She Shapes AI: a mission to rewrite who builds the future

AI is rapidly permeating every corner of technology and society. Yet AI visions, tools, and applications are overwhelmingly shaped and created by a small, privileged section of the population.  

Despite representing slightly more than half of the global population, women are severely underrepresented in the AI field, constituting just 29 per cent of the AI-skilled workforce, 22 per cent of product, engineering, and science roles, and only 10 per cent of AI executive leadership.

Dr Julia Stamm, founder of She Shapes AI, wants to change this. She's created a global initiative dedicated to identifying, celebrating, and amplifying the work of female leaders who are using artificial intelligence for social good.  I spoke to her to learn more. 

A career at the crossroads of science, policy, and tech

Dr Julia Stamm has held senior positions in organisations such as the European Cooperation in Science and Technology, the European Commission and the G20. 

Before founding She Shapes AI, Stamm was the inaugural CEO of The Data Tank, a non-profit data-for-good startup in Brussels that harnesses data for societal benefit.

She was also the founding director of the Global Solutions Initiative in Berlin, supporting the think tank work of the G20 to address global challenges through policy recommendations and is a Fellow of the RSA (Royal Society for the Arts), London, and a Fellow at the Centre for Digital Governance of the Hertie School, Berlin. 

Flipping the script: from problems to futures

In 2019, Stamm founded The Futures Project, a global initiative to ensure that future-focused innovation and technology meet real societal needs.  She recounts that its mission was to create shared visions of the future and then use innovation and tech to achieve them—intentionally and ethically. 

"We flipped the typical 'solution in search of a problem' mindset. Instead, we asked: What's the future we want? And how do we use innovation to get there responsibly?"

Stamm received the Digital Female Leader Award in the Global Hero category for her pioneering work in innovation and technology for impact. She Shapes AI is a young, bootstrapped organisation which focuses almost exclusively on women — female founders, entrepreneurs, and leaders.

When women build tech, responsibility and care come first

In Stamm's experience, when women build technology, they often prioritise responsibility, care, and sustainability.  However, when AI is designed from a predominantly male perspective, the consequences scale dramatically.

Women are already more likely to experience recruitment bias from recruitment tech, suffer the effects of diagnostic and pain prediction models trained on male data, experience sexism in financial credit, and be disproportionately targeted by deepfake technology. 

Stamm contends, "if AI is truly going to benefit society, we need broader input. We must diversify who's developing the tools and how they're being developed."

And, while there's plenty of attention given to data bias when it comes to training LLMs, Stamm sees a broader issue:  

"Who's building the tools? Who's asking the questions? Who's deciding what gets measured?" We need women at every level: in development, leadership, and funding."

Diverse perspectives change the entire trajectory of a project.

"That's the kind of thinking we need. There's this huge promise that AI will benefit all of humanity. But who gets to define what that means? Who decides what the future looks like? It shouldn't be just a handful of people in Silicon Valley. 

Women tend to ask better questions. They start with the problem and try to understand it deeply—rather than building a flashy solution and hoping to find a use for it."

Beyond the same six names

When Stamm first entered the field, she kept seeing the same six women on every "Women in AI" list. 

She asserts, "That's simply not true. There are so many brilliant women doing extraordinary things — we just don't hear about them. So part of our mission is to identify them, put them in the spotlight, and support them — not just with applause, but with tools, funding, and visibility."

SheShapes AI is global, but some of the standout European women in AI for me include:

• Anita Schjøll Abildgaard, CEO iris.ai,
• Alicia Combaz (Germany), founder and CEO of Make.org,
• Dr Luise Frohberg, founder of Taara Quest,
• Goda Go, founder of AI Productivity Hub,
• Tabitha Goldstaub, co-founder of CognitionX and CogX,
• Dr Sasha Luccioni, AI & Climate Lead at Hugging Face,
• Stacy Pavlyshyna,  Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation & Tech Entrepreneur and Co‑founder of Awesomic.

Shaping the narrative of AI leadership

She Shapes AI addresses inequality in three interconnected ways: 

1. Visibility and Voice:  Through its flagship She Shapes AI Awards, She Shapes AI spotlights women leaders across diverse fields such as democracy, peace, and nature. These awards not only celebrate individual achievement but also broaden the public's understanding of who is building the future of AI and for whom. Visibility helps to challenge outdated narratives about innovation and leadership. 

2. Ecosystem Building: She Shapes AI creates international, cross-sector networks that connect women working across AI's many domains from academia to civil society, from startups to government. 

Through community-building, mentorship, and thought leadership, She Shapes AI fosters spaces where women can collaborate, exchange knowledge, and drive systemic change together. Stronger networks lead to stronger opportunities. 

3. Funding Opportunities and Pathways: Access to funding remains one of the greatest barriers to scaling women-led innovation.

Importantly, Stamm wants to shift mindsets beyond the notion of women as NGO founders. She contends:

"We're not a non-profit. I want to dismantle the idea that women-led or impact-driven work must be unpaid or charitable. You can do good and make a profit.

It's not either/or. We also want to push harder on AI for real-world problems—climate, democracy, education, and healthcare. And we need to change how money flows.

If capital keeps going to the same types of founders building speculative tools with no business model, we're missing the real potential of AI."

Real ROI exists beyond equity

  Stamm wants a shift in the funding landscape so that women-led, impact-driven AI becomes a viable investment category. She also wants to shift the language:

"It's not just about equity — it's about ROI. These women are solving real problems in viable markets. Ignoring them is a missed business opportunity."

She Shapes AI works with women everywhere — not just in the big cities or traditional innovation hubs.  Stamm detailed:

"We've seen incredible work from the Philippines, Latin America, and across Africa.

Innovation is everywhere, but access isn't. That's why we're building a global council and connecting with local ecosystems to find and support these women."

There's also this assumption that women are "lagging" in AI, which feels overly simplistic. Stamm suggests that such research misses the point, contending that instead of asking why women aren't using these tools as much, maybe we should consider that they're being more thoughtful. 

"Women often ask: Do I really need this? What are the risks? That kind of reflection should be valued—not framed as a deficit."