Entrepreneurial Winning Women™ EMEIA Class of 2021

Barbara Lax, located in Switzerland, holds a master’s degree in Civil Engineering and in Numerical Methods. She studied and lived in Germany, Spain and Switzerland. After some years in research, she joined Caterpillar in 2002. For 12 years, she focused on strategy, marketing and business development. In 2011, she decided to quit her corporate job and create her own company, the Little Green House, an innovative childcare group. In 2017, Barbara received the Businesswoman of the Year Award from Veuve Clicquot Switzerland. She was a nominee for the Awards at EY in 2019  and at the Swiss Economic Forum in 2016 and the Genilem selection in 2012, and her company won the IMD Start-Up Award in 2018. Barbara is married and has a daughter. She loves endurance outdoor sports and has completed two Ironman Triathlons.

Denise van Gorp, located in the Netherlands, is co-founder and managing director of Allegro Medical. Allegro Medical is the partner of healthcare professionals in realizing innovation to contribute to futureproof, accessible and high-quality care. Denise studied Business Administration at the Erasmus University, and achieved a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Strategic Management. In 2018, she founded Allegro Medical, a project and consultancy company in the Netherlands with an absolute focus on healthcare. Allegro Medical has grown into a strongly emerging brand in the Netherlands with good references and a growing team of 20 employees.

Ewa Chodakowska, located in Poland, is a promoter of a healthy lifestyle, pioneer of fitness in Poland and a self-made businesswoman. She is co-owner and co-founder of BeBio (wellness), co-creator of Purella Superfoods (healthy snacks and natural supplements), co-creator of Be Diet Catering, co-creator of beBIO (eco cosmetics) and co-creator of Mission Swim (swimwear and homewear). In 2017, she created the first and largest subscription video on-demand fitness training platform, BeActiveTV. After 10 years in business, she embarked on a new mission — to take care of the health of children and teenagers. She produced an animated training for children and, with experts, creates free materials for PE teachers. Ewa is also involved in various social causes and projects, especially those that support women and children. She is the initiator of a campaign that supports women who experience domestic violence and #ThinkPink, supporting women fighting breast cancer. 

Floor van Rooy, located in the Netherlands, is the co-founder and co-CEO of the Parfumado Group with two daughter companies: Parfumado, a B2C perfume subscription service and Rocket Campaigns, a B2B data-driven targeted sampling company. The Parfumado Group is operational in the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK, and Floor runs it alongside her brother Martijn van Rooy. Floor lives in the Dutch city of Haarlem with her husband and three daughters. She studied at the University of Amsterdam, achieving a bachelor’s and master’s degree in International Tax Law. Before The Parfumado Group, she had ventures in the fast-moving consumer goods sector, gaining experience in marketing, sales and operations. She started Parfumado in 2017 — growing her team to 50 FTEs, and expanding to the UK and Belgium. After the success of Floor and Martijn’s first company, Rocket Campaigns was born in 2020.

Jaclyn Schnau, located in Germany, is a passionate advocate and speaker on healthy nutrition and working moms. She is the founder and CEO of Pumpkin Organics, a pioneer of organic, plant-centric, sustainable nutrition for babies and kids. Before starting the company in 2016, she was the CEO of Windelbar, an online baby supplies retailer, as well as the Chief Customer Officer at windeln.de. She has a broad marketing background with world-renowned brands such as Häagen Dazs and Pizza Hut. After she dug deeper into the nutrition world, a general sense of frustration about the state of baby food led her to launch Pumpkin Organics. She graduated from the University of Victoria with a bachelor’s degree in Commerce before earning her MBA at Harvard Business School where she met Florian, her husband and co-founder. Jaclyn lives in Munich with her husband and daughter Olivia, who is Pumpkin Organics’ Chief Product Officer.

Jo Chidley, located in the United Kingdom, is a circular economy expert, chemist, herbal botanist and co-founder of Beauty Kitchen, which was founded in 2014 and is the highest-scoring B Corp in the UK beauty industry. Jo has set out to change the face of the beauty industry by creating the most effective, natural and sustainable beauty products in the world. Widely regarded as a pioneer of sustainable beauty, Jo is championing a Reuse Revolution through sustainable innovation by implementing cradle-to-cradle design into Beauty Kitchen’s circular approach. Jo has been instrumental in developing the world’s first closed-loop solution for beauty packaging and has powered the service behind the ground-breaking Return•Refill•Repeat program and Refill Stations. Beauty Kitchen is recognized on the UK’s 50 Most Disruptive Companies list and has won numerous industry awards. Jo also collaborates with businesses in other industries to offer a circular solution to their packaging.

Kuntal Fisher, located in the United Kingdom, is the founder and CEO of FIECON, a health economics consultancy committed to bringing life-changing therapeutics to market. FIECON was founded out of a desire to make a difference by putting culture at the center of the vision; helping patients gain access to medicine using the power of health economics; and giving back to those in need. Over the last 5 years, FIECON has grown 40% to 100% each year, with a consistent culture score of 92% to 94%, an employee retention rate of 92%, and direct charitable donations of over a quarter of a million pounds. FIECON has built FIECON Model Builder, a tool that builds essential cost-effectiveness models for medicines in a matter of minutes and gives patients faster access to medicines. Kuntal formerly worked as a research scientist and strategy consultant with a focus on the pharmaceutical industry. 

Luiza Carpov, located in Romania, is the founder and general manager of Yawo Services Romania, a freight forwarding company providing worldwide air and ocean freight services, customs brokerage and end-to-end transportation solutions. She started her entrepreneurial journey in 2015, after five years of experience in international transports, by sharing the ownership with a former colleague. In 2016, the Yawo brand was added to the Romanian map of freight forwarders after a collaboration with Qatar Airways for an oil and gas project. Starting a business at the age of 24 with little resources or funding forced Luiza to realize that early-stage entrepreneurship was anything but transparent. So, in 2016, she opened a new company, being a sole owner. She started by developing the air freight department, launching time-critical services. Able to translate complex project requirements into transport solutions, Luiza is highly regarded in the automotive, aerospace, textile and pharmaceutical sectors. 

Roisin Callaghan, located in Ireland, is the founder and Group CEO of Cogs & Marvel, a live and digital brand experience agency headquartered in Dublin and recognized as a certified Women-Owned Business in 2021. She has been creating meaningful global campaigns for some of the world’s biggest brands in tech, fashion and finance since the company’s founding in 2006. Identifying an opportunity for the agency’s expansion, Roisin established an in-house travel agency for Cogs & Marvel in 2015. She then moved to San Francisco a year later to open a US base, enabling her to be closer to the Silicon Valley headquarters of key clients that the agency has serviced for 15 years. Now boasting a robust client base, Cogs & Marvel is set to open its third international hub in 2021. Whether virtual, hybrid or live, Roisin is passionate about designing unique and engaging moments for global audiences.

Sophie Schwerdtfeger, located in Germany, is the co-CEO of welearn with its brands wehorse.com and wedog.com. Wehorse.com, an online riding school and wedog.com, an online dog school (launches 1 Feburary 2022) are over-the-top streaming platforms with respected trainers sharing their philosophies in learning videos to inspire, educate and help horse lovers and dog lovers. Together with her co-founder and co-CEO Christian, she acquired the publishing company that primarily sold books and DVDs. They led the company and the business model through a complete digital transformation. Before welearn, Sophie spent 10 years at Tchibo, a company specializing in coffee and non-food products, after studying business in Maastricht, Holland. For five years she was in Switzerland, building a corporate startup that invented an app-controlled capsule coffee machine and launched it in 2016.