Female innovators lead the future at this year’s “Empower 2023 Conference and Pitch Competition,” three days of events hosted by the Princeton Entrepreneurship Council that continue its focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion by celebrating women entrepreneurs in academia from April 26 to 28.
The Princeton Entrepreneurship Council, which is part of Princeton University’s Office of the Dean for Research and a partner of Princeton Innovation, held its initial conference in 2021 to recognize the contributions of Black academic entrepreneurs.
With topics that span “the three stages of university startups — launching, funding, and scaling,” according to the Empower Conference’s website, empower.princeton.edu, the programming connects “faculty, postdocs, and graduate students commercializing university-developed intellectual property and other founders licensing this IP” with the insights, resources, and expertise of industry professionals to pave the way to a successful enterprise no matter the sector. Through technology and the physical, life, and social sciences, attendees can look forward to keynote addresses, panel discussions, networking opportunities, and more.
Included with admission is a ticket to the Empower Pitch competition on Thursday, April 27, at 5:30 p.m., where founders and researchers compete for more than $135,000 in both cash and in-kind prizes, which include the grand cash prize of $100,000 and a $10,000 bundle of legal and advisory services. Semi-finalists and finalists will also have the opportunity to meet with venture capital companies and receive mentorship advice, according to the event website.
General admission for all attendees outside of academia is $35. Both academic — meaning staff or faculty — and student tickets are open to anyone in academia, regardless of the institution, with the former costing $25 and the latter free.
Virtual programming will be held on the event and conference platform, Whova. To register online, visit the Empower Conference’s page on the Princeton Entrepreneurship Council’s website, empower.princeton.edu, and sign up through the Whova portal link.
For the full agenda of events, times, and descriptions, see empower.princeton.edu/agenda, and for a list of the speakers and their respective biographies, visit empower.princeton.edu/speakers.
The first day begins with a welcome from Princeton University’s vice dean for innovation, Craig B. Arnold, at 11 a.m., before bringing in keynote speakers, Katie Rae and Sydney Thomas, in a fireside chat about the societal impacts of their work in venture capital “two different but complementary sectors.”
Building a foundation early on in the startup process is expanded on in “From Innovation to Impact: I-Corps, Grants, and Accelerators,” with voices like Judith Sheft, the executive director of the New Jersey Commission on Science, Innovation, and Technology, from noon to 12:50 p.m.
Other topics for discussion throughout the conference include “Tech Transfer and Licensing Strategies” and “Closing the Funding Gap: Insights to Empower Women Entrepreneurs,” which address startup investment trends and the gaps — in funding, talent, and IP —represented in the latest data.
Ellen Pao, the CEO of diversity consulting nonprofit organization Project Include and the former interim CEO of the social media platform Reddit, will moderate another session, “Funding Strategies for Women Entrepreneurs,” from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 27.
In her speaker biography, Empower describes the New Jersey native as follows: “One of Silicon Valley’s leading advocates for fairness and inclusion, Ellen Pao is also a long-time entrepreneur and tech investor. Her landmark gender discrimination case against venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins sparked other women, especially women of color, to fight harassment and discrimination in what’s been called the ‘Pao Effect.’”
The networking breaks, which are scheduled around the halfway point of the conference each day, are done in small groups or one-on-one chats in virtual meet-up rooms. There will also be three sector focus events that bring together professionals from each discipline for a themed discussion, starting off with those from the physical sciences and technology fields, then the social sciences and digital humanities, and finally the life sciences.
A workshop will be held every day, with the first on “Customer Discovery” held by Christina Pellicane, the assistant director of innovation and lead instructor for the National Science Foundation (NSF) I-Corps Northeast Hub at Princeton University, which was created as a result of a $15 million grant given to local partnered institutions, such as Princeton and Rutgers, that entrepreneurially supports and trains academic researchers to transform their innovations into economic successes.
The other two workshops include “Elevating Your Pitch Through Storytelling” with Josh Tobiessen, the founder of Shared Story Consulting, on April 27; and “Building a Strategy Map to Create a Path to Sustainable Success” with Pam Simpkins, Johnson & Johnson’s senior director of strategy for the Office of the Chief Medical Officer, on April 28.
The two other keynote addresses bring in Halcyon co-founder and CEO Kate Goodall to “discuss the momentum of impact funds and incubators to support founders driving societal change,” then Julia Boorstin, author of “When Women Lead: What We Achieve, Why We Succeed, and What We Can Learn From Them,” a senior media and tech reporter for CNBC’s Los Angeles Bureau, who will be discussing the findings of her book.
Anne-Marie Maman, executive director of the Princeton Entrepreneurship Council, kicks off day two by explaining that it will focus on “two major themes” in the backing of women-led startups: the funding gap that exists for female founders and how the presence of socially conscious entrepreneurial initiatives can have a positive influence in spearheading change.
A “Moving Forward” roundtable discussion on Thursday will “identify the unmet needs of the Empower community (i.e., underrepresented academic founders) and suggestions for future programs (e.g., workshops, mentoring opportunities, startup showcases, speaker series, etc.) that could become part of the broader set of Empower initiatives,” with topics that align with each day’s theme or the overarching one of “building and networking with the Empower community.”
After leading the closing remarks for the second day, PEC Associate Director Don Seitz will speak at the pitch competition later that night. Joining him is a panel of judges with figures such as Mark Jung, Princeton University class of ‘82, an independent board member and advisor, and a former member of the Princeton Engineering Leadership Council, as well as Natalie J. Guo, a fellow Princeton alumna and investor with Thrive Capital.
Female founders of the six DEI-centered academic spinouts who have been selected for their work in developing commercialized intellectual property in tandem with universities include Denise Koller, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton and co-founder of Sóliome, which develops protein-based sunscreens for better protection. Another Princeton-affiliated presenter is designer and architect Yidian Lu, the co-founder of cleantech company PolyGone Systems, which aims to “remove microplastic pollutants from waterways.”
The finalists will present and then answer questions from the judges. While they deliberate in private, as the conference materials explain, the grand winner of the 2021 Empower Pitch Competition, Ellington West, will speak about her progress since then.
West is the co-founder and CEO of Sonavi Labs, a John Hopkins University spinout that “creates medical devices and software rooted in AI and applied to auscultation, the act of listening to body sounds,” its website states, “to transform the way respiratory diseases and infections are detected and managed.”
In addition to the grand prize winner, Empower 2023 will also announce a first and second runner-up. Following more events based on how to scale a business, the endnote address of day three will be led by Marian Croak, an inventor and vice president of engineering at Google, “who will share her journey as a Black researcher in STEM, an innovator in the technology sector who holds over 200 patents, one of the first two Black women inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame,” before Arnold delivers closing remarks.
