2025 International Women’s Day Scholarship recipients
Some of the most successful and impactful companies in the world have been built and co-built by women - Canva, Airwallex, Tala, Stax.
And yet, study after study shows that female founders receive a fraction of the funding that their male counterparts do. They have a harder time breaking into networks, finding mentors, and being taken as seriously as they should.
As reported in The State of Australian Startup Funding 2024, women in startups secured only 15% of total funding, and the median deal size for female teams was just $1 million, compared to $3.2 million for all-male teams. Only 13% of female founders feel very confident about raising their next round, and 70% of female founders believe their gender has greatly impacted their ability to raise capital.
International Women’s Day (IWD) is not just a day to celebrate achievements, it is also a reminder of how much further we still have to go, and that deliberate support systems are essential for progress.
The Stone & Chalk International Women’s Day Scholarship represents our commitment to fostering positive change by providing female founders with the tools, support, and connections they need to take their startups further, faster.
For the past three years, we’ve seen incredible women take this opportunity and use it to strengthen their businesses, solve problems, and make a real impact. This year, we’re welcoming a new group of founders into the program, women who are building AI startups, tackling housing affordability, transforming healthcare, and more.
Our selection committee reviewed over 70 impressive applications from female founders across Australia. What began as a plan to offer 6 scholarships expanded as we encountered so many innovative businesses addressing critical challenges in their industries. Each of the recipients showed exceptional vision, traction, and potential for growth.
Meet the 2025 IWD Scholarship recipients
Cheree Bonnici – Topicks (Adelaide)
Topicks is a mobile app for people who love learning and thinking. Instead of just scrolling mindlessly, users can engage with interesting topics through quizzes, puzzles, logic challenges, news, and in-depth articles.
Sofia Kette – SoMe AI (Adelaide)
SoMe AI helps small business owners create and post social media videos without spending hours editing. Users upload raw footage, and the app automatically edits and posts professional-looking videos. What used to take 20 hours per week now takes just 10 minutes.
Sylvia Chien – OminiWell (Adelaide)
OminiWell is working on personalised cancer treatment. Their Tumour-on-a-Chip technology creates a small replica of a patient’s tumour outside the body, allowing doctors to test different treatments in just two weeks. This helps find the best treatment without making patients go through unnecessary rounds of ineffective medicine.
Mahtab Mirmomeni – ExerWatch (Melbourne)
ExerWatch helps people recover from injuries by tracking their exercise movements with wearable sensors. It gives real-time feedback on whether they’re doing their exercises correctly and allows physiotherapists to monitor progress remotely.
Penny Weber – Recovawear (Melbourne)
Recovawear makes stylish and practical clothing for people recovering from surgery or with mobility challenges. Their designs make it easy to dress and access medical sites (like ports or drains) without discomfort, particularly for people recovering from hip or knee surgery or mastectomies.
Annie Liang – Billie Construction (Sydney)
Billie Construction has created an AI tool to help construction and property managers keep track of issues on-site. It lets on-site workers capture and report problems through voice and photo data, instead of manually writing things down. Billie then organises this information and sends updates to the office, saving time and reducing mistakes.
Visit Billie Construction website
Gunjan Wadhwa – Astra Health AI (Sydney)
Astra Health AI helps health clinicians spend less time on paperwork and more time caring for patients. Their AI system listens to consultations and automatically writes up the notes, reducing admin work. This makes hospitals and clinics run more smoothly and gives better patient care.
Joana Inch – Hat Media (Sydney)
Hat Media is a B2B marketing agency and startup developing an online platform to help companies to create their own branded training academies. This platform combines AI-powered content creation with real mentors, making learning more interactive and community-driven.
Liz Rochaix – Co-operty (Sydney)
Co-operty makes it easier for friends and family to buy a home together. Their online platform helps with legal paperwork, finance options, and income tracking, so everyone involved can clearly manage co-ownership.
Sally Walkom – Flippable (Sydney)
Flippable helps people determine what they can build on a property. Whether someone is looking to develop land or renovate a home, this tool combines AI with real estate intelligence to give insights into building potential, costs and feasibility, and partnerships.
Sophie Greiner – Dome (Sydney)
Dome is changing how people interact with podcasts. It helps podcast creators understand and monetise their audience better and gives listeners new ways to engage, discuss, and even support their favourite shows.
Stacey Key – meforme (Sydney)
meforme is a digital health platform that offers personalised weight management support. Using science-backed advice and expert guidance, it helps people achieve their health goals in a non-judgmental way.
About the IWD Scholarship
The Stone & Chalk International Women's Day Scholarship supports female founders in building and scaling their innovative startups.
It gives access to a community of other founders who are navigating the same challenges, along with mentors, investors, and experts who can help them grow. Because sometimes, all it takes is the right conversation, the right connection, at the right time to change everything.
Molly Fullee, the founder of Fulle and a past IWD Scholarship winner, knows this firsthand:
“Being in an environment surrounded by other entrepreneurs pushing the boundaries of what’s possible empowered me to shoot for the moon. I started thinking bigger, pushing harder, and taking risks that I might not have taken otherwise.”
These founders are about to embark on a six-month journey inside Stone & Chalk. Some will raise capital. Some will land their first big customers. Some will completely pivot their business.
But no matter what, they’ll have people in their corner, other founders who get it, mentors who’ve been there, and a community that’s there for them. We’re excited to see what they build.
Build with Stone & Chalk
Building or growing a business comes with unique challenges and opportunities.
Stone & Chalk provides the supportive ecosystem entrepreneurs need to thrive. Connect with a community of like-minded founders, access expert mentorship, and tap into investor networks that can fuel your growth.
Our innovation hubs in Adelaide, Melbourne, and Sydney offer the perfect environment to scale your startup, with tailored programs, workspaces, and resources designed to help you overcome challenges and seize opportunities.
Visit our membership page to explore membership options to discover how joining Stone & Chalk can accelerate your business growth.
