When Blanca Travesi took on her final project, the biomedical engineer was lucky enough to have an extraordinary experience: developing practical research (in her case, on sleep quality in women with fibromyalgia treated with transcranial magnetic stimulation) that allowed her to work with patients and verify the real, direct impact of her efforts. This process – closer and more human than most academic work – made him think about all the students who fail to apply what they learned at TFG or TFM in a concrete context. If they have demonstrated how university research can improve lives, why are so many other works with potential forgotten in a random drawer?
His partner Manuel Ducavu had a similar experience with his company TFG, which focused on designing spare parts for water pumps in Benin, thus extending the productive life of wells. This made them see the transformative potential of university projects when they had the opportunity to direct them towards real needs. From that coincidence of viewpoints – his and Travisi’s – the idea for U4Impact was born: a platform that connects university talent with companies, departments and institutions looking for innovative solutions to their challenges.
They recall that Spain is the third country in the European Union with the largest number of unemployed graduates, and at the same time, almost half of companies claim to have difficulties finding qualified profiles. U4Impact was born, precisely, to reduce this distance, turning TFG and TFM into impactful projects developed with the support of academic educators and the direct involvement of those who need new ideas to overcome their challenges. They move, above all, between fields: engineering, digitalization and technological innovation; Business and marketing. Work and social education.
Today, that initial batch has become a network that connects hundreds of young people to organizations across the country; A journey that led Traviesi to become one of the finalists for the fourth edition of the Startup Awards, which, as it does every year, recognizes female talent in the entrepreneurship ecosystem. “There was a lot of female talent but little visibility,” says event organizer Elena Benes. “So we wanted to change this narrative by creating a space to celebrate, not just condemn.”
These awards – promoted by the Spanish Start-up Association and the Yellow Agency – were born with a clear mission: to highlight women who are driving change in a sector where they are still a minority. Because although Spanish tech entrepreneurship has not stopped growing, the numbers undeniably show a clear gender disparity in the creation of startups; That’s why you seek awards making noise, Paving the way and building more references for the girls and young women who will come after. Convinced that visibility is the first step towards structural change, Benes adds: “In addition, we want the stories of the winners to be a continuous source of inspiration and serve as a mirror for other women.”
Entrepreneurship with the gender gap
Despite progress, entrepreneurship is still more difficult when you’re a woman. The numbers confirm this – only 10% of Start-ups Spanish companies are founded by them, according to the Entrepreneurship Map of South Summit and IE University – and this is what the supporters confirm: “There is a lack of references and support networks,” sums up Travesi, who remembers the times when she had to “explain her business model in rooms where it is still surprising to see a woman in charge.”
For Naira Gonzalez, president of Technovation Girls, the root lies in education: “Girls grow up thinking that math is too hard and that it’s not for them; that means there are fewer women in tech and, later, fewer leaders.” Neria Lewis, co-founder of Lumi Labs, warns that bias does not disappear even in the most innovative environments: “Technology is not neutral, and neither is entrepreneurship. If teams are not diverse, neither are the solutions.” The three are among the finalists for this edition of the Women Startup Awards, which will present its awards on November 17 at the Teatros Lucana in Madrid.
Maria Bengomia, president of the South Summit, agrees that the challenge no longer lies in the talent, but in the structures that contain it: “The Spanish entrepreneurship ecosystem is evolving towards more diversity, but the data still reflects disparities,” she noted in a previous conversation with El Pais. She also believes that equality will not be achieved through symbolic gestures, but through a real change in mindset: “Women’s leadership must be normalized: in classrooms, in boardrooms, in investing, and in media discourse.” Awards like the Startup Awards for Women point to this trend, as they are not intended to create a separate category, but one day “they won’t be needed because equality is finally becoming a reality,” says Bennis. He points to a clear trend: “Now major companies, accelerators and investors are consciously seeking to include female leaders. There is still a long way to go, but this is no longer seen as a symbolic gesture, but rather as a real competitive advantage.”
Travisi, Gonzalez, and Lewis represent three different ways of understanding entrepreneurship that have the same common thread: the conviction that education can and should be a driver of change. Travesi did this by uniting the university and the company so that academic works no longer remained on blank paper; Gonzalez, awakening technology careers among girls and teens who never thought they would see themselves in programming; And Lewis is building bridges between AI and the classroom so that technology stops being a mystery. Three tracks prove that entrepreneurship can also be a means of education.
Academic works with practical applications
When Travisi talks about U4Impact, he does so with the quiet pride of someone who has seen his idea grow faster than expected. What started as a personal intuition today connects thousands of students to organizations looking for real solutions. “Young people don’t want to be limited to internships: they want to contribute and feel useful,” he explains. “Organizations need this new talent to innovate.” The platform has become a bridge where both parties meet: students apply their knowledge to projects of real scale; They get a good grade (their average work now averages 8.9); Entities benefit from new ideas that they may end up adopting.
The model may be simple, but its scope is not: since its inception, thanks to agreements with more than 60 universities across Spain, U4Impact has strengthened more than 500 jobs (between TFG and TFM) and “directed more than 150,000 working hours contributing to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals”, responding to different specific needs in each case: reducing food waste, designing environmental measurement systems, improving healthcare or exploring digital solutions for inclusion, among others. Many others. “We wanted to show that young talent is not a resource to be trained, but rather a transformative force in its own right,” says Travesi. His way of speaking, calm and enthusiastic at the same time, reveals that behind his project there is more than just management: a deep educational conviction related to his own experience.
“In my first months, I had to explain the project in environments where no one expected a young woman to lead a university innovation initiative,” she recalls. The constant exposure forced her to gain safety, but also to redefine her role: not just as an entrepreneur, but as a mediator between worlds that barely communicated. That’s why he insists that education, not context, is at the core of the project: “U4Impact not only helps young people take their first steps in the workplace; it invites them to look at problems from outside the classroom and understand that their knowledge has value if it is put at the service of others.”
When a girl discovers that she can program
Naira Gonzalez likes to say that Technovation girls It does not teach programming, but rather teaches how to look at the world with different eyes. Power to Code, the association that coordinates the program in Spain, leads an initiative that every year brings together thousands of girls between the ages of 8 and 18 to design apps with a social impact, even if they are not interested in the end result: “Our product is not the apps or the projects, it is the girls,” she says with a smile.
Thus, for 12 weeks, participants learn how to identify a problem in their environment and create a technological solution as a team, always guided by volunteer mentors. “You have to learn by doing, and you can’t love what you don’t know,” reiterates Gonzalez, convinced that the first step to closing the gender gap in technology is to offer early experiences of discovery and purpose.
This initiative, which is free and open to all types of profiles, has grown to reach more than 1,500 participants in Madrid alone. In it, the girls tackle topics such as loneliness for the elderly or mental health, and in doing so they learn much more than coding: “When they understand that technology can help improve the lives of others, creativity is unleashed,” she says. Therefore, what starts as a game often becomes a career. “They see themselves empowered to be able to use technology (…), and the following year they may be in other programmes, camps or scholarships, and thus we see how the seeds germinate.” In a sector where only 13% of professionals are women, Technovation girls It shows that change begins in the classroom – and with a girl who discovers that yes, she can code, too.
Algorithmic ethics begins in the classroom
Doctor of Computer Science and co-founder of Lumi Labs, Nerea Luis has been trying to make AI stop seeming like magic for years. His company develops artificial intelligence solutions through an ethical and educational approach, in collaboration with educational centers, universities and organizations seeking to better understand this technology. “AI doesn’t have to be a black box: you have to teach it how it works so that people trust it,” he explains. His vision includes digital literacy that is not just about using tools, but about how to think: “It’s not just about using ChatGPT (or any other software), it’s about understanding what’s behind it and how it can help us think better.”
Lewis combines communication, consulting, and teaching, and all aspects of his work share a common thread: making technology more understandable, accessible, and fair. “AI doesn’t have to be a black box: you have to teach it how it works so that people trust it,” he warns. In his workshops and talks, he also insists that future professionals must learn to ask themselves about the biases, impacts and consequences of what they create: “21st century digital literacy is not just about programming, it is also about understanding the impact of our decisions on the systems we design,” he adds. In that critical and educational view lies the essence of his project: artificial intelligence in the service of awareness and knowledge.
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