Having worked at the forefront of academic startups for over a decade, and even longer with some of our employees’ histories in academia, Osage University Partners (OUP) has found information on academic women startup founders to be rare, and worth a deeper dive into understanding why. Based on an OUP study on the gender gap among academic founders, only 11% of university startups have women founders. It turns out there are not that many women academic entrepreneurs compared to males, hence the lack of information.

So we asked several women from a variety of academic disciplines and positions to talk with us about their stories in creating their startup ventures in order to shed more light on their journeys and bring awareness to their successes and challenges along the way. Our main takeaway from the interviews so far? This is not a one-size-fits-all experience. However, each entrepreneurs’ unique experience reveals inherent commonalities, and many, many anecdotes, that could be useful to other entrepreneurial women in the academic ecosystem.

We begin this series by spotlighting 6 women we interviewed in 2020 who provided insightful perspectives on their diverse entrepreneurial journeys. We hope that sharing their stories will inspire more like-minded women academic entrepreneurs that they too can take the leap.

We plan to continue this series in the future. Please fill out the form below with inspiring academic women entrepreneurs you would like to see highlighted.