20 Founders On a Mission: Meet the Women Building What Matters — Issue 002
This is the second in our ongoing Women's History Month series spotlighting women founders building businesses that matter. Some started after a layoff. Some walked away from careers most people would kill for. Some spotted a gap so obvious they couldn't look away. Every one of them built something from it.
These are 20 more founders on a mission.
Know a women founder who belongs in this series? We feature founders year-round. Reach out at hi@foundedbywomen.org
Emma Dobinson | Creative Reset
After more than twenty years working in television and film production across Palestine, Tunisia, Libya, Algeria and beyond, Emma Dobinson founded Creative Reset in 2025 to bring that hard-won understanding directly to creative professionals. Through coaching, workshops, consultancy and online programmes, she helps them reclaim their sense of worth, navigate career progression and find their voice in industries that too often work to silence them.
Dr. Sula Windgassen | The Health Psychologist
Sula Windgassen's path began with her own experience of bladder health issues, medical dismissal, and the kind of hopelessness that comes when the system offers no real answers. That search led her through a seven-year academic journey into the mind-body connection, a PhD in psychological medicine, and a practice built on a simple conviction: the body and the mind are not separate things. Today she helps people find relief from chronic health conditions by working with their biology rather than around it. Her book, It's All In Your Body, extends that work to a wider audience.
Jacynth Bassett | Ageism Is Never In Style
Jacynth Bassett began noticing a contradiction while studying Law at Cambridge. We are living longer, working longer, building influence across the life course - including in later in life - and yet culturally and commercially, visibility, value, opportunity and contribution still seemed to have an expiry date. Watching her parents become increasingly marginalised because of their age brought that contradiction into sharp focus. She founded global consultancy & movement Ageism Is Never In Style to challenge those outdated perceptions and build genuine age inclusion and intergenerational cohesion across generations across business, culture and society. This year marks the platform's tenth anniversary.
Natalie Luckham | Naturally Social
Natalie Luckham spent fifteen years in social media and communications watching two things happen as AI became widely accessible: some organisations rushed in without understanding the risks, while others avoided it entirely out of fear of getting it wrong. Naturally Social was born from a desire to find a better path, helping organisations use AI in ways that protect trust, credibility, and the human connection that good communications depends on. Her mission is straightforward: AI should enhance expertise, not replace it.
Geeta Sidhu-Robb | WCorp
Geeta Sidhu-Robb built her first business working with 21,500 women over fifteen years. What she kept seeing was women trying to fix the outside before addressing what was happening inside. That observation became the foundation for her coaching practice and eventually WCorp, where she works with founders and CEOs on the gap between self-esteem and self-confidence. Her clients range from women at £275k revenue to those running businesses above £1 billion. The speed of transformation, she says, surprises even her.
Emmy Brunner | emmybrunner.com
Emmy Brunner spent over twenty years as a clinician watching high-achieving women arrive at support with temporary relief but no deeper resolution. What she kept seeing beneath the stress and anxiety was something more honest: a longing for connection, love, and joy. Her work, codified into a system she has trademarked as VINTIVITY, helps women reconnect with themselves by accessing vulnerability, intimacy, and creativity. She is now building her community in the US and expanding her reach to the global stage.
Clare Sadler | Beyond Instinct
As a child, Clare was fascinated by the question: why do two people in the same situation respond differently? That curiosity led to a 27‑year career helping those in high‑pressure environments excel and the insight — under load, people don’t lose their skills, experience or knowledge; they lose access to them. Access is the foundation of how humans learn, create, lead, innovate, connect and decide, and when restored, everything changes. Human Systems Development gives this insight language and practical solutions. Clare’s mission is to share this work widely restoring access for high‑impact, high‑value transformation where it matters most.
Emma Olmi | emmaolmi.com
Emma Olmi walked away from a high-flying corporate career to build a coaching practice rooted in a different definition of success. Having lived across four continents, travelled solo to more than seventy countries, and raised her son as a single mother, she brings a deeply global and human perspective to her work supporting professionals through career transitions, personal growth, and life change. She is passionate about social justice, courage, and the belief that a life of meaning is not a compromise.
Katrina Purcell | katrinapurcell.com
Katrina Purcell was tired of helping people she didn't admire get rich. She wanted to create a level playing field for founders who were building on willpower rather than repeatable systems. Today she works with sub-$1M founders to provide the structural architecture that allows them to lead strategically while their businesses run reliably. Her goal: to convince founders that documenting processes creates room for innovation rather than stifling it, and to redefine what success looks like for female founders beyond survival-mode endurance.
Diana Lowe | Blue Light Leadership
Diana Lowe's career began in finance, living abroad just out of college, wide-eyed and energised. Then reality hit. Job after job became a battlefield. One manager told her in detail why every teammate supposedly hated her, without offering a single solution. Another awarded her a used pair of tighty-whities in front of the entire company at a town hall, calling her "the most annoying person" for sitting in his seat. There were days she wished she'd get hit by a bus, not to die, but to have a legitimate reason to stop showing up. Eventually she was diagnosed with clinical depression. In recovery, she made a vow: she would do everything she could to stop bad bosses from ruining people's lives. That vow became Blue Light Leadership. Today she is a certified cognitive behavioural coach helping organisations retain their top talent by transforming technical experts into impactful people leaders. Her book Hard to Handle became an Amazon bestseller, with a companion workbook, audiobook, and Spanish edition all coming this year.
Tiffany Woodman | Canna Bella Wellness
Tiffany Woodman's inspiration came from her own experience as a woman in her 40s and the conversations she kept having with friends going through the same things. She wanted support they could trust. At Canna Bella Wellness, she worked with a renowned PhD to create high-quality supplements designed to match moods with what the body may need, without white-labelling or chasing trends. Beyond products, she is building an ecosystem that helps women understand their patterns, walk into doctor appointments prepared, and take action with real data in hand.
Elizabeth Rosenberg | The Good Advice Company
Elizabeth Rosenberg quit her job in March 2020. A week later, the world shut down. The time at home gave her space to ask what brought her joy, what she was good at, and what could make her money. The intersection of those three things and twenty-plus years of brand, PR, and communications experience became The Good Advice Company. She helps executives find their ownable narrative and show up with authority, blending storytelling, intuitive intelligence, and communications strategy. She recently launched Chief Spiritual Officer, a leadership platform redefining what modern leadership looks like when it's grounded, intentional, and human. This global movement helps executives integrate intuition and spiritual health into how they lead, decide, and show up in business.
Nelly Yusupova | TechSpeak
Nelly Yusupova spent years as a CTO watching the same story repeat itself: brilliant founders losing tens of thousands of dollars because they didn't know how to think about technology strategically. The problem wasn't that they needed to learn to code. They needed a different framework entirely. She founded TechSpeak to give non-technical founders that framework, helping them validate ideas, build MVPs, and use AI and technology to grow their businesses with confidence. Her focus is expanding access to tech education for underrepresented entrepreneurs, particularly women.
Jenni Kavanagh | ClimbUp Coaching
Jenni Kavanagh spent years in the Data and AI space watching capable people get promoted into leadership roles and then struggle. Not because they were not good enough, but because no one had prepared them for what leadership now demands. She felt it herself. The expectations of leaders have risen sharply, especially with AI accelerating everything, but leadership capability has not kept pace. ClimbUp Coaching exists to close that gap, helping leaders make better decisions, carry less pressure, and lead in a way that does not burn them or their teams out in the process.
Erika Biddix | erikabiddix.com
Erika Biddix is a speaker, strategist, founder, and community builder who believes the strongest strategies are those that account for reality. She spends her days aggressively helping others and working to change the narrative that ROI can only be measured financially. Her work is rooted in the conviction that the power of community can create something that strategy alone never could.
Abi Harmon | House Harmon
Abi Harmon was a high-performing tech executive who believed success meant pushing harder, sleeping less, and powering through. Until she began studying the neuroscience of stress and realised that the smartest people in the room were often operating with nervous systems that were completely maxed out. House Harmon was born from that insight: that leadership is not just mental, it is physiological. When you train the system that runs your brain and body, everything else changes.
Kim Richards | Caring for Mama
Kim Richards founded Caring for Mama as the flagship initiative of The Caring Collective, a growing effort to reimagine care as essential infrastructure for families and caregivers. Through curated care boxes and partnerships with nonprofits and organisations, she delivers tangible support to mothers navigating postpartum recovery, illness, and burnout, as well as family caregivers moving through major life transitions. Sourcing from 50+ women-owned and impact-driven brands, the work circulates dollars back into women-led businesses while expanding access to care.
Nicole Wilhelmi | Worcester Wellness Collective
After being laid off from her corporate job, Nicole Wilhelmi found herself looking for connection and support within the local wellness community in Central Massachusetts. What she found instead was a gap: no networking opportunities specifically designed for wellness professionals. She built the Worcester Wellness Collective to fill it. Today the network has 322 members and is growing, with regular in-person events, co-working days, and a wellness market featuring over 20 local vendors planned for this September.
Anna Butterworth | Ultra Violet Agency
Anna Butterworth launched Ultra Violet in 2018 after her time as the first promotional communications hire at Elvie, where she discovered that women's health marketing operates by entirely different rules. The education lead time is longer, the barriers are higher, and the standard playbook simply does not apply. Over time, she noticed a deeper problem: the industry was working in silos, building point solutions without anyone asking what the best possible future for women's health could look like. Ultra Violet pivoted from marketing communications to futures forecasting to answer that question. Today it is the only futures agency dedicated to women's health, publishing free trend reports made possible through mission-aligned sponsors. Their most recent report, The Future of Menopause 2035, makes the case plainly: menopause will affect everyone, personally, professionally, or by proxy.
Michelle Niziol | IMS Property Group
As a teenager, Michelle Niziol nearly lost her home. That experience shaped everything. She took three jobs, kept a roof over her head, and by 18 had bought her first property. From that came a mortgage brokerage, which grew into IMS Property Group — an award-winning, family-run business now in its eighteenth year, helping everyone from first-time buyers to portfolio investors manage the entire property journey under one roof. Twenty-six years on, she has helped more than 20,000 clients build the kind of financial security she was determined to create for herself. She also supports Homeless Oxfordshire, mindful that nearly 40% of UK households are just one missed pay cheque away from losing their home.
Noelle Federico | Fortunato Partners Inc.
Noelle Federico spent 39 years identifying patterns and producing results before turning that accumulated knowledge into a practice built around one conviction: capability alone is never the problem. At Fortunato Partners, she works with leaders and small business owners who are smart, driven, and experienced but stuck — overwhelmed by patterns they cannot see, inconsistent in execution, or unclear on strategy. Her work cuts through that noise: getting clients clear on how they lead and communicate, and building strategies they can actually execute. Next, she is scaling access through her Unbreakable Wisdom brand, expanding her community, and deepening practical business education for those who want to operate at a higher level.
Deepika Phakke | Nama Water & Ayurvedist
Deepika Phakke didn't set out to build two brands. She set out to solve two problems she couldn't ignore. Growing up with water scarcity shaped her thinking about hydration long before it became a business, and a bout of long COVID brought her back to her roots in Ayurveda. The result is Nama Water, rethinking sustainable hydration for offices, hotels, and hospitality, and Ayurvedist, a line of functional caffeine-free teas designed to support gut health and longevity rather than deliver a temporary lift. Together they form the beginning of something larger: a portfolio of everyday essentials that make it easy to choose what supports both your health and the planet.
This is part of our ongoing 20 Founders On a Mission series. New editions publish regularly. To be featured or nominate a founder, write to us at hi@foundedbywomen.org
