Meet the #LTST23 Speakers

Gazelle is a Content Creator on TikTok, Instagram and LinkedIn, where she discusses being trans, using pronouns and inclusive language at the workplace. She tells her stories from a humorous but nonetheless educational and empowering point of view. For ten years, she has been making a career in Recruiting and corporate D&I work.

Hans Raffauf is a Co-founder of Clue, the world’s fastest-growing female health app.

Clue has more than 15 million active users in over 190 countries, and is one of the most popular apps in the “Health & Fitness” category in the United States, Germany, the UK, Brazil, France, Mexico and many others. Clue’s mission is to help people all around the world benefit from insights into female health. A lifelong entrepreneur, Hans is convinced that technology and, the ability to ethically harness data, will profoundly change the future of female health.

Prior to co-founding Clue, Hans co-founded hy!, a creative event series, to support and connect Europe’s startup scene which he sold back to Axel Springer in 2017. He also helped set up the Berlin Hardware Accelerator, hardware.co, as well as betapitch, Berlin’s legendary startup competition. Hans also helped to establish Berlin Tech Meetup.

Lisa-Marie Fassl is the co-founder and CEO of Female Founders, the fastest-growing community of entrepreneurial women in Europe, reaching 68k+ women per week. With her team she solves the two biggest problems of the tech & innovation ecosystem: access to funding for female-led companies and recruitment of female talent. With a 10-year track record in the tech ecosystem and especially in early stage financing, she’s initiated projects all over Europe and supported hundreds of companies. She is a Forbes 30 Under 30, acted as the Special Advisor for Startups at the Federal Ministry for Digital & Economic Affairs, is an active member of Vienna’s highest economic policy advisory board, the Vienna Economic Council, a lecturer at several Austrian universities and holds positions on various boards. In her free time she enjoys everything related to food and traveling.

Active in the European startup community since 2012, Nina got to know the ecosystem from different angles. As a Principal and later Head of Marketing & Community at Speedinvest, a pan-European seed-stage VC fund, she put her focus on portfolio services and knowledge exchange among founders. In 2016 she co-founded Female Founders, an organization that aims to change economy and society by fostering entrepreneurial leadership. In addition to that she is the chairwoman of the Austrian Venture Capital and Private Equity Organization (AVCO).

Cihat is responsible for deal sourcing as well as investment and portfolio management, with a strong focus on the future of digital health. Prior to joining VC, Cihat completed his PhD in Engineering at the University of Cambridge with a research stay at the University of Tokyo, Department of Bioengineering. Cihat also gained experience in various high-tech and software R&D roles in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Germany. He also holds a professional football coaching licence.

Forbes 30 under 30, Austria’s most influential female entrepreneur on Linkedin, serial entrepreneur. With Ada Growth, Kosima offers a solution for companies to make their female talents visible and to take professional growth for women to the next level.

Kosima teaches at several universities and passes on her knowledge and experience as a keynote speaker internationally – for example for the United Nations, the European Commission or MIT.

Isabelle Siegrist has been building and investing in companies across Switzerland since 2016 with her company Sandborn. She has a special focus on driving diversity within founder teams and investment decisions. She was recognized as one of the TOP 100 Businesswomen in Switzerland in 2018, 2019, and 2020 and is a Forbes 30 under 30 Alumna (2019), studied Business Innovation at HSG, majored in Social Entrepreneurship at ESCP Europe and conducts research today on AI in VC decision making at ETH.

Triin is the Founding Partner of Sie Ventures backing early-stage gender diverse founding teams, and running a Capital Platform to drive more funding to female founders. Formerly she was Vice President at The Venture Collective, investing in companies across US and UK. She was also an early-stage investor at Founders Factory and Startupbootcamp. Before her career in investments, she was a founder and operator in three companies across FinTech and Future of Work.

Bettine is a believer in the unharnessed potential of female founders. To this end she has set up the Auxxo Female Catalyst Fund as founding partner. She previously worked as a strategy consultant, product manager, accelerated nearly 100 companies at Axel Springer Plug and play and has made nearly 20 angel investments. A trained mathematician, Tine loves to crunch numbers, preferably in her weekly focus sessions.

Barbra Gago is the Founder and CEO at Pando, the first employee progression platform. She was formerly the CMO at Miro where she led the re-brand from RealtimeBoard to Miro in 2018, and scaled from $3 to $50m revenue in just under 2 years. As a VP of Marketing, Barbra also brought both Culture Amp and Greenhouse to market and initial scale. Having worked at the intersection of people tech and future of work for over 10 years she’s expert at scaling high performing teams and businesses.

Julia is the co-founder of Tidal Impact, an impact advisory and investment holding firm catalyzing companies driven by social, environmental and financial returns. She also serves as an executive board member of the Sigma Squared Society, a global community of 800+ of the world’s most ambitious founders in their early 20s, previously known as the Kairos Society.

Dr. Lisa Smith is co-founder and managing director of Prewave, an AI startup making tomorrow’s supply chains more transparent, resilient, and sustainable. Lisa developed the technology behind Prewave in her PhD at the Vienna University of Technology. Together with her team, she transformed it into a leading supply chain intelligence platform. Prewave has more than 100 employees and serves companies with large supply chain networks such as Lufthansa, VW, BMW, Dr. Oetker, and many others.

Stuart is the CEO and founder of the UHLALA Group and has been involved in various professional projects for LGBT+ in the working world for more than 10 years. Since 2009, the UHLALA Group has been committed to the networking, further education and promotion of LGBT+ people in their professional lives worldwide, and bringing them in contact with LGBT+ friendly companies and organizations.

Stuart truly believes in diversity & inclusion in all its dimensions and thus his engagement is not limited to LGBT+ visibility, but also the promotion of women in management positions: with his PANDA Women Leadership Network, which he co-founded in 2012 together with Isabelle Hoyer.

Peter was a consultant at McKinsey for several years, advising large marketplaces and e-commerce companies in Europe. Before that he studied business administration in Vienna, Hong Kong, Shanghai & San Francisco. He comes from Upper Austria and has been living in Vienna for almost 10 years.

Refurbed is a marketplace for refurbished products. These are completely refurbished phones, laptops and tablets that look and work like new. Customers save up to 40%, get a guarantee of at least 12 months and the products are 100% sustainable. The combination of sustainability and cheaper products is particularly attractive to many people. The company’s goal is to bring a refurbished product into every household.

With more than 15 years of entrepreneurial experience in the mobile and internet industries and 10 years as co-founder of Speedinvest, Oliver is a leading expert in Europe’s technology startup scene to Austria and secured €10M from private investors to found Speedinvest. As of 2023, the early-stage venture capital fund has more than €1B in AuM, +250 portfolio companies, six offices across Europe, and is routinely ranked as one of Europe’s most-active investors

Deepali joined Speedinvest as a Partner in 2022 with a focus on finding and funding investment in underrepresented founders. Previously, she co-founded Alma Angels, a community for female angels and invested in and mentored multiple female-founded companies.

Originally from Kolkata, India with a background in investment banking, private equity, and operations, Deepali has a keen interest in technologies solving society’s large problems in sectors such as Digital Health, Femtech, and Climate Tech