Heroines: Women In Tech

Proving age is no barrier to becoming an entrepreneur, Carol has a history in technology has come out of retirement from previous roles with EY, Bunnings and Dominion Breweries. Carol has been working with her son Shaun for over 5 years, with a couple of start-ups which in turn have helped shape the ideas for Chirpyplus.co.nz. The concept behind ChirpyPlus is to reduce loneliness in the over 55's by providing real-life friendships and connections. ChirpyPlus is a subscription-only model, is growing fast throughout Australia and New Zealand, and has very passionate and loyal members.

Alyona Medelyan, PhD is the CEO of Thematic, an AI-driven customer insights solution backed by YCombinator. Thematic helps companies improve customer retention through insights from customer feedback and was founded in Auckland, New Zealand. Alyona holds a PhD in Natural Language Processing (NLP) from University of Waikato and is the author of 25 peer-reviewed publications. She frequently speaks on this topic at Data Science, AI and Customer Experience conferences. She now lives in San Francisco with her husband (and co-founder) Nathan Holmberg, with their two children.

Jenene Crossan is the founder of Flossie, a UX software company that reduces booking abandonment and increases revenue by streaming the user experience. They have Global clients in Australia and NZ and now available in the UK and she talks to us about the struggle of being a female founder in the 'beauty tech' industry. The power of tenacity and resilience and the resistance to conforming to 'startup theatre'.

Melissa is a qualified primary school teacher and mother of three delightful (and very busy) boys. Frustrated with the complexity of finding children’s activities online, Melissa took a giant leap from teaching to app founder, to bring you LOOP. LOOP gives you the ability to search hundreds of children’s events, activities and much more all in the palm of your hand. With it's easy to use functions, Melissa hopes you spend less time scrolling and more time with your family. TOPICS DISCUSSED: The pros and cons of investment, VC versus bank loan Designing an app the challenges of finding a teamValidation, research and due diligence

Rachel is the Founder & CEO of Invsta a New Zealand FinTech company that provides a range of innovative digital wealth and digital asset investment management solutions to financial service businesses globally. Having previously spent 10 years as a wealth adviser for a number of large financial institutions, she was excited to leap headfirst into the world of FinTech and entrepreneurship and loves being at the cutting edge of new technology within financial services. Rachel has recently been appointed to the Executive Council for FinTechNZ, and is excited to see so many cool things happening and the growth of the FinTech sector within New Zealand.   Topics discussed: Being a female founder Fintech The importance of networking to the scaling of your business The gains from doing an accelerator program Lightning Lab Fintech Accelerator www.invsta.com

We’ll be talking to Sarah Jennings COO at Stretchsense, the global supplier of soft, stretchy sensors whose mission is to democratize wearables by making cutting-edge R&D accessible to everyone. Sarah takes us on her journey from academia, to get her foot in the door in new tech, becoming COO and creating a diverse team and inclusive culture for the business.

Ezel Kokcu is a 25-year-old serial entrepreneur on to her third startup. Passphere is an analytics registration platform for expos, conferences and large scale events. Ezel also co-founded STQRY; an exploration app for museums and cultural sites. She grew STQRY to over 60 people, raised over $7 million in VC funding, with over 800 global customers before selling the company in 2016.