Women Entrepreneurs: Protect and promote your brand

Shirin Bidel-Niyat is the Chief of Staff for the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), supporting the Office of the Under Secretary and the USPTO on a wide variety of policy and operational matters. Ms. Bidel-Niyat serves the Director as a principal advisor and helps coordinate a $4 billion budget that supports over 13,000 USPTO employees and the execution of the daily operations, policies, priorities, and global communications that further the President’s intellectual property agenda. In addition, she serves on the USPTO’s Executive Committee and manages the day-to-day policy coordination process with the White House, the Department of Commerce, and other federal agencies. In her previous role at the USPTO, she served as a Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary and Director. Read full biography.

Professor Ferguson is the director of the Farley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, the academic cornerstone for entrepreneurship and innovation at Northwestern University. She teaches a wide range of entrepreneurship and innovation classes and is a Trienens Institute faculty affiliate. She also serves on the executive advisory board of the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers and on the advisory council of CNBC Disruptor 50. Before joining Farley in 2020, Ferguson spent five years at The Garage at Northwestern as an entrepreneur in residence and associate director. Previously, she held leadership positions at multiple startups, including Legacy.com, where she was part of the founding senior management team. She has a B.A. from Vanderbilt University and was Knight Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

Wanting to create an accessible luxury fine jewelry brand, Dana Gordon built her business on the simple but important idea your jewelry should make you feel as comfortable as your favorite t-shirt and as amazing as your little black dress. Gordon strives to create luxurious, everyday pieces women are excited to buy for themselves and gift to their loved ones. Dana Rebecca pieces are designed to become the cherished keepsakes women wear to capture all of life's memories, from major milestones to everyday moments.

Izzy Mokotoff is a senior at Northwestern University and the Co-founder of SteadyScrib, an innovative med-tech startup that developed the world's first writing utensil designed specifically for individuals with Parkinson's Disease. Under her leadership, SteadyScrib obtained essential IP protections, including a provisional utility patent, trademark, and a tech transfer agreement. Mokotoff's dedication to making a positive impact on the Parkinson's community led to the acquisition of a waitlist of over 2,300 individuals through grassroots campaigns and partnerships with national hospitals, medical schools, and support groups. She and her team received recognition from various media outlets, including WGN9, NBC5, ABC7, Fox 32, WebMD, and Parkinson's News Today. Mokotoff also managed a team of more than ten student-entrepreneurs and played a pivotal role in designing and manufacturing a fully-functional product, conducting extensive user testing to validate its efficacy, which ultimately earned SteadyScrib an impressive 88% preference rate among Parkinson's patients compared to existing market technology.

Charlotte Oxnam is the Founder and CEO of Cue the Curves, a social shopping app for plus-size fashion. She is a graduate of Northwestern University, where she studied industrial engineering. She was named in the 2023 Forbes 30 under 30 in Chicago and in ChicagoInno's 25 under 25. She continues to support young female entrepreneurs through her work with the Propel program at The Garage at Northwestern, helping to grow the next generation of female founders.

Karyn Pettigrew, a visionary entrepreneur and inspirational speaker, has transformed businesses globally through her consulting, coaching, training, and media appearances. After 15 years of corporate marketing experience, she began her business coaching practice, Beyond Blind Spots, to help entrepreneurs and leaders uncover core issues with compassion, offering profound, aligned solutions. She subsequently used her pioneering Soul's Code approach to launch ZoeGoes, a six-piece sustainable travel capsule collection for women. She is a graduate of Harvard Business School, a best-selling author, TEDx speaker and a current semi-finalist in Pharrell Williams' Black Ambition Prize.

Since volunteering at the Georgetown Stroke Clinic twelve years ago, Casey Qadir (née Grage), has lived and breathed all things neuro. She researched Parkinson’s disease for five years in neuroscience labs, built neuro-implantable devices in a bioengineering lab, and analyzed neurosurgical data with Northwestern physicians. To gain further experience in data processing, Casey continued on to work as a software engineer within JP Morgan’s Big Data Department. She co-founded Hubly Surgical in 2019 as a response to her long family history of neurological disease.