girledworld is aN Edtech startup empowering the next gen of female leaders and entrepreneurs with skills in leadership, startup and STEM.

girledworld believes the time and solution opportunity is now to harness the society-wide recognition that gender diversity matters, and that gender equity and parity can be addressed if we cultivate the ecosystem and feed the pipeline from the bottom up.

Our girledworld theory of change is that through strategic intervention at critical life cycle touchpoints in girls’ educational journeys, and the adoption of a social engineering framework, girledworld can at a broad social level change behaviour, push through the invisible political, economic and cultural barriers that prevent gender equity, and cultivate the next generation of female innovators and entrepreneurs.

To do this, we employ strategic, cross-sectoral alliance and evidence-based approaches, because we believe the gender gap problem will not self-correct.

Unlike current approaches, girledworld do not seek not to broaden the funnel at the top, but instead to activate, educate and cultivate the next generation of female innovators, leaders and entrepreneurs by changing mindsets, building skillsets and expanding the possibilities, opportunities and pathways of Australian girls in Years 7-12.

girledworld meets a current gap in the market as there is a lack of educational assets, engagement opportunities and immersive workplace experiences for secondary school aged girls in entrepreneurship, STEM and leadership pathways, programs and pursuits. And we believe these are key to cultivating a future-ready mindset, skillset and techset.

girledworld seeks to address this core problem of underrepresentation of females in leadership positions, the startup sector and the STEM domains through the design and execution of conference experiences, workshops and mentoring events specifically for girls aged 13-18 years (target segment), and via the development of co-curricular digital educational entrepreneurship and leadership modules for application in the upper secondary and early tertiary segments.

Supporting this mission is a through the line digital marketing strategy driving word-of-mouth and user-generated viral content in order to advocate, expand awareness and fuel girledworld user growth within the targeted customer segment. Validation pedagogical research, digital content and educational frameworks for the target sector are all being developed with the latest statistics and research from Australian government, industry, education and private sector affiliates. Innovation methodologies employed include Design Thinking, Lean Startup, Lean Canvas and Agile practice.

Thus far, girledworld has gained extraordinary interest from media, industry, government, educators, parents and key players in the startup ecosystem, and has demonstrated early traction through the development of strategic alliances, industry partnerships and pilot sign-ons with schools.

However, whilst girledworld recognise we have tapped the cultural zeitgeist, in order to capitalise on this opportunity girledworld will work to ensure we engineer and execute a growth strategy that is achievable, financially sustainable and consistent with our company vision, mission and social impact model.

What girledworld propose is less talk, less political posturing and much more action, concurrent with educational digital asset development, so we can scale nationally and reach 1 million girls by 2022.