Women Disrupting Tech

In this episode of Women Disrupting Tech, I talk with Veroniek Vermeulen, founder of Silatha, about why women's health is still expected to be left at the office door. Veroniek trained as an engineer in a field where 80 percent of her peers were men, and spent years trying to fit into a workplace that wasn’t suited for women. She founded Silatha to replace that silence with psychological safety, backed by real numbers on engagement and retention. This episode is for female founders and health tech leaders building company culture, women in leadership deciding what to share about their own health at work, and anyone curious what changes once women's health is on the agenda. What you'll learn in this episode Why fitting in at work can mean adapting so well you lose track of what you would build differently How psychological safety becomes measurable: Silatha's programs report 93 percent higher engagement and 92 percent better psychological safety among participants Why cycle-related symptoms only seem unpredictable, and what changes once people track them What staying silent about women's health costs at work: stress, isolation, absenteeism, and disengagement Why policy should follow the 80 to 99 percent of people acting in good faith Her three-part advice for founders in perimenopause: learn your own patterns, find a qualified specialist, and be intentional about what you share with your team Chapters: 00:00 — Introduction: Women’s Health, Psychological Safety & Silatha 02:11 — Meet Veroniek Vermeulen and Silatha 02:42 — From Corporate Engineer to Founder 05:03 — Fitting In vs. Adapting at Work 06:41 — Burnout, Belonging & Being Valued 07:53 — Purpose, Viktor Frankl & Letting Go of Control 13:38 — How Silatha Evolved from Wellbeing to Women’s Health 17:41 — Why Psychological Safety Matters for Health at Work 19:59 — Breaking the Taboo Around Women’s Health 25:59 — How Organizations Build Lasting Support 27:02 — Nura: Private, Always-On Health Support 32:15 — Privacy, Trust & Responsible Health AI 38:10 — Men’s Mental Health and Inclusive Health Conversations 41:00 — The Cultural and Business Impact of Support 43:50 — Women’s Health at Work: Regional Perspectives 46:14 — How Founders Can Build Psychologically Safe Startups 55:15 — Advice for Founders Navigating Perimenopause 56:47 — Priorities, Pressure & Getting Important Work Done 1:01:26 — Finding Purpose Through the Work 1:01:58 — Designing Safer Founder Communities 1:04:06 — Where to Connect with Veroniek Vermeulen and Silatha 1:04:40 — Closing and Episode Outro Show notes:Blog: https://womendisruptingtech.blog/2026/10/08/episode-172/ Substack: https://womendisruptingtech.substack.com/p/episode-172?r=2v0lts&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true Books discussed in the episode Man’s Search for Meaning: https://amzn.eu/d/07Dj5X9M Four Thousand Weeks: https://amzn.eu/d/0fyR6E7E Connect with Veroniek Vermeulen and Silatha Veroniek on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/veroniek/ Silatha on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/silatha/ Silatha on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SilathaJourney/ Silatha Middle East website: https://silathajourney.com/ Silatha Europe website: https://silatha.com/ Silatha on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMEvuobvsmkMqGlv8ndZucQ Connect with host Dirkjan Hupkes LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dirkjan-hupkes/ Substack: https://womendisruptingtech.substack.com/ FundingCoach: https://fundingcoach.ai/ About Women Disrupting Tech Every week, Women Disrupting Tech covers the decisions, patterns, and structural realities that female founders and investors rarely discuss in public but run into every time they meet. Follow to get it in your feed. 🎧 Listen to Women Disrupting Tech on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube. 👉 Subscribe for more conversations with founders building healthier, more honest workplaces.

Every day, women make safety calculations - which route to take, where to sit - that never show up in the data. What happens once that invisible data gets collected? In this episode of Women Disrupting Tech, I talk with Anniek van Veldhuizen, CCO and co-founder of MyHives, about turning daily, unmeasured safety experiences into objective, actionable data. Anniek and her co-founder Nelson built MyHives, and its AI guardian Beekon, to capture safety concerns before they escalate, using privacy-first technology that keeps all processing on the user’s own device. If you’re a founder navigating fundraising bias as a woman, a leader responsible for workplace safety, or simply curious how privacy-first AI can turn subjective feelings of unsafety into evidence that actually gets acted on, this conversation has something for you. What you’ll learn in this episode: Why daily safety calculations, from choosing a route to picking a seat, never show up in official data, and what that costs system design How MyHives captures both physical and social safety signals without cameras or continuous listening, keeping all processing on-device Why traditional panic buttons fail the moment someone freezes, and how Beekon is built to act autonomously instead How unsafe environments cost the Dutch economy an estimated €8.3 billion a year, with roughly €5 billion linked to psychological and safety-related incidents What it took to bring MyHives into pilots onboarding around 33,000 home care workers and station cleaners Why translating lived experience into numbers moves corporate decision-makers more than personal stories alone What it’s like fundraising as a woman founder alongside a Black co-founder, and how being underestimated became an advantage Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 04:00 Anniek van Veldhuizen on building MyHives from lived experience 05:49 The daily calculations people make to stay safe 08:08 Why unsafe experiences go unreported 10:04 The gender data gap and how missing data shapes safety 14:50 Safety, participation, and learned helplessness 17:15 Building trust into a tool people can actually use 19:52 How MyHives works: app, BEEKON, and BEEKON+ 24:00 Triggering help discreetly when someone cannot act 28:08 How escalation works across languages and locations 30:57 Why privacy is central to the product 34:58 Preventing false positives and training the system 40:32 Trials, pilots, and the workplace safety use case 48:09 The business and societal case for better safety data 53:16 Pricing, monetization, and the impact model 1:00:01 Working with security partners without being absorbed 1:04:20 Fundraising as a woman founder and a Black co-founder 1:07:36 Designing Fundicoach to feel safe and inclusive Show notes : Blog: https://womendisruptingtech.blog/2026/09/24/episode-171 Substack: https://womendisruptingtech.substack.com/p/episode-171 Connect with Anniek van Veldhuizen and MyHives: LinkedIn (Anniek): https://www.linkedin.com/in/anniek-van-veldhuizen-27731514a/ Website: https://www.myhives.nl/en-GB LinkedIn (MyHives): https://www.linkedin.com/company/myhives-nl/ Download the Hyves app Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.myhives Apple App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/myhives/id6751838174 Connect with Dirkjan Hupkes: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dirkjan-hupkes/ Substack: https://womendisruptingtech.substack.com/ FundingCoach: https://fundingcoach.ai/ About Women Disrupting Tech Every week, Women Disrupting Tech covers the decisions, patterns, and structural realities that female founders and investors rarely discuss in public but run into every time they meet. Follow to get it in your feed. 🎧 Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube and Amazon Music. 👉 Subscribe for more conversations with women building the future of tech.

More than half of Dutch citizens live with a chronic disease, and over 70% of supermarket products are ultra-processed. In this episode of Women Disrupting Tech, I talk with Anke Kuik, co-founder and CEO of FLTRD, about turning a personal interest in nutrition into a tool that helps people navigate the supermarket. Anke walks me through the science behind PureScore, why popular nutrition labels can be misleading, and the founder decisions that took FLTRD from an outsourced prototype to more than 30,000 downloads. This episode is for female founders and women in tech building health tech products, women entrepreneurs curious about the science behind nutrition apps, and any startup leader deciding when to bring technical development in-house. What you'll learn in this episode: Why more than half of Dutch citizens live with a chronic disease, largely driven by lifestyle. How the "food matrix" explains why isolated vitamins or fiber don't work like whole food does. Why FLTRD built its own PureScore instead of relying on nutrition scores that can be gamed. Why outsourcing app development early on slowed FLTRD down and cost more than expected. Why bringing a technical co-founder in-house was Anke's best decision for FLTRD. How FLTRD keeps its scanning tool free while building a B2B model with supermarkets. What Anke looks for in investors beyond capital: retail, FMCG, and dietary network expertise. Chapters: 00:00 Introduction to Anke Kuik and FLTRD 06:55 Developing the concept and building the first app 12:01 Why healthy supermarket choices are so difficult 14:21 What "ultra-processed" food really means 18:09 PureScore vs. Nutriscore 22:56 Personal responsibility, pricing, and the food system 25:10 How the PureScore works 29:03 Scanning products and choosing better alternatives 31:19 Keeping the app free and building a business model 34:40 Working with supermarkets and the B2B opportunity 37:35 Fundraising, traction, and growth plans 39:52 Health impact and scientific validation 43:18 Publicity, media attention, and founder visibility 46:40 How bringing a CTO in-house changed the company 49:00 Finding investors with strategic value 50:10 Advice for an AI-powered founder funding platform 54:06 Where to find FLTRD & closing Show notes: Blog: https://womendisruptingtech.blog/2026/09/17/episode-170/ Substack: https://womendisruptingtech.substack.com/p/episode-170 Connect with Anke Kuik and FLTRD: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankekuik/ Website: https://www.fltrd.nl/App: Download the FLTRD app in the Apple App Store or Google Play Store. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fltrd.nl/ Connect with Dirkjan Hupkes: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dirkjan-hupkes/ Funding Coach tool: https://fundingcoach.ai Substack: https://womendisruptingtech.substack.com/ About Women Disrupting Tech Every week, Women Disrupting Tech covers the decisions, patterns, and structural realities that female founders and investors rarely discuss in public but run into every time they meet. Follow to get it in your feed. 🎧 Listen to Women Disrupting Tech on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube. 👉 Subscribe for more conversations with women building the future of health tech.

Juliette is the creator of the AI Flower Framework and founder of the AI Flower Foundation. She spent a year mapping how AI could impact her job as an engineering manager, and discovered why so many AI pilots don’t scale. She turned what she found into an open-source AI framework that maps 152 IT activities against 25 levels of AI capability to show what evolves, fossilizes, or stays human work. Whether you’re a founder, engineering leader, or a woman in tech looking for a concrete way to find out whether AI is actually the right solution to your problem, this episode will give you the three questions you need to ask before you start. What you'll learn in this episode: Why most AI pilots stall before they ever scale Why "ten percent wrong" becomes "one hundred percent wrong" once AI touches it The three questions to ask before reaching for AI: AI, automation, or a system fix How 152 IT activities map against 25 levels of AI capability Why she kept the framework open source instead of charging for it What her own redundancy taught her about staying in control of her career Her one safeguard for any AI tool that recommends or matches people Chapters: 00:00 Introducing Juliette van der Laarse and the AI Flower framework 05:19 From childhood programming to AI research and corporate engineering leadership 08:17 Why Juliette started the framework: clarity, career impact, and AI transformation 10:05 Why pilot-first AI strategies often stall at the business case stage 13:35 Why pilots are useful but not enough for enterprise-wide change 16:35 How the framework addresses fear, trust, and job stability 19:11 Juliette's redundancy experience and what it taught her about career resilience 27:33 Will AI take all jobs, and what has to happen before that becomes realistic 29:51 System readiness, regulation, and why some work may stay human 32:06 AI overhype versus useful automation 33:50 Why shallow IT training can lead teams to overuse AI 36:57 How mentoring and senior coaching could scale knowledge better 41:10 The structure of the AI Flower: activities, standards, and excellence 48:02 AI capability as 25 levels of maturity and scope 51:49 Mapping AI capability to IT activities and fossilization of tasks 54:57 How the model shows role evolution across DevOps, test, and infrastructure work 59:27 Capturing undocumented knowledge and local context in companies 1:03:06 Building internal knowledge gathering and documentation workflows with AI 1:09:21 Peer review, critique, and building a board of naysayers 1:15:46 How the framework changes over time while keeping a stable structure 1:18:41 Why the framework is open source instead of monetized 1:25:40 Using the model to map AI risk and suggest controls 1:30:06 Where companies should start, and the biggest mistake to avoid 1:35:23 Why Juliette is setting up a foundation around the framework 1:37:35 Safeguards for an AI funding coach and avoiding self-reinforcing bias 1:41:15 Where to follow Juliette as the foundation and framework grow Show notes: Blog: https://womendisruptingtech.blog/2026/09/10/episode-169/ Substack: https://womendisruptingtech.substack.com/p/episode-169?r=2v0lts&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true Connect with Juliette van der Laarse and the AI Flower Foundation Juliette: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliettevanderlaarse/ AI Flower Foundation: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ai-flower-foundation/ Connect with host Dirkjan Hupkes LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dirkjan-hupkes/ FundingCoach website: https://fundingcoach.ai Substack: https://womendisruptingtech.substack.com/ About Women Disrupting Tech Every week, Women Disrupting Tech covers the decisions, patterns, and structural realities that female founders and investors rarely discuss in public but run into every time they meet. Follow to get it in your feed. 🎧 Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Amazon Music. 👉 Subscribe for more conversations with women building the future of tech.

Karianne Kraaijestein spent years building resilience through sport, from gymnastics to indoor climbing to yoga, before starting triathlons at 47. Now she's the founder of Adaptive, a coaching platform for female endurance athletes navigating a different kind of endurance test: the hormonal transition. In this episode, we talk about her own journey in endurance sports, why she is focusing on women who are in a hormonal transition, and what data is needed to enable peak performance for women at this stage of their lives. If you're an endurance athlete in perimenopause or postmenopause, or you coach one, and training has stopped working for reasons nobody can quite explain, this episode has pointers on where to look for strategies that improve performance. For female founders and women in tech building trust-dependent products in spaces where the data doesn't exist yet, Karianne provides insights that can help you navigate the early stages. What you'll learn in this episode: Why standard training plans, built for a generic body, fail women in the hormonal transition Why tracking sleep, heat regulation, and training load matters more than tracking hormones directly How Karianne finished part of the S’GRAIL in Girona on a torn ACL, and what that taught her about risk Why "too much heart and not enough mind" bankrupted her previous yoga studio, and what she's doing differently with Adaptive Why she considers a scientific advisory board the biggest de-risking factor for investors in a trust-dependent product How letting the community "almost be part of the building" shapes Adaptive's product development Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 04:45 About Karianne and Adaptive 07:33 The Journey into Endurance Sports 10:28 Mental Challenges in Endurance Sports 13:29 The Importance of Goal Setting 16:22 Navigating Individuality in Triathlons 19:14 Overcoming Physical Setbacks 22:20 The Recovery Process and Age Factors 25:01 Building Adaptive for Women 28:13 Understanding Hormonal Transitions 31:05 Energy Management and Training Adjustments 34:11 The Role of Data in Training 36:43 Adaptive's Unique Approach 39:49 Integrating Research into Adaptive 41:33 The Power of Athlete Data 42:47 Research Collaborations and Insights 44:17 Understanding Amateur vs. Professional Athletes 45:30 Adaptive vs. Competitors in Women's Fitness 46:38 Building a Community for Endurance Athletes 47:55 Coaching Integration with Adaptive 49:23 Business Model and Pricing Strategy 52:56 Proving the Business Case for Adaptive 55:41 Data Privacy and Trust Issues 1:00:10 The Role of Community in Data Sharing 1:01:34 Building Trust with Scientific Validation 1:03:20 Future Expansion and Market Opportunities 1:04:46 Navigating Burnout and Performance 1:09:22 Lessons from Past Experiences 1:12:50 Design Principles for Personalized Solutions 1:15:01 Connecting with Karianne, Adaptive and Future Plans Show notes Blog: https://womendisruptingtech.blog/2026/09/03/episode-168/ Substack: https://womendisruptingtech.substack.com/p/episode-168 Connect with Karianne Kraaijestein and Adaptive LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kariannekraaijestein/ Connect with host Dirkjan Hupkes LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dirkjan-hupkes/ FundingCoach.ai: https://fundingcoach.ai Substack: https://womendisruptingtech.substack.com/ About Women Disrupting Tech Every week, Women Disrupting Tech covers the decisions, patterns, and structural realities that female founders and investors rarely discuss in public but run into every time they meet. Follow to get it in your feed. 🎧 Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Amazon Music. 👉 Subscribe for more conversations with women building the future of health tech.