an MSc in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Amsterdam and studied at UC Berkeley.

Before going full-time on PAVA, she worked in a student-led consultancy at Sustainable Students Consultancy. She played hockey for HGC, at the highest competitive level in the Netherlands.

Connect with Femke and Pava

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/femke-delissen/

PAVA Website: pava.ai

PAVA on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pava-ai/

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

02:40 From Education to Entrepreneurship

09:38 Introducing Pava: Revolutionizing Elderly Care

11:04 Addressing the Challenges in Healthcare

14:57 Innovative Solutions: Wi-Fi Sensing Technology

20:41 Personalized Care Through Data

25:29 The Future of Monitoring: AI and Beyond

31:51 Passion for Healthcare: A Personal Journey

37:53 Navigating the Healthcare Landscape

44:48 Funding Challenges in Healthcare Startups

51:51 The Influence of Sports on Entrepreneurship

57:12 Learning Through Community and Collaboration

Connect with Women Disrupting Tech
Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube so you never miss an episode.

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 philosophy of human-centric tech, exploring how Marsha’s background in Industrial Design Engineering helped her build a product that solves the core problem of “app fatigue.”

You’ll also hear the raw reality of navigating a seven-person founding team as the only woman and how to transition a startup culture from “family” to “professional team.”

Key Takeaways from Marsha Goei:

• The “No-Chat” Model: How to validate a disruptive business model by focusing on real-world outcomes (dates) over app engagement metrics.
• Human-Centric Design: Using engineering frameworks to solve emotional and social problems in tech.
• Founder Resilience: Lessons on burnout prevention, identifying misalignment, and the power of heart-centered leadership.
• Operational Excellence: Why a high-performing “professional team” mindset is more sustainable than a “family” dynamic for scaling startups.
• Women in Leadership: Navigating gender dynamics in the 2026 tech ecosystem and building a culture of radical feedback.

About Women Disrupting Tech:

Hosted by Dirkjan Hupkes, Women Disrupting Tech features female founders, tech leaders, and women in STEM who are building the next generation of technology. We provide the actionable strategies and proven frameworks female entrepreneurs use to succeed.

Connect with Marsha and Breeze Social:

• Connect with Marsha Goei on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marshagoei/
• Visit: ⁠https://breeze.social⁠
• Follow: @breeze.social on Instagram and TikTok

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
02:20 Introducing Marsha Goei and Breeze
05:22 The Journey to Entrepreneurship
07:58 Building Breeze: The Concept of a Dating App
11:14 Safety Features and User Commitment in Dating
14:11 Validating the Breeze Concept
17:05 From Concept to App Development
19:55 Business Model Evolution and User Experience
23:00 Design Philosophy and User-Centric Approach
25:56 Success Metrics and User Feedback
29:06 Navigating Gender Dynamics in Entrepreneurship
35:18 Building a Feedback Culture
38:24 The Shift from Family to Team
41:11 Navigating Roles and Responsibilities
45:07 The Journey of Self-Discovery
52:39 Recognizing and Overcoming Burnout
57:17 The Role of Investors in Growth
1:03:55 Empowering Female Founders through Community

👉 Subscribe to Women Disrupting Tech on Spotify and Apple Podcasts for weekly insights from women reshaping the industry.

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 world of fintech, offering a rare look at the "how" behind successful execution.

We dive deep into the Data Chain Mental Model, a framework for better business decisions, and discuss why the most successful Women in Tech aren't just building products—they are building the systems that allow those products to thrive.

What You’ll Learn

• The Founder-Operator Dynamic: Why the "Why" and the "How" must work in perfect symbiosis.
• The Data Chain: A 7-step mental model to move from raw data to impactful business decisions.
• Scaling Smart: When to lean on "generalists" and when it’s time to bring in the "specialists."
• The Power of 'No': Why saying no is the most important skill for an operator during a growth phase.
• Fintech & Credit Unions: Why traditional financial institutions are becoming a surprising hub for innovation and female leadership.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

02:33 Eliza Moore's Journey to Prizeout

09:36 Understanding Prizeout's Unique Fintech Model

13:58 The Role of Credit Unions in Financial Services

20:34 The Operator vs. Founder Dynamic

26:40 Lessons from Mentorship and Leadership

35:03 The Importance of Operators in Business

43:08 Mental Models for Success in Funding

44:28 Closing Thoughts and Where to Connect

Connect with Eliza Moore and Prizeout

Eliza Moore on LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizamoore/⁠

Prizeout website: ⁠⁠https://www.prizeout.com/⁠⁠

The Data Chain Framework: https://medium.com/data-science/12-mental-models-for-data-science-f2e2133d85ea

About Women Disrupting Tech

Hosted by Dirkjan Hupkes, this show features the female founders and tech leaders building the next generation of technology companies. We provide actionable strategies for female entrepreneurs, startup leaders, and advocates for diversity in STEM.

Subscribe & Review

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