Last week we kicked off (virtually) our first Victorian Evolve program for 2021. This program, a partnership between SBE Australia and LaunchVic was created to provide support to Victorian female founders impacted by COVID-19.
We're excited to introduce you to this talented group of 11 founders representing 10 businesses.
Virtual Emporium
Jessie is the founder of Virtual Emporium. She enjoys jungle treks, photographing abandoned buildings, and will never say no to a glass of red wine and cheese! Three words to describe her are: imaginative, passionate & hardworking.
Before establishing Virtual Emporium, Jessie worked as an interior designer for numerous Melbourne based design studios and currently runs her design studio where she designs retail, hospitality, and exhibition interiors and graphics.
During Jessie’s design career, she has been fine-tuning her skills in designing virtual reality spaces and experiences. Her background in designing physical spaces, stories, and moments ensures that VE’s virtual stores are expertly designed to enhance both the tenants’ products and brand story, creating a unique experience online users will enjoy.
Virtual Emporium offers pre-built and custom-designed virtual reality spaces with tailored virtual experiences for businesses to lease and sell their products in an innovative, exciting way online.
We place tenant’s products and branded content - such as video, audio, images, brand messages, social channels, and buy now links to create an interactive shopping experience for online customers to enjoy. We like to say ‘VE brings a new meaning to window shopping’.
Virtual Clinic Assist
Sara has worked in healthcare for over 20 years both clinically and in management positions.
Sara has a special interest in working with service owners to challenge the conventional front facing health administration model to create high level systemisation along with high quality client interactions. She looks to use available technology to build sustainable operations with consideration to how the technology can be enhanced to address common health administration challenges.
Virtual Clinic Assist is a virtual healthcare administration solution developed for private practice health and wellbeing services. We provide cost effective options to systemise and facilitate clinical centred operations and service enhancement initiatives.
Memwah
Founder, Tammie Winward has been working in the events industry on many prestigious projects around the globe for 22 years. Tammie has produced public events, festivals, product launches and has been a key stakeholder in designing leadership conferences for clients such as Lendlease and Wesfarmers.
Events (traditionally) are for people to connect, speak to the future and pass down wisdom. With the closure of the events industry in 2020 and all of us having the ability of seeing our family and close friends taken away, Tammie spent lockdown drawing on her personal experience to rethink how we can create authentic human connection safely behind our screens. How could we adapt traditional storytelling methods to capture stories, speak to the future and pass down wisdom without leaving our homes?
In October 2020, the idea of Memwah was born. A life story video maker that makes it easy to record your life story by answering thought-provoking questions which then is compiled into a video.
Life can pass in the blink of an eye—and once a moment passes, it’s gone forever. Capture your precious memories, forever, with Memwah. Memwah is a life story video platform that makes recording life stories and preserving memories easy for everyone. You don’t need to be tech-savvy or learn complicated video editing. You can record your memories in just a few simple steps. Memwah asks you thought-provoking questions, records your answers and compiles your stories in memorable family video you can send as a gift.
Biobrain
Caroline is an experienced educator of both students and adults. She spent many years in the classroom teaching Biology and Chemistry before moving into adult learning. However, it is her passion for education and science that has led her to develop the Biobrain learning apps. She realised that today’s students and teachers were lacking a modern and low-cost tool that would allow them to learn, revise, and improve their education. Caroline still works with Biology teachers and students and teaches into the Masters of Education.
Biobrain develops STEM learning apps for secondary school and university students. Biobrain leverages on the time that students spend on their mobile devices, offers an easy and affordable solution, and gives students access to high-quality content. Comprehensive learning material is complemented by clear and detailed scientific diagrams. Currently there are three Biobrain learning apps: Biology, Chemistry and Physics. We are currently expanding our content in each of these subjects and developing a web-based platform. “Biobrain is knowledge in your pocket, when you need it! On a bus, train, or tram ride to school…or for remote learning! Biobrain is an easy to use and very intuitive learning tool, that keeps students engaged”
Rachel Zhao
DearDoggy
Founder Rachel has 10 years of experience in marketing and branding in Australia, UK and China and loves her dogs! DearDoggy - a hassle free service for dog owners to care and love their dogs. DearDoggy offers a monthly subscription service providing sustainable and eco-friendly dog products.
It also provides the DearDoggy community a platform to share dog friendly cafés, dog friendly motels, dog friendly camping sites, dog friendly accommodation choices, and dog friendly holiday ideas. A Social tool with other dog lovers- compare your dog walking route with friends and fellow dog walkers - just hashtag your favourite dog walking route to attract more like-mind community members.
Confidence Hackers
Self-proclaimed former ‘shyest person in the Universe’ Anita established Confidence Now in 2014, working predominantly with individuals, dancers and performers. Realising she could have a greater long-term impact through group work with young people, she established Confidence Hackers in 2017.
A human behaviour expert, Anita is a certified practitioner in Meta Dynamics, accredited in Extended DISC (advanced human behaviour studies), and a Level 3 Certified Facilitator, with more than 3,000 hours of personal and group coaching and facilitation under her belt. She is a firm believer that fun makes learning easier.
At Confidence Hackers, We help young people make better wellbeing decisions… for themselves. We empower students and young people to look after their wellbeing by helping them understand more about the way they tick. We do this by unpacking complex human behaviour in simple, fun, engaging and approachable ways that are relevant to them.
My Life Capsule
At the age of 15, Pam took her first solo aircraft flight. At 21, she built her first commercial product prototype to assist runway closures at International Airports. Pam was never destined to follow a conventional path.
From aviation and Crisis Risk Management to several successful startup ventures in hospitality, sustainability and online retail; Pam has always been fascinated by the idea of pushing her boundaries.
Today, Pam is the Founder of My Life Capsule, a technology solution designed to help us all Get It Together - empowering family connection & organisation across multiple generations. Pam is passionate about helping others to capture life’s highlights and organise important personal information and data with bank-level digital security and strict authorisation & tracking protocols.
My Life Capsule streamlines life by connecting & organising families across multiple generations. It supports day-to-day & time-critical administration; while capturing and celebrating your milestone moments.
Upstride
Jane Metlikovec is an award-winning digital communication specialist and Founder/ Managing Director of growing social impact communications agency, Upstride.
Her work focuses on experiential marketing and creative communication projects for organisations that improve communities and people's lives.
She was a recent finalist for Entrepreneur of the Year at Australia's Women in Media Awards 2020, and was a world finalist at the 2018 VR Awards in London for Best Virtual Reality Marketing in the World. She also led an app development team to take out a major prize at Australia's biggest hackathon. Jane holds a Master of Communication, and also a Bachelor of Communication. In addition to digital communication, she loves snowboarding and sewing. Jane lives in Melbourne with her partner, Nick, 10-year-old daughter, Zaya, and baby son, Addy, 1.
Upstride is a social impact communications agency using technology and engagement tools to help our clients create better communities and a fairer world. Our projects often leverage the power of new technologies and we work across VR, AR, apps and other platforms. We believe in the power of storytelling to create moments and experiences that connect with people and help make the world a better place.
Jarvis Health
Priya is a lead software developer specializing in automation, transformation and innovation of business processes through right use of technology. Driving businesses to be efficient and productive by designing and developing well defined workflow automation. Priya has extensive experience and research in use of Conversational AI, NLP in Healthcare industry.
Kolabrate Solutions is a AI based healthcare company aiming to enhance healthcare delivery by automating administrative tasks, improving patient engagement and integrated systems flow. We leverage next generation channels of communication with patients and facilitate efficient healthcare delivery.
Marita D'amico
Driven Outcomes
With a love for business and travel, Marita has started and run businesses and ventures in Australia and overseas since university where she specialised in Marketing and Economics.
Being curious and enjoying a challenge, Marita spent seven years based in Shanghai and Beijing running several joint ventures, projects and high profile events with Chinese, UK and European organisations.
Marita has been a member of the Australia China Business Council, AustCham Beijing and also participated in the SME Working Group in Education in Beijing. Returning to Australia four years ago Marita became passionate about helping young Australians gain the skills they need to succeed in whatever they do at home and as global citizens. Marita joined forces with Betsy Tolmer to launch Driven Outcomes in 2016, a business that would change the way we educate our young people and connect industry and education.
Driven Outcomes
Betsy has had an eclectic career from Event Management to Career Development, working in multiple industries with global brands to boutique providers. Throughout her career she is privileged to work with and be mentored by incredible leaders who have supported her to be successful in all her endeavours.
With her passion for people, bettering communities and the outcomes of individuals, Betsy was delighted to partner with Marita D’Amico in 2016 to launch Driven Outcomes; a business that would allow young Australians to connect with hands on learning opportunities and industry experts to support their own career successes.
The most important thing we can offer our young people to help prepare themselves for their future is an understanding of what skills they have, what skills they need, where they are getting them, and how to keep developing them! We are in a 'transferable skills century’, where the highest VCE score takes a back seat to hands on learning and transferable experience trumps all!
Driven Outcomes designs, creates and delivers extraordinary learning experiences that allow young people to understand, explore and develop their key skills in a 'real world way’. Our programs make the world beyond school tangible for students as they activate core skills and immediately understand the link between education and industry. Through our programs students develop a clear understanding of their core skills and how they connect to the world of work and their future.
Our programs range from 60 minutes to term long projects and are delivered face-to-face and online. This year we have launched digital resources specifically designed to bring industry experts into the classroom and support classroom teachers to implement the Skills Capabilities Curriculum specific to Australian schools. We are proud to have worked with over 270 schools and organisations in Victoria, with over 65,000 students having participated in our programs since 2017.