Stone & Chalk has doubled its help for girls founders in response to overwhelming demand for its Worldwide Ladies’s Day Scholarship program.
Purposes in 2026 surged 60% on final 12 months, so the variety of scholarships awarded within the six-month residency program had been elevated from six to 12.
The 2026 recipients span well being tech, defence tech, synthetic intelligence and cyber safety, and shall be primarily based throughout Stone & Chalk’s hubs in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide.
Stone & Chalk NSW GM Jacqui Duncan stated this system, launched in 2022, not solely provides a workspace for six months, it additionally consists of connections to buyers, mentors and peer founders, plus entry into applications tailor-made to early-stage progress.
“A few of the most profitable and impactful firms on this planet have been constructed and co-built by ladies – Canva, Airwallex, Tala and Stax,” she stated.
“And but, feminine founders obtain a fraction of the funding their male counterparts do. They’ve a more durable time breaking into networks, discovering mentors, and being taken as critically as they need to. The Stone & Chalk Worldwide Ladies’s Day Scholarship allows entry to an innovation neighborhood and a peer group that helps ladies succeed.”
The dazzling dozen embody Dunya Hassan, who’s constructing a transportable AI-powered tactile machine that permits blind and deafblind customers to entry data in actual time at her Sydney startup BrailleGPT, whereas in Adelaide, Storme Paes is constructing Elemental IV, a modular sterile manufacturing platform for important injectable medicines.
Listed below are all 12 2026 scholarship recipients.
Melbourne
- Helena Ngo – Raffy Allergy: A each day medical protocol delivered through a cell app, serving to bridge the hole between specialist oversight and residential implementation for allergy desensitisation.
- Elena Tsalanidis – Deeligence: An AI-powered due diligence platform that takes legislation companies from information room to client-ready report, changing the patchwork of spreadsheets and disconnected instruments.
Adelaide
- Ragya Kaul – NoMind Techniques: A zero-dependency deployment device for air-gapped environments, serving defence, mining, monetary programs and different important infrastructure.
- Marissa Bond – Pondering Mode: An edtech startup serving to academics confirm real pupil understanding in an AI-enabled world via locked-down defence environments.
- Michelle Verco – Flaiver: A RegTech constructing a federated credit score threat platform that permits banks to mannequin and provision credit score threat utilizing fashionable infrastructure and shared intelligence.
- Storme Paes – Elemental IV: Australia’s first modular, GMP-licensed sterile manufacturing platform for IV saline and important injectable medicines.
Sydney
- Janine Owen – Grant’d: An clever grants platform that makes use of AI to match companies and organisations with related funding alternatives.
- Fatima Arifeen – Voltaire Authorized: AI-powered software program that centralises and manages professional bono work and volunteer applications for the authorized sector.
- Karen Perks – MiKare Well being: A digital well being expertise firm delivering safe, patient-controlled well being intelligence options throughout Australia and worldwide markets.
- Laetitia Andrac – Understanding Zoe: The primary AI-powered platform reworking fragmented care into coordinated, neuroaffirming help for neurodivergent youngsters and their households.
- Chantelle Ralevska – Psyber: A cyber safety consciousness and human-risk coaching supplier.
- Dunya Hassan – BrailleGPT: A conveyable, AI-powered tactile machine enabling blind and deafblind customers to entry data in actual time via dynamic Braille, audio, and haptic suggestions.
