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Please join us in welcoming the newest members of the NYU Female Founders Fellowship community!
The NYU Female Founders Fellowship provides community support, training, mentorship, networking, and grant opportunities to entrepreneurs at NYU building scalable, differentiated ventures who are committed to advancing gender equity in entrepreneurship. Fellows get fully plugged into NYU’s ecosystem of resources, and upon graduation from NYU, are invited to apply for student loan alleviation grants of up to $30,000 each. These loan alleviation grants help to reduce financial burdens, which can be significant barriers to starting a startup. The grants are made possible through the generous support of the program’s lead donor: Entrepreneur and NYU alumnus Mark Leslie (WSC ‘66, Trustee), and his wife, Debra.
The Female Founders Fellowship comes with several benefits, including:
- Invite-only monthly peer group events with other members of the Female Founders Fellowship, from both the new and from past cohorts,
- Invites to special social and networking events
- 1:1 mentorship with external mentors, and priority office hours with Entrepreneurial Institute coaches
- Automatic interviews for the next Summer Launchpad Accelerator or Tech Venture Accelerator
- Automatic interviews for the Max Stenbeck Venture Equity Program
- The opportunity to apply for up to $30,000 in grants to help pay down their student loans after graduation from NYU
We're looking for extraordinary entrepreneurs to join our Female Founders Community! Interested in joining the Fellowship's Fall ‘24 cohort? RSVP for an info session on 4/10 or 4/19, and submit your application by May 13 at 6pm ET.
This spring, we welcome the following four members to the NYU Female Founder Fellowship:
Julia Maksimova (Stern ‘25)
Mova Living
Mova Living is a real estate company that provides beautifully designed and furnished, ready-to-move-in apartments for 1+ month stays in NYC. As hotels can be costly for a longer stay, while Airbnb’s unpredictable, Mova takes the stress out of finding proper accommodations by offering fully equipped and serviced apartments in the best areas of NYC.
Originally from Moscow, Julia is a real estate entrepreneur with 15 years of commercial real estate experience in NYC. Following her successful exit, Julia is excited to scale Mova to become the next generation corporate housing company.
Srushti Katore (Tandon ‘23)
Cara Systems Inc.
CARA is a SaaS tool that helps Healthcare Institutions with Neurology Specialists optimize Intracranial Aneurysm (IA) care by providing clinicians with actionable data-driven insights through non-invasive means, reducing clinical costs, improving patient care, and streamlining the workflow. Their aim is to provide clinicians with actionable data-driven insights tailored for each patient case to analyze the risks associated with the diagnosis, growth, and progression of intracranial aneurysms and to provide adept monitoring capabilities.
Srushti is a Tandon graduate with a degree in MS Mechatronics and Robotics specifically focused on Medical Robotics. As the co-founder of CARA Systems, Srushti aims to be a catalyst in the fusion between medical and engineering fields.
Wendy Liang (Steinhardt ‘16)
Sonority Labs
Sonority Labs is a software company that helps individuals learn new speech patterns by providing real-time visual biofeedback technology. Their first product, “StaRt”, is an app that focuses on the English /r/ sound and serves speech-language pathologists and telepractice enterprise customers. Their software provides a real-time dynamic image of the acoustic speech signal and a visual representation of the target pronunciation; speakers can adjust their speech to try to match the target.
Wendy is a speech-language pathologist and associate research scientist with degrees from Syracuse University and NYU. She has experience in the tech sector from roles in business development at an ed-tech start up, and as an accessibility program manager for Microsoft. She currently works in a data specialist role at the BITS Lab at NYU, and most recently acted as project manager for a multi-site collaboration to improve the AI/ML readiness of data obtained through speech research.
Anja Westhues (Gallatin ‘24)
Endure Sport Nutrition
Endure Sport Nutrition is a whole food nutrition system for endurance athletes including fuel for before, during, and after training sessions. We use ingredients that could be found in a pantry but are formulated for optimal performance.
Anja is pursuing her bachelor's degree at Gallatin with a focus on Food Systems and Food & Beverage Marketing. She is an avid runner, Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) fanatic, and writer.
