This International Women's Day, Stone & Chalk is turning commitment into action. Australia's largest innovation community is awarding 12 female founders with six-month residency scholarships, doubling its original plan after applications surged 60% from last year.
It's the kind of tangible support that has defined Stone & Chalk's approach to gender equity since it launched its International Women's Day (IWD) Scholarship program in 2022.
Each recipient of the IWD Scholarship receives access to a modern workspace at a Stone & Chalk hub for six months, connections to investors, mentors and peer founders, and entry into programs tailored to early-stage growth.
Female founders continue to face challenges in securing growth-stage funding. According to the State of Australian Startup Funding 2025 report, all-female founding teams secured just 2% of total capital last year, and only 24% of deals involved a female founder. Fundraising confidence among female founders has plummeted: just 43% plan to raise in the next 12 months, down from 83% in 2024. The report points to limited access to mentors and investors, and a lack of ecosystem support for late-stage progression.
Stone & Chalk's scholarships are designed to address these barriers to gender equity. "Some of the most successful and impactful companies in the world have been built and co-built by women - Canva, Airwallex, Tala and Stax," said Jacqui Duncan, General Manager NSW at Stone & Chalk. "And yet, female founders receive a fraction of the funding their male counterparts do. They have a harder time breaking into networks, finding mentors, and being taken as seriously as they should. The Stone & Chalk International Women's Day Scholarship enables access to an innovation community and a peer group that helps women succeed."
That impact is already showing. Molly Fullee, a previous IWD Scholarship recipient and Co-founder of climate tech startup Onvol, said the experience changed the way she approached business: "Being surrounded by other entrepreneurs empowered me to shoot for the moon. I started thinking bigger, pushing harder and taking risks that I might not have taken otherwise."
The 2026 recipients span health tech, defence tech, artificial intelligence and cyber security, and will be based across Stone & Chalk's hubs in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide.
Among them is Dunya Hassan, Founder of BrailleGPT, who is building a portable AI-powered tactile device that enables blind and deafblind users to access information in real time. In Melbourne, Elena Tsalanidis is scaling Deeligence, an AI-powered due diligence platform that takes law firms from data room to client-ready report. And in Adelaide, Storme Paes is building Elemental IV, Australia's first modular sterile manufacturing platform for essential injectable medicines - a sovereign solution to rising hospital demand.
These women will join a growing community of female founders who have used Stone & Chalk's infrastructure and networks to accelerate their growth. For Stone & Chalk, this support is embedded into how the organisation operates. Women make up 75% of the organisation's leadership team, 60% of its board, and 63% of all staff.
The full list of 2026 scholarship recipients is included in the appendix below.
About Stone & Chalk
Stone & Chalk Group is Australia's largest innovation community. The organisation supports startups, scaleups, corporations and governments at every stage of their innovation journey. Over the past 10 years, Stone & Chalk has supported 3,000+ companies to raise a collective $4.2 billion in funding, with 100,000+ jobs created.
2026 IWD Scholarship Recipients
Melbourne
Helena Ngo - Raffy Allergy:**A daily medical protocol delivered via a mobile app, helping bridge the gap between specialist oversight and home implementation for allergy desensitisation.
Elena Tsalanidis - Deeligence:** An AI-powered due diligence platform that takes law firms from data room to client-ready report, replacing the patchwork of spreadsheets and disconnected tools.
Adelaide
Ragya Kaul - NoMind Systems: A zero-dependency deployment tool for air-gapped environments, serving defence, mining, financial systems and other critical infrastructure.
Marissa Bond - Thinking Mode: An edtech startup helping teachers verify genuine student understanding in an AI-enabled world through locked-down defence environments.
Michelle Verco - Flaiver: A RegTech building a federated credit risk platform that enables banks to model and provision credit risk using modern infrastructure and shared intelligence.
Storme Paes - Elemental IV: Australia's first modular, GMP-licensed sterile manufacturing platform for IV saline and essential injectable medicines.
Sydney
Janine Owen - Grant'd: An intelligent grants platform that uses AI to match businesses and organisations with relevant funding opportunities.
Fatima Arifeen - Voltaire Legal: AI-powered software that centralises and manages pro bono work and volunteer programs for the legal sector.
Karen Perks - MiKare Health: A digital health technology company delivering secure, patient-controlled health intelligence solutions across Australia and international markets.
Laetitia Andrac - Understanding Zoe: The first AI-powered platform transforming fragmented care into coordinated, neuroaffirming support for neurodivergent children and their families.
Chantelle Ralevska - Psyber: A cyber security awareness and human-risk training provider.
Dunya Hassan - BrailleGPT: A portable, AI-powered tactile device enabling blind and deafblind users to access information in real time through dynamic Braille, audio, and haptic feedback.
