Category: Female Founders Shop

VEERAH, a mission-drive designer vegan shoe company founded by and led by women to “do good and look incredible”. VEERAH reimagines how vegan shoes can look and feel when driven by innovation and thoughtful design. 

VEERAH was founded by Stacey Chang, WG’12 in 2016. When she tried to buy cruelty-free and beautiful shoes she found only Crocs, Birks and canvas sneakers. She was surprised by the lack of options for stylish non-leather dress shoes. Stacey launched VEERAH after spending time studying shoemaking construction in Italy, researching manufacturing and sourcing companies across Europe and Asia, and finding the right partners who were on board with her mission.

Shop VEERAH at the WAFFA Founders Store here. Take 15% off all full price items with code WHARTON21. This offer expires 12/31/21 and cannot be combined with other promotions.

And look for our shopping guide along with the Wharton Black MBA Alumni Association’s holiday shopping catalog in the recent edition of Wharton Magazine on 12/13/21.

If you are a Wharton or Penn alumnae and would like to join the 50+ products/services in the Female Founder Shop, just fill in this form. If you run a non-profit, we’d love to include you as well, to help increase awareness and engagement for your organization.

Nisha Thomas Dearborn has been thinking about skincare since she was a kid. Her mom is a retired dermatologist so Nisha spent summers in her office and traveled to dermatology conferences with her in high school. Nisha’s first job was an internship at Estée Lauder, and she spent nearly a decade climbing the corporate ladder at Johnson & Johnson and was marketing director and brand manager for preservative-packed skincare products like Aveeno and RoC.

In 2016, she made a family move to Maine which inspired a lot of healthy lifestyle changes. She realized that just like we demand high quality, fresh ingredients in our food, we should demand high quality, fresh ingredients in our skincare. Ingredients are at their peak when they are first mixed together and activated. The sooner you can use a product after it is activated, the better it is for your skin.

“That’s why I created Fresh Chemistry: a revolutionary approach to skincare that puts fresh, potent ingredients — and the power to activate them — in your hands.” Fresh Chemistry is high performance skincare with fresh, clean ingredients that you mix in and shake to activate for the potency and power your skin deserves.

Read more about Nisha and the growth of her company Fresh Chemistry here.

Check out It’s Made To Order (IMO), a platform for creators of fashion and lovers of fashion. On IMO, independent fashion brands provide apparel that is made to measure or made to order at the cost of off-the-rack clothing. So, you find the style you want and then it is customized to suit you perfectly. 

IMO was founded by Udochi Nwogu WG’11. She was inspired by the sustainable practices in Africa’s fashion production. IMO produces in small quantities and only when an order is placed. Shown above, a top and wrap skirt set, known as an Iro and a Buba, by a Nigerian based brand,Titi Below, is just $78.39. 

Shop IMO at the WAFFA Founders Store here. And look for our shopping guide along with the Wharton Black MBA Alumni Association’s holiday shopping catalog in the recent edition of Wharton Magazine on 12/13/21.

If you are a Wharton or Penn alumnae and would like to join the 50+ products/services in the Female Founder Shop, just fill in this form. If you run a non-profit, we’d love to include you as well, to help increase awareness and engagement for your organization.

Check out Heathy Inspired Cook, offering specially curated kitchen “power tools” to help make cooking faster, easier and more fun. Healthy Inspired Cook wants to empower chefs to use cooking for self-care and care for those you love.

Healthy Inspired Cook was founded by Kadia Lawrence WG’09.  Years ago, she carefully researched and customized a healthy diet for herself, cooking her way to a 100 pound weight loss. This journey showed her the importance of cooking and understanding what you consume. Kadia doesn’t want people to think of cooking as a tedious chore, so she’s taken the guesswork out of what you need at every stage of the your cooking adventure.

Use promo code WHARTON10 for 10% off of your entire order through 12/31/21, onetime use per customer. Shop the WAFFA Founders Store here.

If you are a Wharton or Penn alumnae and would like to join the 50+ products/services in the Female Founder Shop, just fill in this form. If you run a non-profit, we’d love to include you as well, to help increase awareness and engagement for your organization.

Lucinda Duncalfe is the founder of AboveBoard, an executive hiring platform connecting qualified executives with full-time and board opportunities. Study after study proves that installing leaders with different backgrounds serves shareholders, employees and the broader society. But the current approach to executive hiring depends too often on closed networks and processes with no transparency, a strategy which leads to a lack of diversity in hiring.

Lucinda is revolutionizing the way leadership roles are filled – opening them up on an inclusive platform so that everyone qualified has access rather than just those in existing networks. AboveBoard creates a fundamental shift in the dynamic of executive hiring, one that is overdue and can have far-reaching social impact.

Lucinda has had a truly remarkable career, beginning in the male-dominated tech startup industry of the mid-90’s. She’s founded three companies and led many others. Lucinda has earned accolades at the highest levels in the start-up world – like EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year and Enterprises Award’s CEO of the Year – and is much in demand as a public speaker. She has traveled the world – including a trip kayaking north of the Arctic Circle as part of leadership training. And to top it off, Lucinda is also a  Shotokan Karate instructor. And in 2017 she was named Senior Women’s Kumite US National Champion at the International Shotokan Karate Federation! 

Read more about Lucinda and her experiences building AboveBoard here.

If you are a Penn/Wharton female founder and would like to be highlighted in an upcoming WAFFA newsletter, just click here to provide us with info/photo.

BoCa Flavor, Caribbean-infused blends for everyday consumption from recent Wharton MBA graduate Jelece Morris. Read more about Jelece here.

We’ve created a special marketplace to highlight the wide range of innovative products and services developed by the WAFFA Female Founder community.

For example, this holiday season you can honor your favorite TroubleMaker with a gift of Trouble merchandise and recognition. Trouble was co-founded by Bari Harlam (Wharton BS, Masters AND PHD!) who is committed to accelerating progress on closing equity gaps for women and girls. Read more about Bari Harlam here.

Use code WAFFA5 to get 5% off of your order. AND, keep in mind that 100% of profits go to organizations that promote gender equity. Click to shop here.

Browse, shop, enjoy and share! And, if you are a Wharton or Penn alumnae and would like to be included in the Female Founder Shop, just fill in this form.

In 2017, Yinka Taiwo-Peters founded YTPshop, a contemporary African-inspired fashion brand for women. With no formal training and less than $200, she taught herself to design all products in the U.S. as she established a network of female artisans to manufacture in Nigeria, where she was born. Today, she has a small all-female team across Nigeria and the U.S. who continue to build and develop the brand. Read more about Yinka and her story.

All YTPShop products are ethically handcrafted by female artisans in Nigeria and the prints are sourced from West African markets. The brand celebrates the authentic African experience and adorns confident women with bold aesthetics and colors. Be sure to check out YTPshop in the WAFFA Female Founders store. Use promo code WHARTON for 20% of all products. Shop here.

In 2014, Camille Genise Heart was desperately seeking advice and products for her super curly hair. Camille realized as she studied the industry that the challenge wasn’t so much of a hair problem, it was more of content overload and navigating all the products out there. Camille began working on developing a whole new kind of brand for the indie beauty community. 

FELOH (Fell-Oh) is a conscious and inclusive social marketplace just for beauty. When users post their content in this social community, they get rewards called “curl coins” to shop the marketplace, where independently owned beauty brands list their products to sell.

This past August, Feloh launched their improved MVP version and to date have 200 users, 60 selling partners and 2,000 quality-made beauty products in the marketplace. They’ve have won two pitch competitions already and are raising their first pre-seed round now. Read more about Camille Genise Heard here, shown above (right) with co-Founder and COO Jacqueline Baron.

Support sustainably made and BIPOC businesses this holiday season by shopping Feloh in the WAFFA Female Founders store. Use promo code GO QUAKERS to get 15% off any order between 11/26-12/18/21.  Shop here.

We’ve created a special marketplace to highlight the wide range of innovative products and services developed by the WAFFA Female Founder community.

For example, this holiday season be sure to check out Eddi, a thoughtfully designed 100% plastic-free “hand washing system.” As Forbes reports, Eddi is disrupting “the otherwise staid hand soap market with elegant steel dispensers paired with hand soap refills packaged in highly recyclable, lightweight aluminum bottles.”

Co-Founders Sarah Pura WG’13 and Jamison Pereira WG’16 were struck by the fact that despite a growing plastic waste crisis, retail shelves are still stocked with single-use plastic. So they build Eddi to deliver to customers an enduring dispenser with simple refills in plastic-free, easy-to-recycle format. While sustainability may be the selling point, the brand woos customers with its aesthetics. Fast Company says – “This startup will make you fall in love with your hand soap dispenser.” 

Right now, an $82 starter set is just $65 (a 20% savings), plus use promo code HOLIDAYVIP for an extra $20 off at checkout. And use WHARTONPROUD for $10 off at other times. Click to shop here.

Browse, shop, enjoy and share! And, if you are a Wharton or Penn alumnae and would like to join the 50+ products/services in the Female Founder Shop, just fill in this form.