At iAccelerate, we're proud to be the home of entrepreneurship in the Illawarra, where half of our resident companies have an active female founder. While this is punching well above national and international standards, we are actively finding ways of supporting more women to enter in to entrepreneurship.
So, this month we hosted the Female Founders Workshop to inspire women to break down barriers, identify as entrepreneurs and invest in themselves.
Image: Women meeting at the Female Founders Workshop
We wanted to celebrate the strength and resilience of women in our community, often whose entrepreneurial journey had been borne out of necessity, and provide a platform for them to explore their entrepreneurial potential.
The iAccelerate team designed the event with purpose and intention to be welcoming, aspirational and inspiring - but would there be demand from women in the Illawarra?
I'm glad to say we were blown away.
Our workshop began with a buzz of chatter and excitement, with 30 women from all walks of life joining the iAccelerate team for breakfast.
Our attendees brought such a richness of perspectives and experiences to the day, generating exciting discussions and building trust with each other through openness and collaboration.
The excited energy became an atmosphere of reverence, as the room held its breath listening to the remarkable Maryam Popal Zahid share her story of perseverance, tenacity and triumph.
Image: Maryam Popal Zahid giving the keynote address at Female Founders Workshop
Maryam is the Founder and CEO of Afghan Women on the Move, a not-for-profit organisation that creates a safe platform for women as survivors of war and trauma to find community and learn new skills.
Maryam is an entrepreneur, humanitarian, artist, former refugee, 2019 Blacktown City Woman of the Year and has just been named as a CommBank Next Chapter Innovation Partner. She is an award-winning Afghan-Australian human rights champion, diversity and inclusion practitioner, self-thought artist and social commentator.
With all of this well-deserved recognition, you might be surprised to learn that Maryam warned us she might cry while telling her story, breathing such an air of humility, grace and dignity that is occasionally missing in keynote speakers with such a long list of achievements. Maryam’s commitment to using her position to empower and protect women in her community exemplifies the impact of one person can have on the lives of many.
Maryam embodies the vision of UOW's LIFT project, to ‘lift as we climb’ and we can’t thank her enough for setting the tone of our workshop.
The core of the workshop lay in the expertise of Rebecca Duldig, the driving force behind the empowering and well-considered workshop content.
Rebecca was an iAccelerate resident in 2016 with her company Medi Movement and is now our Business Development and Initiatives Manager. Rebecca's insights of her own entrepreneurial experience and career in med tech seamlessly blended practical knowledge with motivational guidance, giving participants a roadmap to navigate the entrepreneurial landscape at the start of their journeys.
Image: Rebecca Duldig busting myths about how to launch a startup company
Her commitment to cultivating an environment where all women could envision themselves as entrepreneurs echoed the workshop's overarching vision.
Rebecca generated some deep and enriching conversations by positioning our attendees as problem-driven founders. By digging into their lived experiences of the problems they want to solve as entrepreneurs, participants were encouraged to be more curious about the problem and the multitude of ways it could be solved, rather than focusing on a singular solution.
The workshop was rounded out with the inspired storytelling of Makrita Solitei, an entrepreneur and associate research fellow of ANCORS, housed right here on the Innovation Campus.
Makrita's journey, spanning from Kenya to Australia, showcased how she used power of entrepreneurship as a tool to empower the women in her Maasai community. Her authenticity as a speaker, coupled with transparency about the challenges she faced, made no effort to disguise that an entrepreneurial journey can be a bumpy one.
Makrita's motivation to build upon the intergenerational impact created by her matriarchal role models, meant that creating new systems for the benefit of the community was her main priority.
Image: Makrita Solitei explaining how she came to be "standing on the shoulders of giants"
Makrita placed the audience firmly within the story as active participants, explaining that she was able to see further than those before her thanks to the knowledge gained and shared by her grandparents, and the entrepreneurs in the Illawarra can see further than those without a support network, thanks to the community of knowledge exchange built here at iAccelerate.
The purpose of the Female Founders workshop was to instil confidence in participants, encouraging them to embrace their leadership potential.
We also wanted to add a practical dimension to the day's aspirations, with the opportunity for attendees to undertake the Activate program at iAccelerate in 2024 for no cost under a Female Founder Scholarship. The scholarships serve as a tangible pathway for attendees to further nurture their entrepreneurial ambitions and invest in themselves.
The workshop was curated to foster an environment where women felt not only supported as individuals but also valued for their unique perspectives and capabilities.
Image: Women attending the Female Founders Workshop
Through interactive sessions and collaborative exercises with each other, participants leaned into their leadership potential, breaking through self-imposed limitations and with the knowledge that they will not be alone on their entrepreneurial journey with iAccelerate behind them.
The ripple effect of this event, fuelled by the Female Founder Scholarships, promises to shape the entrepreneurial landscape in the Illawarra with new players set to join our ranks in 2024.
30 Female Founder scholarships are available in 2024. Apply now!
Photos by: Tyneesha Williams, supplied