Pitch Events x Female Founders
MARCH 2022 FEATURED FOUNDERS
On the Way Up: Elevator Pitch Series
Sponsored by Amazon Alexa Startups
Summer: WiV Pitch Event
Tuesday, June 14, 2022 | Virtual
11:00am – 12:30pm Pacific Time | Look up your time zone
Fall: Female Founders Fireside Chat
Thursday, September 22, 2022 | Virtual
11:00am – 12:30pm Pacific Time | Look up your time zone
Winter: Pitch Finale!
Thursday, November 10, 2022 | Virtual
11:00am – 12:30pm Pacific Time | Look up your time zone
Expand your community. Meet the women launching emerging voice tech. Join the conversation.
Can’t attend live? Sign up anyway – we’ll send you the recording after!
Pitch at Women in Voice in 2022!
Applications due Friday, May 13 11:59pm
for Summer Pitch event on Tuesday, June 14
Quarterly call for Female Founders
Join us in Q3 on Friday, August 12
Female-founded companies raised $3.31 billion in 2020, or 2.2% of the year’s total sum, compared to $3.5 billion and 2.6% in 2019. Ouch. Still not over 3%. (Yahoo, 2021). We’d love to support that changing.
Meet our Sponsors!
MARCH 2022 FEATURED FOUNDERS & VC PANEL
Featured Founders & VC Panel!
Want to pitch in June 2022? Apply to Pitch here.
Pradnya Desh
CEO of Advocat AI
Former US diplomat and a strong believer in the ability of the market to bring about positive results with clear goals and effective business practices. As a CEO, US diplomat and a legal adviser Pradnya has focused on promoting economic development through helping companies, communities and individuals produce positive outcomes by the choices they make.
Chloe Duckworth
Co-founder & CEO of Valence Vibrations, Inc.
Student entrepreneur studying computational neuroscience, interested in sensory augmentation, neurodiversity, and brain-computer interfaces. Chloe’s goal is to democratize health and wellness in marginalized communities. Technology isn’t created in a vacuum, and there is no ethical innovation without accessible technology.
Marthe Lübbers
Co-founder & CEO of MOVZ
“I love dancing and was always frustrated by how inaccessible dance is: my favorite dancers live in other cities and even if I could attend their dance classes I wouldn’t be able to learn the dance as fast as I could by myself simply by adjusting the dance videos to my needs and copying the moves. When Tiktok dances rose in popularity and noone yet offered this technology, I decided to do it myself.”
Maria Reyes
Co-founder & CEO of VozLab
Former Marketing Director turned tech entrepreneur. Maria has been applying everything she has learnt through out her more than 15 years marketing career to help others like her get their brands into smart speakers.
“I believe the emerging technology is here to stay, and I believe every brand should have a voice, so let’s put them both together!”
Iliana Rodriguez
COA of MyVoiceTravel
Iliana is both a mom of 3 and an executive. From Caracas, Venezuela, Iliana has 20+ years of experience in the travel and hospitality industry.
“The great thing about travel is that you not only see new places, but get to learn the culture, enjoy the food, and meet people. I just love how technology makes our lives easier and without borders.”
VC Panelist
Elizabeth Scallon
GTM & Operations at Alexa Startups
Award winning leader in the Pacific Northwest startup ecosystem. Elizabeth is a scientist, mentor, and 15 year leader in scientific and technological innovation.
LEADERSHIP IMPACT:
⫸ Connecting enterprise to new ventures
⫸ Nurturing talent and growing teams, startups and communities
⫸ Trend assessment in the global innovation ecosystem
Known for a keen ability to locate disruptive and innovative technology, Elizabeth currently leads the Go To Market & Operations for the Amazon Alexa Fund and Startups team. Here she is engaging ambient and immersive startup founders and investors through startup programs, business development, and technical support. The Alexa Fund also provides up to $200 million in venture capital funding to fuel voice technology innovation.
Elizabeth led the launch of WeWork’s startup and incubation arm, WeWork Labs in US West and LATAM, and previous to WeWork Elizabeth led the team at CoMotion Labs at the University of Washington coaching and growing the robust bench of NW tech and biotech startups.
An out lesbian from before the L Word pilot episode, Elizabeth has a passion for spotlighting and developing outsider voices. A tendency that aided her biotech startup team at VLST (her title: Head of Ops) grow to 50 employees and $35M in funding.
Obsessed with growth and knowledge, Elizabeth went from a degree in Biochemistry, to Georgetown’s Global Executive MBA in Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Emerging Markets. She was most recently invited to join the 2019 cohort of Harvard Business School’s YALP program which aims to develop leaders who understand cross-sector collaborations for shared prosperity and can implement them more effectively and spread them more rapidly than in the past.
Despite an active travel schedule overseeing labs and showcasing Seattle talent in SF, LA, NYC and internationally, Elizabeth is a hometown hero. She grew up in Seattle, plays the connector and mentor role in building Seattle’s booming economy, and she lives on Beacon Hill with her wife and toddler. Sundays usually mean farmer’s markets and family brunch.
VC Panelist
Kristina Milyuchikhina
Business Development at Amazon Alexa Startups & Fund
Kristina is a Head of Alexa Startups & VC DEI business development at Amazon Alexa Fund. Prior to that she held various business development roles within Amazon in retail and B2B e-commerce space. Kristina is a Wharton MBA graduate with triple major in finance, strategic management, operations & information management.
VC Panelist
TJ Woodberry
Executive Director & Entrepreneur, Founded and Funded by WOMXN
TJ Woodberry is a self-taught, self-funded entrepreneur who describes herself as “a builder.” She is the owner of Poppi’s Spa + Lounge and holds real estate interests throughout the Tulsa metro area. A longtime Tulsa resident, in 2017 Woodberry left a successful career in international auto sales to focus on her own family and wellbeing, but quickly realized her drive to create needed an outlet. In 2021, she launched the nonprofit initiative “Founded and Funded by Women” to make sure other women have access to the start-up capital they need to build their own businesses.
“I’m happiest, I’m most myself when I am helping other women realize their dreams.”
Event Host
Dr. Joan Palmiter Bajorek
Founder & CEO, Women in Voice
Dr. Joan Palmiter Bajorek is the CEO and Founder of Women in Voice (WiV), the global nonprofit supporting women in voice AI. Ranked the #4 Voice AI Influencer, Bajorek is a leader in the voice tech field internationally. Formerly working at Nuance, Bajorek is currently a Technical Advisor for several startups and companies. She has 9+ years of experience in strategy and execution for conversational AI products across healthcare, telecom, government, and customer service verticals.
Speaking with global audiences, she has been a featured or keynote speaker at CES, VentureBeat, L3-AI by Rasa, GeekGirlCon, Girls Who Code, Women in AI Summit, among others. Her PhD research and writing has been featured in Harvard Business Review (HBR), Cambridge University Press, Adobe XD Ideas, and Samantha Bee’s Full Frontal on TBS. She holds a PhD from the UArizona in the field of speech language technology and an MA in Linguistics from the UC, Davis. She lives in Seattle, WA.
Join the discussion on June 14!
Come learn about cutting-edge voice & conversational AI products and companies created & led by women.
Office Hours for Founders
2022 Sessions Launching Soon
Join us for practical Q&A with advisors, community with founders, and a dose of inspiration.
In your founder journey, have you ever thought…
“I’m not ready to pitch yet.” “I’m making progress but I’m not sure what the next step is.”
Sponsored By:
Format: Like an office hours in college, drop by to talk to us in an informal way virtually.
Connect with other founders, learn about pitching & talk shop. Learn how our pitch events can help you. Receive support, community, inspiration, motivation!
- Friday, February 25
- Friday, April 22
- Friday, August 12
- Friday, October 7
Your Hosts:
Dr. Joan Palmiter Bajorek
Award-Winning Leader | CEO & Founder, Women in Voice
Kristina Milyuchikhina
Business Development at Amazon Alexa Startups & Fund
Anthony Claudia
Managing Director of Symbl for Startups
You’re invited – pull up a chair.
RSVP to join us!
We’re delighted to host elevator pitch events for Women in Voice Founders to connect with investors and the public at large.
These events build community, connection, and networking opportunities to get feedback, implicit and explicit mentorship, and shape a supportive ecosystem of funding mechanisms for founders with diverse perspectives.
These events serve the WiV Mission by Celebrating, Amplifying, Connecting, and Creating opportunities for women in voice tech.
Three events in this 4-part series have WiV Founders pitch, a short Q&A, and then a larger discussion and feedback round.
For our pitch events, each founder pitches via video to an audience of investors. There is then be 3-5 minutes to field questions.
Post call, founders can follow up with all participants to answer any outstanding questions, provide details to VC panelists, etc. We facilitate intros and support founders any way we can- within reason of course!
Our goal is to get founders exposure and connections to support and capital.
Have someone we should be connected to?
Email admin at women in voice dot org!
Keywords: investor, founder, funding, startup, VC, angel, money, pitch, deck, scaling, money, team, build, venture capital, equity
More about this event
Who is invited? You! These events are open to the public and educational. Venture Capitalists and Angel Investors might be in attendance, but we there is no expectation of investment at these events.
Emcee: Dr. Joan Palmiter Bajorek
Our goal: facilitate relationships, community, and mentorship between investors and underestimated founders!
Event Flow: VCs, Angel Investors, and Founders will gather to hear a few pre-selected pitches. After each pitch, you’ll have the chance to ask the Founder questions, and offer feedback verbally. We will also have a feedback form for you to submit digitally.
Benefits of attending:
- Support diverse founders
- Build relationships across industries
- Stay on the cutting edge of voice and voice-adjacent technology startups
- Learn more about Women in Voice community members
This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice.
Women in Voice Event Sponsor
Special thanks to Amazon Alexa Startups for sponsoring this event series!
