women-founder
(4)
Samantha Scott
Samantha Scott, PhD is the founder and CEO of JuneBrain, a Baltimore medtech startup building the first wearable, technician-free retinal scanning system. Trained as a biomedical engineer at Stanford and USC, she is turning high-resolution eye imaging plus AI into a way to detect and monitor brain and eye conditions far outside the walls of a clinic. JuneBrain has raised more than $3 million in private capital, won $3 million in NSF grants, holds four issued patents, and is on track for an FDA submission.
Soo Kang
Soo Kang is the Co-Founder and Creative Director of Coffee Meets Bagel, the women-focused dating app she built alongside her sisters Arum and Dawoon. A Korean-American designer by training, Soo immigrated to the US at age 12, studied at Parsons School of Design, and brought creative direction and brand identity to one of the most distinctive dating apps on the market. The company famously turned down a $30 million buyout offer from Mark Cuban on Shark Tank - the largest offer in the show's history at the time - and went on to raise $23.2 million in total funding with $36 million in annual revenue.
Joy Zhang
Joy Zhang is the CEO and Co-Founder of Mon Ami, a San Francisco-based healthtech company building HIPAA-compliant SaaS for agencies that serve older adults and people with disabilities. A Stanford MBA who has volunteered in hospice and dementia care since high school, Zhang co-founded Mon Ami in 2018 after interviewing 150+ seniors and caregivers to understand what the system was missing. Today Mon Ami is used by government agencies and nonprofits across the US, helping them replace manual paperwork with automation - so their staff can focus on care instead of administrative burden. The company has raised over $12M and grown to 180 employees, making it one of the most visible startups in the aging-services technology space.
Maria Barrera
Maria Barrera is the CEO and co-founder of Clayful, an on-demand chat-based mental health coaching platform that connects K-12 students with certified coaches in under 60 seconds. A Stanford-trained mechanical engineer who immigrated from Colombia at age 10, she moved from aerospace (Boeing, GE) into edtech (Nearpod) before a New York Times article about rising suicide rates in eight-year-olds pushed her to found Clayful in 2021. The company has raised $9.15M in total funding, serves 50+ school districts across six states in 133 languages, and frames mental health as coaching rather than therapy to reduce student stigma.