Rachel Domb, S’24

Rooted Living

When Rachel Domb was a high school athlete, she struggled to find healthier snack alternatives to the refined, sugar-filled options sold in stores. So, she began making her own. During her freshman year at Northeastern, Domb launched Rooted Living with advice and encouragement from members of the Women’s Interdisciplinary Society of Entrepreneurship—and in 2020, her venture won the top prize in the Husky Startup Challenge. Now, Domb is doubling down on developing even more healthy, eco-friendly products so that consumers can “shop, snack, and support” their values, as she puts it.

Sajni Vederey, DMSB’23

Shoerzo

From a young age, Sajni Vederey has aspired to foster inclusivity and empowerment in her community. With Shoerzo, she’s doing just that by emboldening women to make fashion choices in support of their health. Vederey long observed that when diabetic women in India were advised to wear therapeutic shoes to protect their sensitive feet, the bulky, unappealing styles drove them to sacrifice comfort for fashion—and often led to diabetes-related injuries. Through Shoerzo, Vederey offers chic, traditional restorative footwear so that diabetic consumers can dress comfortably and confidently.

Nita Ugbedeojo Akoh, S’23

My Atlas

Nita Ugbedeojo Akoh says that “a resilient mind is the greatest armor” when striving toward a challenging goal, an approach she learned from her lifelong role model—her mother. With that outlook, she’s developing My Atlas, a mental health wellness solution tailored to college students. The digital application provides customized support to users at no cost, and it can identify behavioral, emotional, and physical trends, dispense insights, and help deliver personalized treatment in partnership with skilled healthcare providers.

Chloe Welch, DMSB’23

SOAR

As co-founder of the sports supplement venture SOAR, Chloe Welch knows that the success of her company falls partly on her shoulders. Is the responsibility daunting? Yes, but this entrepreneur also finds it thrilling, from managing teams to making hard decisions to delivering assertive pitches. Welch and her SOAR co-founder Hanna Zainab Elzaridi are breaking into a male-dominated industry, and gaining valuable experience as non-tech founders creating a tech product. Thanks to collaborations with Northeastern student engineers and innovators, SOAR’s first kiosk will soon land in a Boston-area gym.

Hanna Zainab Elzaridi, DMSB’23

SOAR

Growing up, Hanna Zainab Elzaridi learned to embrace differences and challenge traditional gender roles. Today, her forward-looking mindset serves her well as co-founder of SOAR, a sports supplement vending machine venture that enables gym goers to quickly concoct customizable beverages on site. As a female innovator in the male-dominated fields of fitness and supplements, Elzaridi—along with her SOAR co-founder Chloe Welch—credits Northeastern’s entrepreneurial ecosystem for helping the venture take flight. Together, they are making the sports supplement industry more convenient, sustainable, and inclusive.

Alexis Musaelyan-Blackmon, S’25, Khoury’25

Dephend

Alexis Musaelyan-Blackmon is passionate about leveraging data, AI, and computational biology to unlock solutions to society’s complex cybersecurity problems. Enter Dephend, this entrepreneur’s cutting-edge answer to constant, increasingly sophisticated phishing attacks and other email-based threats. As a woman founder and CEO in a male-dominated field, Musaelyan-Blackmon has faced her fair share of challenges—and she’s committed to supporting, inspiring, and advancing other women innovators in tech.

Debpriya Das, DMSB’23

Bioland

Debpriya Das has a proven track record in furthering education, having discovered her self-described “secret talent” for teaching biology at a young age. At just 19, she became a respected and inspiring high school biology teacher in her native Bangladesh. Now, with Bioland, Das combines her love of science with her leadership knowledge and diverse background to power a positive difference, improving education in the biosciences. Her motto? If a changemaker is passionate about a cause, there’s no challenge they cannot overcome.

Kristine Aleksandrovica, DMSB’23, SSH’23

Stulitito

With skills in supply chain, finance, and strategy, Kristine Aleksandrovica relishes the idea of using disruptive innovation to transform the economy while also improving sustainability. For more than 10 years, she’s dreamed of launching an eco-friendly furniture company that uses recycled materials, a so-called better IKEA of the future. Aleksandrovica’s concept for her venture, Stulitito, utilizes cutting-edge green materials—like a leather alternative sourced from the root structure of mushrooms—to build furniture manufactured using ethical labor practices and a transparent supply chain.

Marine Nimblette, S’23

Businesses United in Diversity (BUD)

Marine Nimblette’s background is in behavioral neuroscience, but this activist is also passionate about uplifting her community by advancing ideas and practices that are innovative, inclusive, and generationally sustainable. Through Businesses United in Diversity, Nimblette merges her interest in improving health and wellness outcomes with confronting challenges faced by Black entrepreneurs and showcasing Black-owned businesses. Each day, she works to promote diversity in her community by representing an array of voices and perspectives.

Sima Bou Jawde, BHS’27

Enrich Academia

As a woman in the Middle East pursuing a college career, Sima Bou Jawde observed that young learners must often overcome complex socioeconomic and cultural conventions to unlock doors to an education. Enrich Academia aims to help international students surmount the hurdles they may face in continuing their education by providing mentorship, resources, and practical tools to ensure success. Jawde ultimately hopes to dismantle barriers to access, and create equal opportunity for scholars from diverse and distinct backgrounds.

Jessica Pogranyi, DMSB’13

Cara a Cara

As a first-generation American, Jessica Pogranyi learned the importance of resilience, hard work, and connectedness at a young age. Then after years of working in corporate roles, Pogranyi embarked on a new challenge in 2020 as a founder of Cara a Cara—a sustainable mezcal brand distilled with rainwater and grounded in a deep commitment to doing good and fostering connections between communities. Her next goal is to create a closed loop wastewater treatment system by building an onsite water treatment plant  to process and reuse water for irrigation and cleaning.

Melissa Withers, S’02

RevUp

Having spent her career working in male-dominated industries, Melissa Withers was compelled to launch her own investment platform, RevUp, to write her own story and help close the funding gender and diversity gap. As one of the first revenue-based funds for early stage companies, RevUp has directed more than 60 percent of its investments to companies led by women or people of color. Withers is now working on a special season of her podcast (Un)founded, where she will tell and promote the stories of women and funders “louder and prouder than ever before.”

Johanna Davenport Calica, S’12

La Porte

Johanna Davenport Calica uses fashion to create points of connection between people, places, and cultural movements. Since 2018, her sustainable and gender inclusive luxury resortwear brand LA PORTE has garnered widespread industry recognition for its approach to inclusive and ethically made swimwear. With her venture, Davenport Calica seeks to provide women with a shopping experience that takes into account those who may not have been born female but identify as female or nonbinary, as well as women who want to wear gender-fluid clothing.

Massiel Eversley, BSN’06

Nisus Life

As a mother of three, nurse leader, and health advocate, Massiel Eversley is committed to making nutrition simple and attainable for women at every stage of their pregnancy journey. Her product, Nisus Life Postpartum & Lactation, is a vegan, all-in-one postpartum and lactation protein powder that fills a critical gap in the maternal health product category. Ultimately, Eversley seeks to bring more awareness to women about the necessity of getting healthy postpartum, as well as the importance of the choices they make about their health through supplementation, prevention, and resources.

Ammy Lowney, SSH’05

JUICYGREENS

To Ammy Lowney, healthy food is more than just fuel—it’s an opportunity to support and educate the community, promote sustainable living, and create a more equitable hospitality industry. With four locations in the Boston area, JUICYGREENS serves a healthy plant-based menu while supporting other small businesses and local youth organizations through wellness initiatives. She is currently working to launch a farm-to-dorm rooms meal program that provides healthy food and snacks to students who stuggle with food security.

Helene Servillon, AMD’12

JourneyOne Ventures

Helene Servillon is passionate about changing the venture capital status quo to create a more equitable business ecosystem for women. Despite having no prior finance background, no investor connections, and no experience in investing, she embraced the challenge of pivoting her career and founded JourneyOne Ventures, a 100 percent woman- and minority-owned early stage fund investing in highly regulated and misunderstood industries. Servillon counsels budding entrepreneurs to work hard and smart, and to believe in themselves—two maxims that she learned from her role model, her mom.

Shanae Chapman, CPS’12                                       

Nerdy Diva

After years of witnessing inequities in the product development and startup workplace, Shanae Chapman launched Nerdy Diva in 2018. As a boutique, Black woman-owned tech solutions company offering research, design, training, and content strategy, Nerdy Diva’s mission is to inspire creative problem solving in tech and society, with a focus on increasing access and opportunity for everyone. Chapman applies industry best practices and academic research principles to fuel her work, while partnering with companies that care about their impact on communities, society, and the world.

Taja Lester, Mills College, MBA’11

Health Equity Capital

As the founder and managing partner of Health Equity Capital, Taja Lester invests in entrepreneurs who are committed to improving health outcomes in communities that she knows well, based on her lived experience. Health Equity Capital aims to change the current state of healthcare in the United States by funding high-performing ventures that drive more equitable health outcomes in three target populations: women, racial and ethnic minorities, and people over age 65. Lester is adept at identifying and nurturing investment opportunities, particularly at the intersection of the life sciences and health equity sectors. 

Madison Rifkin, DMSB’21

Mount

Madison Rifkin’s entrepreneurial journey began when she was 12 years old, when she won an innovation competition by developing a new kind of bike lock. Her latest venture, Mount, enables owners of vacation rentals and boutique hotels to provide their guests with adventure equipment rentals such as bikes, scooters, kayaks, paddleboards, surfboards, snowshoes, and beach equipment to enhance their vacation experience. Rifkin says she seeks to build a new type of company led by amazing women in leadership to give a voice to those who haven’t gotten one before.

Dania Alnahdi, Khoury’22

Cora Care

Though Dania Alnahdi wasn’t sure she had the courage to launch her own business, she took a leap of faith with Cora Care, inspired by her experience of having a sick pet. Her innovative product, Cora Care Strips, provide pet owners peace of mind by giving them direct, affordable, instant knowledge about their pet’s health. As a Middle Eastern, Muslim female entrepreneur in a male-dominated area and a longtime advocate for diversity in technology, Alnahdi aims to encourage other women to pursue their passions in entrepreneurship and feel more comfortable in technology and engineering spaces.

Gina-Maria Garcia, AMD’15

BUYa Beauty

Gina-Maria Garcia is disrupting the human hair extension industry with a first-to-market innovative invention with ethically sourced human hair. Her BUYa Beauty human hair extensions come directly from willing sellers in Europe and Southeast Asia, and are meant for women with thin or fine hair. Garcia cites her mom, also a Northeastern graduate, as her greatest supporter, whose help on many levels got her to the launch stage. In the future, she would like to mentor other budding female entrepreneurs in the Northeastern community.

Lilly Stairs, AMD’15

The Chronic Boss Collective

Leading with passion, empathy, and vulnerability, Lilly Stairs seeks to create a networking membership for women leaders with chronic conditions, giving them a space to call their own and to thrive in their careers. Diagnosed with two autoimmune diseases at 19 years old, she is launching the Chronic Boss Collective, a community for ambitious businesswomen living with similar chronic illnesses. Stairs says she is particularly energized when surrounded by fellow female leaders, and is excited to achieve her dream of positively impacting the lives of the millions of women.

Chahhat Lakhwani Melwani, DMSB’18

Cleyo Beauty

Chahhat Lakhwani Melwani felt overwhelmed by the variety of skincare products on the market, not to mention the number of steps involved in many skincare routines. To make skincare easy, effective, affordable, and kind to sensitive skin, she launched Cleyo Beauty. Since then, she has overcome many challenges in funding, the supply chain, and manufacturing, and she plans to scale her business from Chile to include the U.K. and other countries. Melwani believes that connecting with like-minded individuals who are innovative and have entrepreneurial ambitions like she does can result in great things.

Divya Malpani, DMSB’22

Skinvest

Making skincare clinical but cool was the goal of Divya Malpani in launching Skinvest, a line of gender-neutral products that help tackle the most prominent concerns of Indian skin. Since launching her company in February 2022, Malpani has overcome her hesitations related to hiring and trusting the employees she has needed to ensure that her business grows. Now selling in the U.S. as of January 2023, her Skinvest brand has six new products coming out and ambitious plans to expand to other countries with large Indian populations such as the U.K., Canada, and the United Arab Emirates.

Adebukola Ajao, CPS’21

For All Things Digital

Adebukola Ajao is a freelance writer-turned-digital media entrepreneur with a passion for mentoring, storytelling, and driving awareness through powerful marketing campaigns. As the founder of For All Things Digital, Ajao helps entrepreneurs access information and resources in the digital marketing sphere including grants, free coaching opportunities, and financial guidance. Her community oriented approach to educating business owners through the lens of popular culture makes strategic marketing more accessible, affordable, and digestible for all people.

Caroline Klibanoff, SSH’18

Made By Us

Caroline Klibanoff is a founder and strategist committed to strengthening democracy, uplifting youth, and connecting tomorrow’s leaders with their role in shaping America’s story. She’s inspired by organizations that are innovative and ambitious, yet transformative, even when they are civic or public facing. As executive director of Made By Us, Klibanoff brings the nation’s history to younger generations in novel and meaningful ways via a network of museums, historic sites, and archives—and in doing so, educates and engages learners as they discover their passions and step into active citizenship.

Denisse Esther Mayers Paulino, MBA’17

DEMP Agency

Passionate about creating positive, lasting social change, Denisse Esther Mayers Paulino is increasing access and opportunities for clients from underrepresented communities. As founder of DEMP Agency, an Afro-Latinx, woman-owned brand strategy, marketing, and design firm, Mayers Paulino aligns creativity and strategy to uplift minority-owned businesses and other organizations. Through her work in sectors from healthcare and education to finance—with partners that include Boston Public Schools, InnoPsych, and the Social Innovation Fund—Mayers Paulino expands equitable opportunities for creativity, learning, and personal development.

Laura Kozuszek, CPS’21,’22

Island Sustainability Solutions

Laura Kozuszek is a strategist, consultant, and environmentalist who thrives on tackling complex societal issues that arise at the cross-section of the natural environment and human interaction. Her multifaceted background includes studying biology and economics, working in disaster management, and earning her advanced certification as an open-water scuba diver. Today, as the founder of Island Sustainability Solutions, Kozuszek partners with island and coastal communities to design and implement resilience and sustainability solutions that address the effects of climate change.