2021 2022 2023 2024
A Student Conference at Harvard Business School
 

Éva Goicochea

A former legislative aide and early startup team member, Éva Goicochea is the founder of maude, an inclusive modern sexual wellness company launched in 2018 that became the first in its category to debut at Sephora. To date, she’s one of only ten Latinas to have raised over $10 million ($13M) in funding. Her accolades include Entrepreneur’s 100 Most Powerful Women (2019), Inc.’s Female Founders 100, the CEW Female Founders Award (2022), Vogue Business’ 100 Innovators—Beauty Disruptors (2023), and the Beacon Award for Entrepreneur of the Year from Beauty Independent (2023). In 2025, she was named Changemaker of the Year by BeautyMatter.

 
 

Pranitha Patil

Pranitha Patil is the co-founder of Function Health, on a mission to help people live 100 healthy years. Pranitha left Harvard University Graduate School early to build Function Health in 2021. Drawing from her experience as a former manager at Accenture Health Strategy, where she collaborated with both US-based hospital systems and health insurance providers, and global health systems, Patil recognized the need for scalable technology to empower everyone to own their health. Pranitha’s personal health journey helped shape her mission. As a first generation Indian American woman managing her own chronic conditions, including PCOS, pre-diabetes, and genetically high cholesterol, Patil has transformed. She’s improved her insulin and HbA1c levels, gotten a deeper understanding of her lipid particle sizes, and realized she needed to actively manage stress to lower cortisol levels. Determined to empower others, Pranitha believes in giving everyone, especially women, minorities, and BIPOC communities, the power to take control of their health.

 
 

Ellen Wilcox, MBA

Ellen Wilcox is an investor and the Head of Listening at Listen Ventures, an early-stage consumer VC backing entrepreneurs building against tipping points in consumer health and wellness. At Listen, Ellen is on a mission to bring design thinking and design research to the world of venture capital, turning human stories into consumer insight and intellectual curiosity into investment conviction. She mixes methods to craft investment theses, bring the consumer voice to due diligence, and help founders design brands that listen. Ellen has dedicated her career to understanding human behavior and designing elegant interventions that aim to reconcile the rational economic model and the irrationality of the human mind. Ellen is a reflection of her roots: she blends the curiosity of a Montessori kid with the grit of a Deloitte consultant, the creativity of an IDEO designer, and the business chops of a Kellogg MBA.