The Fashtech Ecosystem Of Female Founders
“Nature is like a woman who enjoys disguising herself, and whose different disguises, revealing now one part of her ad now another, permit those who study her and assiduously to hope that one day they may know the whole of her person” (Diderot)
Today is Mother Earth’s day, and I feel an immense feeling of gratitude for sharing my birthday with HER. Even as we have spent decades suppressing the power of Earth and women alike. Nature is feminized because it is seen as holding the same qualities as women when most romantic writings were created.
Women were seen as being domestic, moral, pure, soft, graceful, beautiful and straightforward; this was according to the nature of separate spheres: men and women were radically different in terms of their characters as men were seen as hard-working, mechanical, rational, independent and proud; none of which is easily connected with nature
My “gift” for Mother Earth today is sharing with you the first part of a 5 articles series, of women who are using technology to push for sustainability!
Although the industries of technology and fashion are dominated by men at the C-suite level, women are flourishing in the crossover area known as fashtech.
What is #fashtech?Fashtech is the crossing of Fashion and Technology in the era of Digitization.
The objective of this series is to list is to describe which technologies and how Digitization is disrupting the Fashion Retail industry, but also how they are transforming our daily life. Ladies around the globe who are doing in the fields of VR, AR, and XR and make sure I won’t leave anyone out.
When it comes to the tech industry, there is a specific variety of problem amongst men and women in the workplace.
However, a 2017 survey of 70 international VR and AR companies revealed that 64.3 per cent of those companies were led by women and started to play more significant leadership roles in technology and innovation.
The same data also showed that more men were in technical roles than women, with 61.4 per cent more. While women may have the ambition and passion for starting companies, they continue to lag behind their male equals in technical positions. On the bright side, the data suggests women are leading the development of AR/VR technologies.
Today, in 2021, this remarkable progress in the number of visible female role models in this landscape has been made possible. The VR industry has been making significant jumps and bounds in recent years, and it continues to evolve rapidly.
So, here is my list (in no specific order) of some of the most innovative, creative, and inventive women you should follow to stay in the know for fashtech. This list includes anyone we believe is pushing the boundaries of the respective industry forward.
Josephine Kwan, the founder of Flow 2 Freedom Apparel, is a visionary and self-motivated entrepreneur with over a decade of diverse business experience in commercial real estate, and marketing, negotiations, acquisitions and dispositions, operations, finance, and management.
With this new venture, she is looking to change lives by allowing females to remain sexy and confident, especially during menstruation. The company has developed a new eco-friendly apparel line to support women in being active irrespective of their periods that may have impeded their daily lives.
Dr. Georgie Bruinvels, Founder of Fitrwoman App. Georgie Bruinvels is a Senior Sports Scientist and Research Scientist at Orreco. She manages Orreco’s Redox testing at client sites, analyses blood biomarker data, and leads the science behind the Female Athlete Program and FitrWoman™ and FitrCoach™ applications. Georgie holds a PhD from University College London and has published widely on the female athlete, iron deficiency and the menstrual cycle. Before joining Orreco, she worked for 3 years with UK Anti-Doping. Georgie is also an elite endurance athlete. She has represented the British Athletics Team and won her first international marathon in 2015.
Tracy Wong, Founder and CEO of Voor3D. Tracy is a fashion tech entrepreneur, a B2B Saas virtual showroom solution, targeting redesigning the fashion business model to be synchronous, agile, and sustainable. She has previously held roles in design, merchandising to product development and production and has worked with multiple brands, including Gap, Inditex, Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein etc.
Now Tracy is based in New York for the past 6 years but before, she lived in the Bay Area, California, close to Silicon Valley, where she grew up after moving from Hong Kong.
Jeanette Jackson, CEO of Foresight Cleantech Accelerator. Jeanette is the CEO of Foresight, a cleantech ecosystem accelerator that is enabling entrepreneurs and exciting a world-class cleantech industry across Canada. She is a multi-award winning sustainability champion, a sought-after public speaker, and a leading advisor to the cleantech industry.
Marina Pengilly | CMO & Co-Founder, Little Black Door. Marina is a South African entrepreneur based in London.
Former founder of lifestyle brand Who Loves You and retail specialist Marina is the CMO and co-founder of Little Black Door. She has a passion for sustainability and nurturing and growing communities.
It was early 2019. Marina and her business partner Lexi Willetts had quit their jobs to start Little Black Door. A digital wardrobe inventory platform, which enables users to index their closets and sell clothes on resale sites — all online. Since then, the two founders have tested the Little Black Door app on 250 users, raised more than £350,000 from friends and family, and are getting ready for a seed round of £1.5m to launch a version for the general public at the end of this year.
Got any other influential women to follow in #fashtech that you want to share with me? I know I may have missed a few but that is why I am continuing this list on a monthly basis!
Feel free to tweet me @veralovici
