This week we are exploring the story of Mirza, a femtech meets fintech company on a mission to close the gender pay gap. Mirza is co-founded by a female team, Siran & Mel.

Siran graduated with a degree in Gender Studies from Harvard and had expected to go into academia or nonprofit, but what started as a short skills pursuit in the private sector turned into a passion for leadership, management, and operations. Siran built the driver support organisation for Uber in New York and oversaw the support business for the US Northeast, before moving to London for a degree in Social Business & Entrepreneurship at the London School of Economics. With Mirza, she’s gone full circle and looks forward to bringing together her passions: women’s empowerment, structural change, and building a company of the future.

After graduating from UVA, Mel began her career focused on building fast growth companies. From launching and scaling sales territories in Europe, to making college education more accessible, to managing a luxury real estate portfolio, Mel fell in love with the process of building a concept from the ground up. A lifelong ideator, Mel had launched side hustles and passion projects while working, but it was during her time at London Business School that she realised she wanted to go all in on her own business. Mirza is her second company and is the manifestation of her passion for equitable access for all women and the desire to operate in the social impact space.

**Since the time of recording Mirza have taken a slight pivot: using information from their platform they advise on the types of childcare that they need and the types of childcare that can financially afford at the time. Mirza helps tackle the delta between the two and through employers they help finance the portion of childcare costs that are unaffordable. In addition, they now generate data on employee financial health and policies that work to help employers to create better workplaces for working parents.

If you would like to get in touch with Siran Cao at Mirza you can email her at: siran@heymirza.com.

The next series of Pitch Deck we will be hosting EdTech and Future of Learning founders who are preparing to raise capital - if you would like to get involved, sponsor the next series or know someone who would be a great guest please get in touch here: www.pitchdeckpodcast.com.

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