Meet the 2024 Female Trailblazers of SaaS

Giving Back to the World of Healthcare 

Dr. Jacquelyn Kung’s biggest goal is to get more females into technology as founders and engineers. She says she loves two things about what she does; the first is that “SaaS is valued on revenues (versus profits), so hard work gets multiplied much more than in other businesses.” The second is, “Healthcare is an area where your work both gives back to the world and makes money.”

Dr. Kung is now an Advisor for Activated Insights and a Solutions Specialist at Digital Wellness Institute.

About Activated Insights

Activated Insights (acquired by Home Care Pulse) stands out as an award-winning software company that aids senior care providers in gathering feedback from both employees and residents.

A Customer-Centric Approach

Dianne Ackerman is a proactive executive with outstanding analytical, problem-solving, product development, and customer relationship skills, recognized for her invaluable contributions in overseeing Aptron software products and its entire customer base.

About Aptron Corporation

Aptron develops, markets and supports ERP systems for colleges, universities and other educational organizations.

Data-Savvy, Commercially Capable, and Agile 

Elena Chan has a profound legal, compliance, and risk background, honed while working at large banks. However, she is also a data-savvy, commercially capable, and agile fintech leader. “She can seamlessly move from the most formal environments to the fastest-moving and is one of the few leaders who can operate across many different contexts and subject matter.” In her nomination, she is hailed as an inspirational leader widely recognized for her ability to motivate teams toward challenging objectives. Time and again, she has demonstrated this skill in recent years, earning her well-deserved acclaim.

About BeforePay

BeforePay develops AI-powered unsecured lending decision models for banks and provides a comprehensive lending platform. Their platform is also utilized for direct-to-consumer lending in Australia, processing over 35,000 loans weekly with a dedicated team of fewer than 40 employees.

Compassion and Strategy Define this Leader

Lisa Bowman has over 20+ years in the SaaS industry, her keen interest in employee and management development has been instrumental Blue Mountain’s tremendous success, from 10 to 100+ employees. She has demonstrated outstanding strategic leadership, culminating in her recent promotion to Chief of Staff. “In this role, she has not lost her care and compassion for every employee.” In addition, she is an exemplary part of our community, coordinating 1000’s of hours of Blue Mountain volunteer activity.

About Blue Mountain Quality Resources

Blue Mountain is a leading provider of SaaS software to Life Science manufacturers.

The Next Big Thing in Retail Management Solutions

In addition to her professional accomplishments, Tally Mack is a role model for women in the software industry and a strong advocate for women in leadership positions. Her nominator explains, “Women make up 50% of Bravo’s Executive team, 75% of Bravo’s sales team, and 42% of all Bravo’s full-time employees.” Tally’s dedication to mentoring and supporting women in the industry is truly inspiring.

Also mentioned is her vision for harnessing AI and emerging technologies, and how this is revolutionizing the industry. “Under her leadership, Bravo has introduced the industry’s first AI predictive pricing tool for secondhand retailers, enabling accurate and optimized pricing for merchandise, including future valuation of inventory. Additionally, Bravo has launched Judy, an AI assistant that improves the customer experience for Bravo’s global customer base.” These innovations, coupled with Bravo’s robust suite of SaaS products and services, have enabled the company to maintain an impressive 95% customer satisfaction rating.

As CEO of a SaaS company in hyper-growth mode, Tally strikes the elusive balance of leading with both extreme humility and unwavering resolve. She inspires employees and customers through her servant leadership and commitment to building a culture of inclusion while propelling Bravo forward with her no-nonsense approach to focusing on objectives and achieving goals.

About Bravo Store Systems

Bravo Store Systems is a software company that provides point-of-sale (POS) and retail management solutions, particularly tailored for pawn shops and secondhand retailers. Their platform assists businesses in managing inventory, sales, and customer transactions.

Disrupting the Cybersecurity Industry

In a male-dominated cybersecurity industry, Anusha is breaking that paradigm and doing it with disruptive ideas. Anusha’s idea to develop an entirely novel approach to “zero trust” machine-to-machine authentication addresses a major emerging cybersecurity requirement and growth area for government and commercial enterprises building their IT infrastructure in cloud-native environments reliant on public, private, and hybrid cloud.

“Anusha has been the architect behind Corsha’s platform, which offers an automated and dynamic machine identity solution that enables multi-factor authentication (MFA) for application programming interfaces (APIs), which today represent over 80% of web traffic. API traffic is predicted to become the most frequent attack vector for enterprise web applications.” Anusha Iyer’s career accomplishments are not all, “The company has established an early customer beachhead in the U.S. national security market, securing seven-figure SaaS contracts with the U.S. Air Force, while garnering significant commercial customer traction since raising its Series A round in 2022.”

About Corsha

Corsha specializes in streamlining and automating API security, ensuring robust protection for organizations against vulnerabilities in their application programming interfaces.

An Early Visionary in Compliance

Brenda Craig, Founder and President, has led Craig Safety Technologies for over 25 years, consulting for OSHA and DOT before transitioning into the technology space years ago. Recognized with several awards, including the Stevie Awards for Top Women in Technology, and featured in numerous articles, she is an early visionary for leveraging technology to streamline the compliance process.

About Craig Safety Technologies

Craig Safety Technologies is a Compliance Management SaaS solution. It aims to serve organizations of all sizes facing challenges from the employee hiring process to maintaining regulatory compliance of assets – personnel and equipment.

Mutually Beneficial and Socially Impactful Results

Renee Zau applied her experience with matchmaking platforms to in-kind donations and community partnerships to create a robust, secure, self-service platform supporting over 15,000 fundraising events annually. “Renee’s creative two-sided application of DonationMatch.com eliminates the most time-consuming portions of charitable donations for their clients on both the donor and recipient sides. It also elevates the option for in-kind donations as an impactful marketing channel, enabling corporate giving even while budgets are tight. Few marketing platforms can boast inherently mutually beneficial, socially impactful results.” Since 2010, DonationMatch.com has facilitated over $158 million in donated products and services from 500 businesses to over 50k events.

About DonationMatch.com

Founded in 2010, DonationMatch.com transforms how donation requests are handled for both recipient nonprofits holding events and donor companies. DonationMatch.com uniquely enables businesses of all sizes to efficiently qualify and assess donation opportunities, simplify fulfillment, and track their non-monetary philanthropic efforts in ways that also amplify marketing visibility for win-win benefits.

True Leadership in a Fast-Growing Category 

Alwar Pillai co-founded Fable in 2018 after witnessing firsthand the challenges enterprises faced in addressing digital accessibility. She built a community of assistive technology users and made it easy for customers to engage with them, prioritizing speed of delivery and integration into standard development practices.

Undoubtedly, she is an innovative leader in an emerging, fast-growing category. Her background and experience in accessibility have played a pivotal role in influencing how global brands such as Walmart, Meta, Figma, and Slack develop inclusive products. Furthermore, she has championed bringing accessibility to the forefront of the product design process and has cultivated a robust team that consistently supports customers in their product evolution journey.

About Fable

Fable is a company that pioneers innovation in the emerging field of digital accessibility, influencing global brands’ product development by bringing accessibility to the forefront of the design process.

A Keen Focus on Delivering Value

Karen Chiang is dedicated to cultivating enduring relationships at Ibbaka. Her focus revolves around optimizing value for all stakeholders, including customers, strategic partners, and investors. She achieves this by prioritizing transparency, diversity, and honesty, recognizing that the talent within Ibbaka plays a crucial role in fostering these key values.

Steven Forth, CEO and Co-Founder of Ibbaka, shares, “Karen has innovated the pricing space by clarifying the role that non-economic value plays, or as she says, ‘Community Value Drivers.’ This is part of a large move towards leveraging pricing for community good.”

About Ibbaka

Ibbaka is a SaaS pricing and package optimization solution to help companies establish more effective pricing strategies, deliver unmistakable value to their customers, and attain excellence in the subscription economy.

Compassion and Strategy Define this Leader

Tessa Court is an exceptional leader of people, and builds teams that are innovative, nimble, and always put the customer first. Her ambitions to solve the complex pain points for marketing organizations worldwide have allowed her to work with some of the largest brands in the world and become a trusted system of record and collaboration for their most valuable digital content.

About IntelligenceBank

IntelligenceBank is an award-winning marketing operations and digital asset management software that helps teams better manage their business processes online.

A Team of Wonder Women 

With a decade of experience in digital health, Martina Janeckova, focuses on advancing care delivery and patient outcomes. She specializes in medical reimbursements for remote patient monitoring, chronic care management, and virtual care models. An accomplished speaker, Martina has developed and published studies demonstrating the effectiveness of digital patient programs in improving health outcomes and driving healthcare results while reducing delivery costs at scale.

Her greatest accomplishment? “As you might know, only 2% of female-founder start-ups get funded. Lara Health has been bootstrapped and yet, our growth has been phenomenal. We doubled our SaaS revenue in the past four months.” She says, it is the team of “wonder women who deserve the recognition. I contribute Lara Health’s success to these ladies!”

About Lara Health

Lara Health is a female-led operating platform designed to improve profitability and productivity of independent medical practices.

One Successful Exit Later 

Dana Zeff is the Founder of LeaseLabs, a national digital marketing company she launched in 2008. A decade later, she successfully sold it to Real Page for six-and-a-half times its annual revenue. Boasting over 35 years in multi-family expertise, including 12 years in multi-family SaaS, it is safe to say she is a highly accomplished entrepreneur and talented CEO.

Dana is now a Managing Partner at Unit Leader and Co-Founder of De Novo Digital.

About LeaseLabs

LeaseLabs delivers full-stack marketing strategies tailored for the multifamily housing industry. From top-notch SEO to precision social geotargeting, they also offer the industry’s leading technology platform.

The Intersection of Childcare and Data 

Kathryn O’Hagan-Todd’s leadership is marked by a commitment to data-driven approaches and a keen understanding of the complexities of childcare systems. Her efforts in integrating technology solutions to address these challenges demonstrate why she is considered an exceptional leader in the childcare SaaS industry.

Her role at OneHSN involves being a technology partner for government in human services, which places her at the forefront of public sector solutions in Canada. The company has been recognized as one of the Top 10 Public Sector Solutions Companies in Canada in 2023, a testament to her leadership and the effectiveness of the solutions provided under her guidance.

About OneHSN

One Human Service Network is a services and technology company that builds coordinated care networks of health and human service providers to address all determinants of health. What was originally created to help childcare service providers manage their waitlist, has grown into a North American-wide shared platform providing best practices, administration efficiency and improved access for families.

Too Many Nominations to Count 

Anna Gong successfully pivoted a product from B2C to B2B, turning it into a global success across various industries and enterprises, a feat described by one nominator as “not an easy sale in itself.” Fearless in reinventing both the company and its products, she remains at the forefront of the MarTech space.

Anna earned the title of our Female Trailblazer with the highest number of nominations. The consensus from her nominations: “She’s a powerhouse with grit, wit, and innovative thinking.”

About Perx Technologies

Perx Technologies introduces the world’s first intelligent, autonomous loyalty and customer engagement solution. Headquartered in Singapore, the platform synergizes gamification, behavioral science, and AI to support brands in elevating customer actions and interactions using data-driven experiences.

MarTech Born in Romania 

Xenia’s leadership stands out in the tech world for her remarkable feat of launching a successful SaaS venture, Planable, from Romania—a place not typically known as a tech hotspot. She has broken into the fiercely competitive MarTech scene, proving that great ideas and strong execution can come from anywhere, not just the usual tech giants like Silicon Valley.

From her nomination submission: “What’s more remarkable is that Xenia has grown Planable to a team of over 40 people, achieving significant growth with minimal fundraising (less than $1 million). She built a rapidly growing company in a capital-efficient manner and in an era when it was common for startups to burn through cash rapidly.”

About Planable 

Planable is an operating system for content marketers. The product helps teams plan, collaborate, approve, and deploy content and serves as their editorial calendar and “source of truth” for content operations.

Breaking Down Barriers in SaaS 

Darlene Pope is a recognized leader in SaaS, renowned for her fervent advocacy of cutting-edge technology in the real estate sector. With more than three decades of experience in commercial real estate, technology, and smart building consulting, she is a globally recognized subject matter expert and visionary in the smart building and SaaS industries.

Ms. Pope’s nomination attests to her 30 years of high-profile leadership experience, breaking down barriers and accepted norms, driving positive disruption, and thriving in a highly male-dominant industry.  She is a true trailblazer, having led many groundbreaking projects and accomplishing many “firsts” in the industry. Beyond her leadership role at Planon, she serves as a mentor, advisor, and inspirational author and speaker, focusing on digital transformation and the future of work through the utilization of fully integrated SaaS solutions.

About Planon Software

Planon specializes in providing comprehensive workplace management solutions, including software for real estate, facilities, energy, and maintenance management.

Breathing Life into Life Sciences

Rani Powers possesses a distinctive background in design and software engineering and a Ph.D. in bioinformatics, introducing a novel level of user experience to address the historical gaps in life science software. This enables her to offer a fresh and modern perspective to solutions to the traditionally underdeveloped life sciences SaaS landscape.

About Pluto Bioscience

Pluto Bioscience is a collaborative computational biology platform that empowers researchers with advanced bioinformatics analysis, requiring no coding. It operates within a scalable cloud solution, offering collaboration tools, sharing features, and visually appealing data representations.

A Former Practitioner Turned Founder 

Nathalie Garcia, Co-Founder and CSO, is tremendous at understanding the needs of a diverse customer base. As a former practitioner, she deeply appreciates the complexity of running small businesses and has built and grown a product that solves critical customer pain points. She is a compassionate leader and has fostered a high-performing team at the forefront of innovation for health and wellness providers. Just eight years after launching, Practice Better serves over 20,000 customers across 70+ countries and numerous industries.

About Practice Better

Practice Better helps practitioners build better businesses by freeing them from time-stealing administrative work, allowing them to focus on making long-lasting impacts for their clients.

The Path to Entrepreneurship

Following graduate school, Varsha Bhave immersed herself in the role of Urban Planner for diverse city governments, gaining insights into the complexities of funding city infrastructure development. Reflecting on this period, she shares, “My entrepreneurial journey began after I discovered the power of interconnected computers, joined by a simple protocol, called the Internet. I quit my job and founded Systemates, Inc. in 1997.”

About Projectmates

Projectmates (acquired by Hexagon AB) stands as an owner-centric SaaS enterprise specializing in construction project management software solutions.

Guiding Executive Teams to the Finish Line

Dr. Cindy Gordon has assembled a formidable AI leadership team, resulting in the development of award-winning SaaS AI B2B products, SalesInsights™ and MoodInsights™. Additionally, she spearheads a robust Data Science Services offering, catering to mid-market and large enterprises across North America and Europe in various industries. Through these initiatives, Dr. Gordon’s team has significantly enhanced operational efficiency, saving millions by addressing inefficient processes while driving net new revenue with an average ROI valuation exceeding 250-500%.

She is described as “a visionary who encourages organizations to innovate with a competitive differentiation operating under a strong governance and risk framework.” She has also guided executive teams to envision and realize opportunities and solutions for their business that few others have been able to, ensuring transparency, diversity, and collaboration for effective decision-making while “staying grounded on corporate purpose.”

About SalesChoice

SalesChoice is a predictive and prescriptive analytics company that provides AI-driven sales analytics solutions.

An Active Contributor of Women in Tech

Rachel Lyubovitzky is a distinguished industry leader with over 15 years of experience in enterprise tech, renowned for successfully founding and scaling four B2B tech companies, including EverythingBenefits, acquired by UKG in 2021, and Setuply, focused on enhancing customer onboarding.

As a visionary, she constantly seeks innovative ways to enhance customer experiences. Passionate about breaking barriers for B2B solution providers, she actively contributes to the tech community as a member of the Forbes Technology Council and serves as a mentor, making her an exceptional role model for women in tech and an inspirational leader dedicated to business success.

About Setuply

Setuply is a client onboarding automation platform for B2B software vendors and implementation service providers, delivering the next-generation experience for seamless onboarding. It is considered the “springboard” that providers need to realize revenue faster and form lasting partnerships.

Strategic Investments Across Her Solution

Suuchi Ramesh has strategically invested R&D and go-to-market resources to build a multi-product platform, initially starting as a sourcing platform and evolving through feedback from a two-sided marketplace to a successful SaaS platform. With inherent solution stickiness, the company secures long-term SaaS contracts boasting high gross and net dollar retention, placing it at an unstoppable inflection point as it expands its customer base across countries and industries under her leadership.

About Suuchi

Suuchi is recognized as a comprehensive one-stop solution for supply chain complexities, offering core products such as PLM (Product Lifecycle Management), ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), and GSN (Global Sourcing Network).

Inclusive Leadership in a Male-Dominated Field 

Kathryn Schifferle, a seasoned leader in the SaaS industry, showcases entrepreneurial prowess as the Founder of Work Truck Solutions, addressing industry challenges with innovative solutions. Her leadership style promotes collaboration, growth, and inclusivity, setting an inspiring precedent as a female leader in a predominantly male-dominated field. Kathryn’s blend of visionary innovation, customer-centricity, and inclusive leadership positions her as an exceptional figure in the SaaS sector.

About Work Truck Solutions

Work Truck Solutions, initially focused on addressing the challenge of tracking customized vehicle configurations, has evolved into a comprehensive SaaS suite for the commercial vehicle industry, streamlining dealership operations encompassing marketing, inventory, and customer management.

Boasting Two Decades of Expertise

Merel van der Lei serves as the CEO of Wyzetalk, a prominent digital employee experience platform designed to enhance communication and engagement for frontline and non-desk workers. Leveraging over 20 years of experience, Merel brings extensive business and product strategy expertise, specializing in employee engagement and employee experience solutions. “When it comes to leadership, Merel is a shining example of empowerment and empathy.”

About Wyzetalk

Wyzetalk is a communication and engagement platform that enables organizations to connect with their dispersed workforce through mobile and web-based channels, fostering collaboration, and enhancing employee engagement. In Merel’s words: “We connect the disconnected; Significantly improving frontline work experiences and opportunities while at the same time impacting employers’ bottom lines.”