Founders jumping the gender barrier

The next generation of female entrepreneurs are blazing new trails to success.

Jacqueline Savage was a year out of university and working as an engineer before someone mentioned her choice of career may be difficult for a woman.

Up until that point, it had never occurred to Savage that her gender may be an issue.

“Someone said to me it must be hard to be a female engineer and I said, no, it is actually all right,” says Savage, 28 (top).

Her gender had not come to mind when she used her time at university to invent a lifesaving medical device, nor had it been a factor when she gave up her job to launch MedCorp Technologies to develop and market her invention, which can monitor a patient’s temperature and deliver drugs remotely.

MedCorp is working on a device for mobile intravenous drug delivery

At university and working in “young” companies, there was a gender-neutral approach.

“There was no sexism and, sometimes, I feel it was leaning towards the females’ favour. It never came into conversation until I went [to work in] an older, traditional style, boy’s club in manufacturing,” she says.

“Having said that, they still headhunted me and wanted me to come and work for them,” says Savage, whose four-year-old company is now about 18 months away from launching her device.

Millennial women come to work without a lot of the baggage shouldered by their Baby Boomer mothers.

Savage says young women push the boundaries without even realising they are doing it — and that benefits everyone.

“A few colleagues have just got married and just had kids and we are sitting down now, basically redesigning the entire company structure to accommodate that,” she says.

Savage says Millennials believe they can design the companies they want to work in.

“We haven’t had any ridiculous adversity, we have had it incredibly easy and incredibly comfortable, but we are highly skilled at the same time.

“And then, we are raised by a generation that have told us to find something you like and never work a day in your life, dream big, take risks and anything is possible.”

Gina Lednyak credits her immigrant background to her success

A generational shift

The founder of L & A Social Media, Gina Lednyak, says her experience as an immigrant has helped forge her approach to starting a business.

“You just have to make it work. You don’t have anything to fall back on,” she says.

Gina Lednyak

Lednyak, 30, immigrated with her parents from Belarus to New York as a six-year-old (escaping the collapse of the Soviet empire) and then came to Australia on an internship with Boston University.

Now, her five-year-old company employs 15 people, mostly young women, who do not necessarily talk about family plans when asked about their life goals.

“It is very rare that settling down and having kids is mentioned as a top priority,” she says.

There has been a generational shift in thinking that they can chase their career goals and still have a family. “It doesn’t mean you have to drop everything else.”

“In the company culture we are trying to create, work is about something that fits in with your life,” she says.

Anna Ross

The founder of ethical cosmetics company, Kester Black, Anna Ross, is conscious her background gives her a great deal of freedom to succeed or fail.

Ross, 29, came from a family in New Zealand that did not have much. Her father was a truck driver and her mother did book keeping part-time.

They both would have been just as happy for her to work in a local cafe, so long as she was happy, she says.

“There was no expectation of me, which was a blessing in disguise because it gave me the permission to try everything. Whatever I did was going to be a success in my parents’ eyes.”

Ross says young women are very conscious that technology will kill off 40 per cent of jobs in the next 10 to 15 years, and so it makes sense for them to invent their own as entrepreneurs.

“Young people, especially females, are paving their own way. A lot of the reason I started my own business was because I knew I really wanted to have children and that fitting my career around my children would be difficult,” she says.

Ross says she has had to fight harder to be taken seriously as a woman when it comes to dealing with manufacturers, but she has turned a perceived weakness into a strength.

It took a year of pestering for her Australian-based manufacturer to agree to producing a small run of nail polish and then even longer to get the CEO to agree to meet with her.

Although that first order was for only about $2,000 worth of product, Kestrel Black is now one of his biggest customers.

“They definitely underestimated me and that, from my perspective, is a very good place to be. I have been the underdog and underestimated and people tell you too much and I can use it to my advantage,” she says.

Jacqueline Savage, Gina Lednyak and Anna Ross were all winners at the 2016 Telstra Business Women’s Awards. Nominate for the 2017 Women’s Awards here.

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