JVF empowers the Kendra Scott Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership Institute, a community for undergraduate, graduate and alumni female founders at University of Texas at Austin.

As part of this partnership, JVF sponsors the FoundHER program coordinator and one female founder per year with a seed grant for their individual venture. This founder is featured annually during Jess January alongside a JVF sourced speaker for KSWELI’s SheSpeaks series.

The FoundHER program includes professional development resources, events, and fundraising opportunities for female-founded businesses each semester. Jess was additionally an alumni of University of Texas at Austin.

2024 Grantees

  • Manasvi Perisetty

    2024

    Manasvi Perisetty is majoring in Electrical and Computer Engineering with a minor in Entrepreneurship at the University of Texas at Austin.

    Manasvi has always dreamed to utilize technology and business to provide solutions to her community. Creating YouUnited with her team has fulfilled that dream.

    YouUnited is a student-led website non-profit empowering ambitious students to explore their career interests and develop their passions. We provide students worldwide from middle school to college with virtual opportunities. These opportunities cover a wide spectrum of pathways from Fine Arts to STEM.

  • Lauren Fleming

    2024

    Lauren Fleming was born and raised in central Texas and she still lives in the area with her husband, two kids and puppy. She is a driven professional holding an MA in Sustainability and an MBA, boasts over nine years of expertise in project and portfolio management, enterprise risk, and strategy.

    In 2021, Lauren founded Hem Support Wear after personally experiencing the limitations of existing pelvic floor support garments. Determined to redefine these products, Hem Support Wear is dedicated to crafting thoughtfully designed garments that provide gentle compression to support the pelvic floor and promote wellness. Lauren knows from first hand experience that women deserve something better, and Hem Support Wear is on a mission to provide it.

    Since launching the first product line in 2023, the focus remains on creating meticulously designed support wear for the pelvic floor, guided by values of quality, beauty, and inclusivity. The company is committed to supporting women's wellness through its products, values, and by partnering primarily with women-owned businesses, including production partners based in the United States.

  • “We are ever-appreciative of the foundation JVF provided for us for our launch. We recognized early on that JVF's mission and Jess's legacy aligned very closely with what we're hoping to accomplish with STEM Muse, and they are thankful for the supportive environment JVF fosters and personalized support the Vollman family has lent them. They're proud to continue their work in "patching the leaky pipeline" and look forward to growing with the JVF community and the amazing founders they support.”

    Sophie Sanchez, 2023

  • “JVF has been an incredible part of my experience with the KSWELI FoundHER program. I so appreciate all the time and energy they have put into learning more about my business and offering mentorship based on their various backgrounds. This year I plan on applying the seed grant towards a successful internship program, product expansion, and QR code development. Thank you so much to the KSWELI & JVF teams for supporting fruitleatherNYC over the past years and I am looking forward to continuing to grow alongside JVF in the coming years!”

    Emily Silver, 2022

KSWELI Women’s Summit

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Past Grantees

  • Sophie Sanchez

    2023

    Sophie Sanchez is currently a PhD candidate in Neuroscience at UT Austin, and the founder and CEO of STEM Muse. JVF’s seed grant to STEM Muse came at a critical point-- right before they became a Public Benefit Corporation and officially launched in February of 2023.

    STEM Muse is the STEM mentorship network for women to increase the recruitment, retention, and success of women in STEM careers. They accomplish this by connecting women in STEM higher education– undergraduate students, graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and research staff– with professionals more advanced in their academic and industry careers. They have scaled the program more than 10x since its establishment in 2020, serving more than 500 pairs in 2023!

    In 2023, Sophie had the honor of pitching at the Kendra Scott Women's Summit, where STEM Muse took home second place. STEM Muse also was recognized as one of the top startups in Austin, being selected as 1 of 6 to pitch at the Dell for Startups Austin Startup Ecosystem Summit. Their most exciting accomplishment in 2023 was formalizing their first institutional sponsorships with the University of Texas at Austin College of Natural Sciences and Cockrell School of Engineering.

  • Emily Silver

    2022

    Emily Silver is the founder of fruitleatherNYC, which she started as a senior at UT Austin in 2021 with the goal of redefining the way consumers purchase leather. fruitleatherNYC accessories are made from a vegan leather composed of upcycled waste from apple juice production.

    Over the past 2 years since graduating, she has had the opportunity to work in Materials & Color development at Outdoor Voices (2021 - 2023) and recently at Tesla (2023 - ).

    She continues to learn so much about sustainability, artificial leather development, and keys to successfully running a business that she continues to apply to her endeavors at fruitleatherNYC.