Female leadership is crucial to the success of startups

The gender gap in Latin American startups remains. Only 37% of companies have at least one woman in the C-level, but even at the CEO level, women only represent 14%, according to the 2024 Latam Startup Salary Study.

But the good news is that we are slowly seeing how this inertia is being broken, thanks to the new generations of women who are taking the lead in the startup scene in Latin America. Examples include Julieta, Catalina and Macarena , winners of the Latam Health Champions 2025, who earned the right to participate in the so-called "Mission Boston", an event that seeks to open the way for health technology developers in our region.

Julieta Luz Porta is a commercial engineer and CEO of SphereBio . She has two partners, Dr. Guido Molina and Dr. Martín Guerrero, who, with a team of scientists and oncologists, are generating nanovehicles to send signals to the immune system. Today, they are testing them on lethal cancers such as colon, pancreas, melanoma, and with the idea of ​​continuing with infectious and autoimmune diseases, such as HIV.

Thanks to the latest technological convergences, they transmit signals from the tumor to the immune system so that it can attack the tumor. This science was developed in Argentina, but has now caught the attention of Harvard hospitals such as the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Brigham Young Cancer Center. Julieta assures that many people trust what they are doing and the scientific arguments they offer.

Regarding how she faces this challenge as a 27-year-old woman, she tells El Economista that she had already been working on other science projects and always realized that the idea was to bring together great team members while also working on her own safety. “I feel like a soccer coach who puts the best players on the team, and my role is to tell the story of what we're doing, so that people who don't understand the subject will learn about it and want to support it.”

Thanks to a business and science program , the team was formed, leaving her to lead the project. "Although as a young woman I have to face many prejudices and challenges, I am confident that the results will be the ones that will silence everyone."

Now, what she and her team need are funds, financing to complete clinical trials, so they're looking for partners. "For me, this opportunity to travel as a group on a potentially commercial mission, with the contacts we're presented with, is unique, because having the best technology is useless if people don't know about it. That's why I'm very grateful to be able to build bridges through this recognition that the Latam Health Champions have given us."

Motivate other women

Catalina Isaza Falla, a product design engineer and CEO of Innmetec , shares that this project arose from an alliance between two universities in Colombia, one medical and the other engineering and administration, "from which a spin-off of personalized implants for bone replacement emerged."

In 2014, Catalina began working with this research group and then, in her master's degree, she developed one of the materials that is promoted today and that has a great differentiator, "it is a material very similar to bone and has the ability to integrate with it ." Along the way, she realized that pediatric patients had to undergo repeated surgeries to change implants and that if metals heavier than bone were used, it caused damage, so she looked for an alternative.

In 2019, the product was licensed and at the same time Innmetec was created, in order to operate at the pace that the market requires, now at 33 years old, she assures that “this has been a very big learning process, from being a very technical person to having to be the face of this project, because since the company was created, we knew that I would be the CEO, it's about training me to be a leader and run a business, in addition to managing my emotions and having a family, there are many things that you have to learn and transform, this journey has been very cool.”

She adds that she has had the fortune of coming from a university where gender equality is promoted, where women study engineering, scientific careers and lead their teams, however she knows that this is not the scenario for everyone, which is why she wants to motivate other women, "tell them that they can achieve many things, I think I am one of those examples in which if the ecosystem promotes the impulse to women, this bears fruit and we can be in leadership roles ."

She concludes that "being able to come to Boston and experience the ecosystem is another step that will allow me to establish myself in a field that is definitely not easy for a woman, but we are achieving it."

From designer to entrepreneur

Macarena Silva Maldonado, 26, is the CEO of Ari Health Design . She explains that everything started with the Ari-test device, a self-test device to detect HPV in women that emerged in 2022 after her thesis project.

She sought to empower women's health and, while reviewing medical devices, realized that almost all patents are from the United States or China. "There are very few in Latin America, so I asked myself, why do we always have to import all the technological advances and feel they are more important if they come from Europe? If in our countries we can do the same and even take our developments to other parts of the world."

She asserts that despite the risks one takes and the fears every entrepreneur has, things can be achieved and made concrete. “I always tell my team that I'm the kind of designer who wants to make things happen, not just publish a paper. I'll only be happy when my product is in the hands of women taking the exams .”

Macarena takes the opportunity to share that Latin America has a lot of talent, but we struggle to emerge and make our presence felt in the world. "That sometimes leads us to think we can't. As the leader of this project, I'm learning a lot about turning this concept on its head."

Today, his product is just a couple of clinical validations away from launch, so all this LHC experience is a perfect fit. This is his first funded business trip, where he's been able to showcase his development to leading researchers, programs for startups, and experience the most powerful healthcare innovation ecosystem in the world.

She acknowledges that the experience is unique, but not easy. “In my case, I'm a medical device designer, and that's a very difficult thing to explain in Latin America. Some people tell me it must be very boring, but for me, it's the best thing in the world, and how great it is that I found it. I'm absorbing everything like a sponge, because even knowing the journeys of the other winners is a great guide for me on what to do and what not to do. I was scared about the trip, as for me it's the first big leap and my introduction to the world and the innovation ecosystem in a much more tangible and real way, but that fear I had is gone.”

She applied for government funding in her home country, Chile, where she raised around $32,000 for a year and a half of research . Now she's working on patent applications, and Macarena isn't going to stop. She set a goal for her startup, and today it's a reality.