On March 4th, 2026, Venture Lab hosted the Breaking the Bias Panel and Pitch Competition. This session shared strategies for pitching and evaluating ventures in FemTech, Retail, and Gender-Focused Products & Services with the Penn community.
This session arose in response to the reality that these verticals are subject to systemic obstacles that contribute to an investment gap, where there is an underrepresentation of funded founders and ventures that service or support individuals with underrepresented gender identities. This underrepresentation has led to stark knowledge gaps about gender-focused products and services, and subsequent missed opportunities both on the part of investment and grant-making firms and the ventures that would have benefited from investment and support.
The session began with a panel discussion that aimed to demystify the nebulous world of founding and funding gender-focused products and services. The panel featured the expert perspectives of Krishna Shah (WG'23), an Investor at CVS Health Ventures; Bo Zhao (WG'18), the Founder & CEO of Baby Gear Group; Mona Bijoor (C’98), a Partner at Kings Circle Capital, and Stefanie Modri the Co-Founder of Vasowatch. The panel shared their experiences about the various manifestations of bias they have faced over the course of their career, and how they have navigated working in this space in the current macroenvironment.
The session culminated in a pitch competition, where 4 members of the Penn community pitched their innovations. The pitching ventures included Alivia pitched by Ariela Zebede (M’26, WG’26), Girl Math Capital, pitched by Serena Ainslie (WG’27), Mind The Skin pitched by Audrey Ajakaye (C’26), and Olfaction, pitched by Arti Singh (C’26) and Zion Abebe (C’26).
These pitches were heard by a team of experienced judges, including Roshna Bahauddin (WG’26), Esha Desai (L’27, WG’27), Alivia Jiang (W’26), Kate Miriam Schnitzer (WG’26), and Shailee Shah (WG’27).
As a result of the judges’ collective diligence, Audrey Ajakaye and Mind The Skin won the Pitch Competition’s $1,000 Prize.
We would like to congratulate Audrey on this achievement, and we want to recognize the work of Ariela, Serena, Arti, and Zion on their pitch preparation and the monumental progress of their respective ventures. We would also like to express our gratitude to our amazing panelists for taking the time to join us for the evening, and to our judges who enabled this competition to take place.
Thank you to the attendees of the session, and we are excited to see the growth of innovations in FemTech, Retail, and Gender-Focused Products and Services!
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Article by Rebecca McHugh
Photos by James Graves
