The Women Entrepreneurs Taking The Global Water Crisis Into Their Own Hands
Women entrepreneurs rarely think of just themselves when they set out to start a business venture. Our mission as an organization has always been to educate women on going global so, “they can run healthier businesses and create a new future for themselves, their families, and their community,” which directly showcases how the surrounding networks, and the world at large, of women business owners, are often top of mind for such founders. Any enterprise or company is not built, nor sustained, in a vacuum, so maintaining a groupthink mindset of, “How can I lift others up alongside me?” is key and common amongst women entrepreneurs.
This theme is displayed in the article “Three female founders’ plans for addressing water challenges” from the Financial Times, as author Sarah Murray introduces women business owners with global betterment visions for their entrepreneurship. The women featured were “candidates nominated for the prize funding component of a 2023 water challenge launched by FoodShot Global,” which is a “New York-based network of banks, companies and investors [that] supports young companies developing sustainable food system technologies, by providing funding through either equity investments or through its GroundBreaker cash prize.”
Emily Hicks’ company, FREDsense,
“currently offers two products — one for arsenic detection and one for rapid lab analysis of PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) — also dubbed ‘forever chemicals’ because they fail to break down in the environment. Customers are water treatment providers, which require rapid verification of their remediation at utilities, airports, military bases, and other facilities.”
Hicks’ creativity and innovation, paired with a dedication to deprecate the global water crisis is a prime example of a woman entrepreneur prioritizing all of us. Similarly, Adi Yehezkeli, co-founder of Fabumin, has demonstrated her commitment to this world issue by way of, “developing onsite water recycling technology that [she] plans to sell to legume factories, enabling them to reuse 80 percent of their wastewater.”
The closing spotlight Murray shines is on visionary Elie Fink, whose company, Talmond Foods, uses “plant-based snacks made using Ghana’s tropical almonds, which do not require irrigation — unlike true almonds.”
The efforts of Hicks, Yehezkeli, and Fink are as admirable as they are important. It is awe-inspiring to watch women entrepreneurs face a global problem head-on.