About us

The European Female Founders (EFF) started with a bold question:

What would happen if women from every corner of Europe came together to reshape entrepreneurship?

On May 13, 2022, 54 women — two from every EU country — gathered in Sofia, Bulgaria, to identify the barriers holding women entrepreneurs back and to imagine what a truly inclusive ecosystem could look like. That moment sparked something bigger.

This initiative was inspired and initiated by the European Commission for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, calling for stronger action to support female entrepreneurship across Europe.

Three years later, in April 2025, European Female Founders (EFF) was formally established in France — as a nonprofit, a network, and a call to action.

Our founding team brings together women from tech, agriculture, finance, and social enterprise. We’ve launched startups, raised capital, built diverse teams, and brought innovation to market. We know the system from the inside — and we’re here to make it work better for everyone.

Our Founding Team


  • Co-founder - President

    Monika Stanisheva is a leading entrepreneur and angel investor in Central and Eastern Europe with more than 25 years of experience promoting innovation, inclusion, and sustainable growth. With a career spanning media, business, and advocacy, she has consistently brought a distinctive blend of strategic insight and operational acumen to her ventures.

    Ms Stanisheva is the founder of the Green Transition and Innovation Forum, the largest platform in Central and Eastern Europe dedicated to advancing the shift towards a sustainable and inclusive economy. She also serves as a member of the European Sounding Board of Innovations, offering counsel on emerging technologies and innovation policy across the continent.

    In the private sector, she chairs the board of Dir.bg, Bulgaria’s leading digital media company, where she leads strategic initiatives aimed at maintaining the firm’s technological edge. A staunch advocate for gender equality, Ms Stanisheva is also the Founder and President of the European Female Founders Association, a platform committed to promoting women's leadership and fostering diversity across industries.


  • Co-founder - Vice President

    Teddy Slavcheva is an Impact and Social Entrepreneur with extensive experience in building initiatives at the intersection of sustainability, innovation, and gender equality. She is the co-founder of Sooo. Global Sustainability Media, based in Norway, reaching audiences in over 80 countries, and the founder and lead of SDG Solutions, an organization dedicated to translating sustainability goals into practical action for companies and communities.

    Ms. Slavcheva is the founder and leader of Women in Tech Norway, a national platform empowering women in technology, and serves as a board member of the Nordic Women in Tech Awards, a leading initiative celebrating female achievements in the Nordic tech sector.

    She is also the founder of Sustainability United, a global community of over 5 000 members, where she has hosted more than 300 audio events in collaboration with an international team of moderators, fostering dialogue and action around sustainability challenges worldwide.

    A passionate advocate for innovation, environmental stewardship, and diversity, Ms. Slavcheva is committed to building ecosystems that drive positive social and environmental impact on an European and global scale.

Laure PREVAULT OSMANI - European female founders


  • Treasurer

    CEO & Co-Founder of SABI AGRI, pioneering electric tractors for sustainable farming. She is a passionate advocate for gender equality and the empowerment of women entrepreneurs.

  • Co-founder

    Dr Sabrina Malpede is the co-founder and Managing Director of ACT Blade Ltd and SMAR Azure Ltd. She has nearly two decades of experience in the design, development, and commercialization of innovative solutions first in the yachting and now in the wind energy industry. She won the Royal Society of Edinburgh Enterprise Fellowship in 2003 and a SMART Scotland award for her development of a novel product in the field of rig design in 2004 (now marketed by SMAR Azure Ltd).

    She has an Honours degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Federico II (Naples-Italy) and a PhD in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Glasgow (UK). In 2020, she was awarded by the UK gov DIT with the European Tech Woman Award (International Clean Energy) and in 2022, she won the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) Public Award and the second prize of the Woman Leadership award.


  • Co-Founder

    Milena Stoicheva is currently the Chair of the Innovation Council at the Bulgarian Ministry of Innovation and Growth and a board member of the European Female Founders, where she actively works to strengthen the role of women entrepreneurs in creating sustainable and inclusive innovation ecosystems.

    Milena Stoicheva is a long-standing Executive Director of JA Bulgaria, as well as co-founder of JA Bulgaria’s subsidiary The Edge: R&BD, both of which share the mission to support the development of startup culture in Bulgaria.
    She has taught innovation and entrepreneurship at the European Institute of Innovation and Technology and was Director of Innovation and Transformation at EIT Culture & Creativity.

    She is the recipient of JA Worldwide’s highest global leadership award “Soraya Salti”, presented to her in 2021 in recognition of making a societal impact through economic empowerment.

    She has been is Bulgaria’s Minister of Innovation and Growth from June 2023 to April 2024.
    She co-founded the Bulgarian Cluster for Digital Solutions and Innovation in Healthcare and is its first Chair.

  • Co-founder

    Maria Fátima Lucas is CEO and co-founder of Zymvol Biomodeling (Barcelona), a global biotech pioneer applying Physics/AI-hybrid computational chemistry to develop green chemistry. She also serves as CEO of OXYCO – The Enzyme Factory, a joint venture that produces vegan biomelanin via proprietary enzymes. 

    A chemist by training, she holds a PhD in quantum chemistry and spent 9 years as a researcher at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). Her leadership and innovation have been widely recognized including the 2020 EU Prize for Women Innovators. She actively promotes gender equity in science and entrepreneurship and is a founding partner of the European Female Founders network.


  • Co-Founder

    Plamena is an IT consultant, passionate entrepreneur and relentless advocate in making the Tech industry more attractive and welcoming to women and other minority groups.

    She started her first company at the age of 15 and has been a mentor, startup advisor and a motivational speaker ever since.

    Shocked by being the only female in her Computer Science program at university, and all the challenges she went through building a career in Tech, she started WonderCoders NGO, to support and inspire women and minority groups in taking their first steps into the Tech world.

    She is the founder of Nordic Women in Tech Awards and together with the European Commission she is a Co-organizer of European Female Founders.

    Her work has been featured in media such as EuroWoman and TechSavvy media. She has been nominated for multiple European and Global Awards for her advocacy for DEIB.

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FAQ

  • Tout commence par une idée. Peut-être voulez-vous créer une entreprise. Peut-être voulez-vous donner une nouvelle dimension à un passe-temps. Ou peut-être avez-vous un projet créatif que vous souhaitez partager avec le monde entier. Quel que soit votre cas, la façon dont vous racontez votre histoire en ligne peut faire toute la différence.

  • Tout commence par une idée. Peut-être voulez-vous créer une entreprise. Peut-être voulez-vous donner une nouvelle dimension à un passe-temps. Ou peut-être avez-vous un projet créatif que vous souhaitez partager avec le monde entier. Quel que soit votre cas, la façon dont vous racontez votre histoire en ligne peut faire toute la différence.

  • Tout commence par une idée. Peut-être voulez-vous créer une entreprise. Peut-être voulez-vous donner une nouvelle dimension à un passe-temps. Ou peut-être avez-vous un projet créatif que vous souhaitez partager avec le monde entier. Quel que soit votre cas, la façon dont vous racontez votre histoire en ligne peut faire toute la différence.

  • Tout commence par une idée. Peut-être voulez-vous créer une entreprise. Peut-être voulez-vous donner une nouvelle dimension à un passe-temps. Ou peut-être avez-vous un projet créatif que vous souhaitez partager avec le monde entier. Quel que soit votre cas, la façon dont vous racontez votre histoire en ligne peut faire toute la différence.