For Women Founders
Your journey is long, challenging and often lonely. If you feel that the HiPower Signature Program, and our HiPower Community can help you along your adventure, we’d like you to join us.
And we know that you probably don’t have a lot of free cash flow right now. So to help out, our HiPower Angels have created this scholarship.
Each year, we will cover the HiPower Signature Program admissions fee for two women founders selected by our HiPower Angels committee.
In addition to completing your application, you must be prepared to attend our 6 sessions throughout the year and our annual offsite in person in either our San Francisco or Menlo Park, California locations.
At the end of your Signature Program application form, let us know you are applying for the Women Founders’ Scholarship.
We normally review applications in December of each year, but if you want us to review yours earlier, please feel free to contact us.
2024 Scholarship Recipients
Marla Sofer (Founder/CEO, Knomee)
Marla is a fintech founder, keynote speaker, and former executive at traditional wealth and asset management firms and leading transformational fintech providers. She led operational partnerships at BlackRock and J.P. Morgan quantified in the billions of dollars before leaping into fintech to improve customer experiences. She has built and scaled integration, channel, and corporate development partnerships at high growth fintech companies including Carta, Jemstep, Xignite, and Lending Club, innovating in the areas of private equity, digital advice, financial market data, and fixed income. She has experience as a client, a vendor, and a partner leading digital transformation in banking and capital markets, and as a change agent driving diversity and inclusion. She founded two women’s networks and speaks frequently on topics related to the evolution of financial services to broader audiences. In 2020, she was selected as a Silicon Valley Business Journal Woman of Influence, and was recognized in 2021 as a Woman in Wealth Tech to Watch. She earned an MBA in Business Strategy and International Business from Rutgers University and a BA from the University of Texas at Austin. She lives in Foster City with her two teenage children, husband of 20+ years, and dog, Bear.
Sonya Driezler (Co-Founder, Choir)
Sonya Dreizler is the co-founder of Choir, a diversity-tech platform focused on amplifying the expert voices of people of color, women and nonbinary professionals in finance, business, and tech. Sonya is also a speaker and author focused on fostering candid conversations about gender and race in financial services.
Sonya is a former financial services CEO with two decades of industry experience.
Outside of work, Sonya enjoys traveling with her family, weight lifting, gardening, and cooking. She is on the board of Foodwise, a nonprofit dedicated to growing thriving communities through the power and joy of local food.