As part of its continued $30 million commitment to provide underrepresented founders with the resources, capital, and community they need to level the startup playing field, AWS is welcoming a cohort of 25 women founders to its AWS Impact Accelerator program.
The new cohort members were selected from a competitive field of thousands of applicants and chosen by a diverse committee of AWS startup experts based on the strength of their idea, technical readiness, and an extensive application and interview process. AWS looks forward to providing them with the support they need to accelerate their businesses and narrow the gender funding gap of the startup world.
Each of these startups will receive up to $225,000 in cash andAWS Activate credits, an extensive and individually curated training curriculum, mentoring and technical guidance, introductions to Amazon leaders and teams, networking opportunities with potential investors, and ongoing advisory support.
Meet the 25 startups and their founding teams who will bring a wide range of expertise and experiences to the AWS Startups community, and keep reading to dive deeper into just a handful of their stories.
A closer look at members of the Women Founders cohort
Amber Buker, co-founder and CEO
Totem | Tulsa, OK
Totem | Tulsa, OK
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Amber Buker is the founder and CEO of Totem, the first digital bank by and for indigenous people. In founding Totem, Buker became one of just three Native American women in the U.S. to raise institutional capital. An enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation, Buker aims to create pathways to financial inclusion for Native Americans through digital banking. Totem is founded and funded by Native Americans and creates pathways to financial inclusion for indigenous people through digital banking. Totem partners with sovereign tribal governments to provide relevant financial products and education, and to make tribal benefits more accessible.
Diana Muturia, CEO
Clyn | Phoenix, AZ
Clyn | Phoenix, AZ
![An info card that includes the headshot of a woman wearing a black shirt and blazer on the left, and text that reads "Diana Muturia CEO of Clyn" on the right with two shades of blue in the background.](https://assets.aboutamazon.com/dims4/default/b643186/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1600x900+0+0/resize/767x431!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Famazon-blogs-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Ff9%2F36%2F002b8a8643e2876ece238447ac96%2Fawswomenfounders-card-dianamuturia1.jpg)
After dropping out of college, Muturia struggled to create rapport and negotiate her prices as her neighborhood’s sort-out cleaner. She also saw how cleaners were often treated as second-class citizens and wanted to change that perception. After meeting with other small cleaning providers, especially in Black and Hispanic communities, and hearing their unique stories, Muturia was inspired to create Clyn, an app aimed at optimizing the cleaning industry. Along with improving efficiency when connecting with home service providers, Clyn can help consumers realize the incredible work cleaners do to make our environments shine.
Jennifer L. Williams, PHR, founder and CEO
DIVERSD | New York, NY
DIVERSD | New York, NY
![An info card that includes the headshot of a woman on the left, and text that reads "Jennifer L. Williams Founder & CEO of DIVERSD" on the right with two shades of blue in the background.](https://assets.aboutamazon.com/dims4/default/f5ef564/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1600x900+0+0/resize/767x431!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Famazon-blogs-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fcc%2F96%2F34b359f2435f824e1f04d4502968%2Fawswomenfounders-card-jenniferlwilliams1.jpg)
A proud HBCU graduate of Howard University, Jennifer L. Williams, PHR, is determined to infuse inclusion into organizational DNA—because she believes workplace safety is supposed to allow the totality of a person to thrive. Williams has an affinity of bending rules and pushing envelopes. In workplaces, she routinely found herself at odds with conformity and culture fits. As a result of these patterns, she built her expertise in diversity, equity, inclusion + intersectionality, HR, and Big Data, and thus created DIVERSD. DIVERSD is an AI-driven approach to shaping Human Resources around the concerns of overlooked groups. A “CDO in a box,” DIVERSD offers a bot interface for nonjudgmental HR interactions, pattern detection to subvert marginalization and integrations to preserve anonymity.
Karen Lee, CEO
Glou | Boston, MA
Glou | Boston, MA
![An info card that includes the headshot of a woman wearing a white shirt and grey jacket on the left, and text that reads "Karen Lee CEO of Glou" on the right with two shades of blue in the background.](https://assets.aboutamazon.com/dims4/default/cb41f1d/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1600x900+0+0/resize/767x431!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Famazon-blogs-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Ffb%2Fcc%2F88d8382d433c948e7219cf807446%2Fawswomenfounders-card-karenlee1.jpg)
After working in and studying retail, Karen Lee, founder and CEO of Glou, brings to life an e-commerce experience built on the psychology and existing pain points of beauty lovers. Lee has an insatiable curiosity for beauty and passion for sustainability and is determined to make shopping better for people and the planet. “Glou is the first company to approach sustainability by not selling anything to consumers, but rather recirculating all the great makeup, skincare, and beauty products that are already out there,” said Lee. “With AWS, I can create a concrete tech roadmap for the next five years.”
Kate Anthony, CEO
Euphoria | Denver, CO
Euphoria | Denver, CO
![An info card that includes the headshot of a woman wearing a red and white polka dot shirt on the left, and text that reads "Kate Anthony CEO of Euphoria" on the right with two shades of blue in the background.](https://assets.aboutamazon.com/dims4/default/93cfea0/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1600x900+0+0/resize/767x431!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Famazon-blogs-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F7c%2F07%2Fed852e5b499a8505d58cd6504a8a%2Fawswomenfounders-card-kateanthony1.jpg)
Kate Anthony describes herself as “a proud woman that happens to be transgender.” She is an entrepreneur and the CEO of Euphoria, a technology company that creates software and services for transgender people. She's been named one of America's Greatest Disruptors by Newsweek, is a former TEDx speaker, and was recognized as one of Go Magazine's 100 Women We Love, just to name a few. Euphoria is trans-majority owned and operated, and is the only transgender technology company with a female and transgender CEO. Their mission is to restore agency and dignity to transgender souls.
Trini Bensusan Millé, founder and CEO
TeeRead | Miami, FL
TeeRead | Miami, FL
![An info card that includes the headshot of a woman wearing a white graphic T-shirt on the left, and text that reads "Trini Bensusan Mille Founder & CEO of TeeRead" on the right with two shades of blue in the background.](https://assets.aboutamazon.com/dims4/default/0f85421/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1600x900+0+0/resize/767x431!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Famazon-blogs-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F60%2F3a%2F263fc377452396ebc294979fc212%2Fawswomenfounders-card-trinimille1.jpg)
Trini Bensusan Milléis creating a freer future, equipping kids with tools to become their full selves. As the founder and CEO of TeeRead, a Miami-based EdTech, she is using AI and speech recognition to solve the biggest problem in education—reading. TeeRead is a platform for parents and teachers that uses AI speech recognition to make reading intervention scalable, to radically increase outcomes. The platform automatically diagnoses students’ reading levels, pinpoints reading issues and curates content based on a student’s ability. Their goal is to make our literary crisis a problem of the past.
![An image with a dark blue background that reads "8 weeks, 25 startups. Serious growth." on the left, and a variety of startup logos on the right. The bottom left includes an illustrated image of a building and plants, and the top left corner shows the AWS logo.](https://assets.aboutamazon.com/dims4/default/15ca2a2/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1600x900+0+0/resize/767x431!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Famazon-blogs-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F1d%2Fd0%2Fdbbf56764ee4b07f4575a4e2dfd9%2Fawswomenfounders-inline-endcard-1600x9001.jpg)
AWS is eager to back this new round of businesses, leveraging the power of our ecosystem to initiate long-overdue change, and position ourselves as the first infrastructure choice for promising but overlooked startups. Visit the AWS Startup Loft to learn more about the AWS Impact Accelerator for Women Founders and future cohorts launching in 2023.