Watch the UBS Female Founder Award 2021 awards ceremony, where we recognized the finalists of the program and announced the winner.

A 2021 UBS report entitled, “The Funding Gap - Investors and female entrepreneurs,” found that female founders and entrepreneurs receive less funding than their male counterparts. As a result, women are lacking in equal opportunities to innovate and build successful companies that contribute to the global economy. Furthermore, there is an abundance of evidence to suggest that female founders and entrepreneurs, who receive funding, develop businesses that perform as well, or even better, than their male counterparts, which suggests investors are missing out on attractive investment opportunities.

The UBS Female Founder Award 2021 was our “call to action” for these findings and is a definitive, actionable response to the report. For this cohort, we received nearly 150 submissions from early-stage businesses around the world and shortlisted the submissions to create a final list of 16.

All finalists for the award joined the 2022 cohort for Project Female Founder, our specially designed, year-long, global accelerator program focused on investor readiness and community, providing the founders with the support and mentoring needed to reach the next-stage of growth. Working with companies, Fortuna and Coralus, (founded by Vicki Saunders, a UBS Global Visionary), the finalists joined an additional 19 female founders in the program, creating a total of 35 women who are breaking boundaries and creating the next generation of Fintech companies.

Learn more about how UBS is helping to close the funding gap by supporting female founders.

Meet the extraordinary female founders and entrepreneurs that are shortlisted for the Female Founder Award of the UBS Future of Finance Challenge 2021.

Auquan: Chandini Jain CEO

Duality: Rina Shainski Co-founder and Chairwoman and Prof. Shafi Goldwasser Co-founder and Chief Scientist

Elas Bank: Dra Vanise Goulart Zimmer President ElasBank & Ph.D. Researcher

Entelligent: Pooja Khosla Ph.D. Executive Vice President Client & Product Development

Fairly AI: Fion Lee-Madan Technical Co-Founder, COO and Customer Success

Fundnel: Khai Lin Sng Co-Founder & Chief Investment Officer

The S Factor: Bonnie-Lyn de Bartok Founder & CEO

ValAI : Allys Todd Co-Founder

Vested Impact:  Kimberly Abbott Founder & CEO

Worldfavor : Frida Emilsson Co-Founder & COO

Congratulations to Kimberley Abbott of Vested Impact. She impressed the jury with her track record as well as her demonstrated leadership both within Vested Impact and in the wider female entrepreneur community.