FoundHER Summit: Build x Lead x Fund 2026

✨ The FoundHER Summit ✨ The FoundHER Summit is a high-energy, one-day event designed to support female founders elevate their business, no matter where they are on their journey - from first build to first raise. We’re bringing together women founders, investors, tech partners, corporations, and ecosystem leaders for a day of practical insights, powerful conversations, and game-changing connections.

🌟 What to Expect Expert-led education on the latest tech, resilience and growth strategies Tangible take-aways Interactive sessions Two-room format with key sessions recorded for post-event access Networking drinks post event

💡 Why Attend? Build your confidence and connect with like minded founders and business owners Navigate the tech landscape and understand what makes sense for you Learn how to use social media to build a brand and reach your audience Protect your mental health and resilience Connect directly with partners looking to support founders at every stage Learn how to vibe code or set up Claude (or Grok) correctly Build and strengthen your network and met some really awesome people! Headshot outdated? Get a new one at the event from our friends at Nacara Studio (additional cost $88 inc. GST. Bookings strictly required. Book here: https://luma.com/6p5mxm4l) Goodie bags generously gifted by Snackproud - powered by Feedwell

AgendaA main stage and breakout room with dynamic sessions across capital strategy, tech and AI, personal branding, selling online and leadership Fireside chats, capability breakouts and pitching opportunities with those in the room Expert speakers that cover the whole startup journey - see below! Bring your laptop!

This is THE room to be in to Build → Lead → Grow → Fund

This is THE female founder startup event you don't want to miss.

Full agenda to come.

Event Details 📅 Tuesday, 24 November 2026

⏰ 9:30 AM – 6:00 PM AEDT 📌 Western Sydney Startup Hub, North Parramatta NSW

👥 In Person | Limited spots

🎟️ In-Person: Early bird $99 (10% discount for our TRW Alumni - reach out the team at admin@techreadywomen.com to get the discount code)

🎟️ Livestream: $28 - reach out the team at admin@techreadywomen.com if you want to join a watch party at a Tank Stream Labs location across Australia.

Don’t miss your chance to be part of this transformative event!

Tickets are limited, secure yours today and join us at the forefront of Australia’s inclusive innovation movement.

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About the Speakers Your Hosts Watch this space as we continue to add more and more amazing speakers! It is going to be great!

Nicola Mills is the Founder and Group Managing Director of Sunny Balcony Group and co-founder and Chair of CABER Group – together spanning professional services, recruitment, funding, AI, and engineering across Australia, New Zealand, the UK, the USA, the Middle East and Brazil, with combined revenue approaching $32M. She is the architect of the Supported Start-Up model, enabling 8+ employees to become founders within the group. A founding member of the EY Asia Pacific Entrepreneurial Winning Women program, Nicola has been recognised as a Smart Company Eight Entrepreneurs to Watch, a finalist in The CEO Magazine Global Executive of the Year Awards, 2025 TITAN Business Award winner and a Silver Stevie Award winner.

Jessica Spendlove is a performance dietitian, keynote speaker, advisor, author and podcast host who helps leaders and high-performing teams sustain performance without burnout. With 15+ years’ experience across elite sport, defence and corporate environments, Jess has worked with Olympic medallists, world champions, professional sporting teams and Australia’s Special Forces. Today, she partners with leaders and high-growth organisations to build sustainable performance through practical, science-backed strategies for energy, recovery and resilience. Jess is the author of For the Long Run and host of Stay at the Top.

Bethan Timmins is an engineering practice leader, product strategist and advocate for women who build. As Adoption and Practice Lead for Westpac’s Engineering Practice, she works with more than 10,000 engineers on the thing that quietly decides whether a large organisation ships or stalls: standards that help rather than police, community that’s real, and craft that gets recognised. She was previously Chief Product Owner for Developer Enablement, shaping the platforms, tooling and AI coding capability those engineers build on, and she co-authored the You Build It You Run It playbook on giving product teams real ownership of what they ship. A systems thinker at heart, she also advises the product community at Organa, helping founders take an idea all the way to a customer, with a focus on women building extraordinary things on a fraction of the runway their peers are given.

Samantha McCallum is an innovation leader, CX strategist and startup advisor who helps businesses build growth strategies around their customers. She blends strategic foresight with proven methods, including Lean Startup, Human-Centred Design and Agile, to help organisations anticipate change and deliver what comes next. Her 20 years of experience span consultancies, digital agencies and client-side leadership, including Head of Experience Design at Latitude Financial, Head of Marketing at Fairfax Media and Strategy Director at R/GA. Across telco, finance, FMCG, media, retail and government, she has led teams and shaped products for brands such as Telstra, nbn, Macquarie Bank, Woolworths and McDonald’s. As Managing Director of her innovation consultancy Outfoxed, she now advises and mentors a portfolio of startups while working with enterprise and ASX-listed clients, and she brings a talent for aligning everyone from the Board to the delivery team around a shared vision.

Jade Porter brings more than 25 years of experience in the technology industry, working with enterprises, government, commercial organisations, and more recently digital natives and start-ups across Australia and New Zealand. At Dell, Jade led the High Performance Compute business through the emergence of machine learning and the evolution toward today's large language models, helping customers turn advanced compute into practical outcomes. Jade later joined CrowdStrike in its mission to Stop Breaches, bringing deep cybersecurity expertise to customers facing an increasingly sophisticated threat landscape. For the past four years at Cloudflare, Jade has overseen the growth of the Digital Native and Start-Up segment, where partners and customers are seeing a wide range of use cases for Cloudflare to Connect, Protect and Build in the AI era. This work draws on a career that spans infrastructure, security and the leading edge of AI, and reflects a consistent focus on helping organisations adopt new technology with confidence.

Gwynne Leftwich is a Customer Engineer at Cloudflare in Sydney. She works with enterprises and high-growth organisations to secure, modernise and scale their internet-facing infrastructure across networks, applications and APIs. Gwynne has more than a decade of experience in business development, strategy and technical solution delivery. She works closely with security, infrastructure and engineering leaders on technical discovery, solution design and hands-on proofs of concept. Her work now includes helping organisations adopt AI securely, from protecting APIs and data flows to designing architectures that can support AI workloads at scale.Gwynne's career began in banking and finance. She holds an MBA from the University of Sydney and a Master of Finance from Macquarie University. She is particularly interested in AI security, bot management and the governance challenges of generative AI. She focuses on practical solutions that help organisations move faster with confidence.