International Women’s Day falls on Thursday, March 8 focusing on “DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality” and the theme Embracing Equity. And we are here for that and resonate so much with the ‘embracing equity’ tag as something we have been speaking about for the last 2 years.

“Equality’ doesn’t go far enough, ‘Equity’ through extra tailored supports can widen the funnel and bring about exponential change and a democratisation of the founder landscape for all.”

— Sinead Crowley, AwakenHub Co-founder

Our mission and vision is right at the heart of the 2023 IWD theme, supporting women from across the Island of Ireland to incubate, grow and scale innovative businesses across all sectors and verticals from nascent founders to those looking to build and scale. As a community of women founders we celebrate and turn up for you all every day of the year so we’re not hosting a stand alone IWD event. Instead we are sharing some of our women founder stories from our all island of Ireland accelerator lite programme - SheGenerate.

We live on an island with more women than men. But funding and investment does not come close to reflecting the talent and opportunity that exists and lives within the women founder ecosystem in Ireland. The challenges are systemic, societal, institutional, geographical and lie both with how women are seen and treated as founders; as well as unfortunately, because of that, how women often feel about themselves.

This week we are not here to focus on the challenges but to celebrate the brave and those who feel the fear and do it anyway by sharing some of our newbie founders who are finding their feet and on a journey of rapid discovery and learning.

Everyone has to start somewhere. Some don’t even get as far as ‘starting somewhere’ due to lack of community, knowledge and support. SheGenerate is a bespoke 8 month programme which encourages women from all sectors, backgrounds and ages to throw themselves head first into founder life wrapped in the support of the AwakenHub team, our amazing Big Sisters, and a whole shed load of women founders at different stages of their journey.

30 women were selected for the 2nd cohort of SheGenerate and they represent diverse fields in healthcare, education, finance, logistics, design to name but a few. They are 5 months in now and starting to refine, go live, build products or build out their businesses.

A selection of them have very kindly shared some of their unique stories, perspectives, and experiences with us so we can share them with you. How being part of the AwakenHub community has advanced their entrepreneurial journey, increased their participation in the start-up ecosystem, and enabled them to grow in confidence, capacity and connectivity.

We couldn’t do SheGenerate without the support of our partners & sponsors so on International Women’s Day we also want to salute you and thank you for your support.

Lead Sponsor: Taylor Wessing (Ireland), Ulster Bank NI, Women in Business Northern Ireland, Catalyst NI, British Business Bank.