Your Town for Female Empowerment

As part of Generation Y, Magdalena Rogl has been in the online world for over 15 years. In 2016, she moved from the media industry to corporate communications at Microsoft Germany. Her ongoing commitment to equality, inclusion and diversity became her main task at the company in 2021 as Diversity & Inclusion Lead.

For her extraordinary career path from working child care work  to the digital industry, Magdalena was honored with the Digital Female Leader Award and as one of the “25 Women Revolutionizing Our Economy”, among other awards.

Magdalena is a value ambassador for the non-profit education initiative GermanDream and a role model at BayFid, the young talent development program of the Bavarian State Ministry for Digital Affairs.

In October 2022, her first book “MitGefühl – Warum Emotionen im Job unverzichtbar sind” was published.

Thus, we are happy to welcome Magdalena with her Keynote on Emotional Leadership: 
Emotions and work are two terms that still have nothing to do with each other for many people. Yet awareness of our own and others’ emotions can make us more successful and happier. For this, we need emotional intelligence – and unlike IQ, we can train our EQ and thus develop resilience. If we as a society and as teams want to make full use of our possibilities and abilities, we have a responsibility to change outdated structures so that all people feel emotionally safe and can use their feelings.

As the founder of Runaway Redhead, Nora Breuker supports companies, organizations and initiatives in building their online and offline communities and supports them in developing digital marketing strategies.

In her adopted hometown, the Ruhr region, she has built up “Digital Innovation Ruhr”, one of the largest meetup communities for IT, marketing and startups in the region.

Nora was also co-founder of the Los Angeles-based social startup “From Fat to Finish Line” and still leads one of the largest online communities for overweight runners there. For many years now, Nora has been on stage, mentoring startups and encouraging other women to start their own businesses.

Birthe Bruckhoff is head of the Innovation & Knowledge Transfer competence field at Business Metropole Ruhr GmbH. She holds a degree in spatial planning and has been active in various areas for BMR since 2007. In the competence field Innovation & Knowledge Transfer, her topics and projects focus on supporting companies with networking activities, promoting innovative capacity and targeted matching formats. Special emphasis is placed on the start-up scene and the creative industries.

Vanessa Westphal is co-founder of the Bochum-based Tech Startup Choosy. Choosy aims to help individuals improve eating habits and thereby tackles two of the most significant topics of our time with tech: planetary & human health.

 Vanessa is an entrepreneur, innovator and thought leader. She studied electrical engineering and holds an MLA in Organizational Behavior from Harvard University. After nearly 10 years in the corporate environment, she has (co-)founded two companies and combines knowledge from the corporate & startup world. She has built an incubator, led an intrapreneurship program and coached (corporate) founders. She advocates for more female founders and leaders, especially in tech, and will join our “How to Feminize The Startup Ecosystem Ruhr” Panel discussion.

Can-Su is a very solution-oriented person with a passion for shaping the working world of tomorrow. With her expertise in new work and digital solutions, she helps companies develop innovative approaches to overcome challenges and achieve their goals.Before joining as CEO & Co-Founder of the startup AVAILY, she gained experience in various startups after her studies in economics – from business centers to gastronomy concepts to construction site digitalization.Always true to her passion, using agile and newwork methods to inspire people for digital solutions.
At AVAILY, she is responsible for the further development of the business model as well as for sales activities and internal structures. Always with the goal in mind to bring Newwork to life and enable decentralized work according to individual quality standards, as a professional environment increases the acceptance for hybrid work.

Svenja Bremer is the founder of WHO:IN, the digital ecosystem for female founders. The independent online portal aims to bring clarity to the startup jungle and actively connect all startup actors. It takes up the entire start-up offer of Germany and prepares it in such a way that beginning foundresses arrive directly at the desired information and above all at the correct partners inside.

Before founding her own company, she worked for several years in various positions at KfW, as an independent start-up consultant, and as a management consultant for the Chamber of Crafts. Svenja holds her Master in Business Consulting & Digital Management and loves to combine strategies, analysis and creativity on a daily basis.

As an approachable and open-minded visionary, she would like to familiarize many more women with the start-up topic, motivate them to decide to start a business and support them in building a successful business. In doing so, it is very important to her not to make any distinction between the different “types of founders”. The start-up path of a craftswoman, for example, may be different from that of an innovative start-up, but the hurdles and challenges are often the same.

Beate’s passion is equal opportunities for women in science, politics and business. She leads the project Female Academic Entrepreneurs at Ruhr-University Bochum (FACE@RUB) and is executive director of the Marie Jahoda Centre for International Gender Studies. She is also president of Deutscher Frauenrat, the National Council of German Women’s Organizations.

As a PhD candidate, researcher and lecturer at Freie Universität Berlin, Conny Steenblock is passionate about the intersection of Entrepreneurship, Digital Innovation and Female Leadership. Her current research focuses on the dynamics, changes and initiatives within entrepreneurial ecosystems that aim to leverage the potential of women in (tech) leadership positions. She is part of the doctoral program of Stiftung der Deutschen Wirtschaft.

Before her academic career, Conny gained professional experience in the Deutsche Bahn AG leadership academy and equine-assisted coaching. She is always fascinated by innovative approaches to leadership development and enjoys sharing her personal insights and research findings.

Coming Soon

Coming Soon

Vanessa Meyer founded KNOWBODY in the summer of 2020 together with Carolin Strehmel and Fabian Diga and developed the eponymous app for sexual education with her team. She has been dealing with areas of social tension for many years, founded a university initiative for social entrepreneurship, for example, put her focus on political education early on, and since KNOWBODY has been concentrating fully on revolutionizing sex education in schools.

Julia Kahle is Co-Founder at heynannyly – the digital solution for short-term and secure care placement as an employer benefit. Verified, insured and bookable within one day.

Julia finds her drive in her enthusiasm for progress and work-life balance. For the past 11 years, she has been testing for herself what it means to be a working mom – with all the challenges that entails.

More serenity and flexibility in caring for children at off-peak times and when “something just comes up” – that is the mission of Julia and her co-founder Anna. Happy workingMoms / workingDads and happy children. Together, they close the care gaps in companies for their employees and thus reduce absenteeism.

Previously, she was responsible for employer branding and recruiting for a long time and knows that it is time to create real employee benefits and to take responsibility as an employer of choice.

With her passion for connecting people and organizations into thriving ecosystems, Pamela founded allynet GmbH during her parental leave. At the helm since 2010, she steered her company through the dynamic journey of founding, scaling, and achieving a successful exit.Before founding her own company, Pamela held various leadership and management positions, including corporate consulting, division management, and leading third-party economic policy projects in the public sector.With PDT Invest GmbH, she invests as an angel investor in startups across diverse industries, prioritizing teams that embrace diversity with at least one female founding member. #mission #25to25

Vanessa Meyer founded KNOWBODY in the summer of 2020 together with Carolin Strehmel and Fabian Diga and developed the eponymous app for sexual education with her team. She has been dealing with areas of social tension for many years, founded a university initiative for social entrepreneurship, for example, put her focus on political education early on, and since KNOWBODY has been concentrating fully on revolutionizing sex education in schools.

Rebekka is a bridgebuilder at heart: working as a Manager Startup Ecosystems & Corporate Partnerships at the Initiaivkreis Ruhr, she connects startups with international corporates. Besides her professional work she is a mentor for (future) startups and helps with her expertise in the mentoring of the Junger Initiativkreis. Her professional background is based on her studies to Entrepreneurship Ecosystems at the Ruhr University Bochum. Her strong belief is that a vivid and healthy startup ecosystem can only develop within a diverse infrastructure.

Dr Britta Julia Dombrowe, Program Lead Startup Activities, has been taking care of all start-up topics of the Initiativkreis Ruhr since 2016: including the Gründerallianz Ruhr, the HANDS ON DATA CONFERENCE and many cooperations in the startup ecosystem like the Salon des Créateurs or the Ruhrsummit.

The Initiativkreis Ruhr is one of the strongest regional business alliances in Germany and unites over 70 member companies with the aim of keeping the region livable and lovable. The Initiativkreis Ruhr has been setting up projects in the areas of culture, education and business for over 30 years. Coming from art history,

Britta Dombrowe worked for public television for many years before moving to corporate communications at Evonik Industries. The changing region and the combination of cultural and economic issues have always aroused her interest. “I am not a child of the Ruhr area. Maybe that’s why I find the contradictions of the region so fascinating: winding towers and tech, green idyll next to a social hotspot, high culture and football – and 5 million people right in the middle.”

“You can’t not communicate” was already said by the well-known communication expert Paul Watzlawik and has become one of Jacqueline Kos’ guiding principles over the last few years. But how did it get there?

Despite a close connection to music, the generalist discarded her goal of going into the music industry shortly before graduating from the Ruhr University in Bochum with a degree in German language and literature  and history. After her traineeship as a PR editor, she dared to jump into a female-led startup for ergonomic gaming furniture. Here, she quickly took on responsibility for building up communications and developing the brand’s storytelling. Further experience in large companies followed and eventually led her back to her home in Essen.

Since October 2022, Jacqueline has strengthened the team of Gründerallianz Ruhr as Communication Lead and holds the helm over the communication measures of the initiative. 
The topic of female entrepreneurship is important to her for various reasons, especially when it comes to finding solutions for the challenges facing society as a whole in the future. 
She is therefore all the more pleased to be able to play a key role in the programm development for HERHOOD this year and to guide through the HER Stage program as a host.