Not a diversity measure, not a nice-to-have: How female leadership really works

She has been on the wish list for a long time and this year she is finally making the long journey from Berlin to Lake Constance: Verena Pausder, Chairwoman of the Startup Association and well-known voice of the podcast "Fast & Curious". When she takes the stage at the Graf-von-Soden Forum for a keynote speech, she fills the hall with a mixture of wit and honesty. "I wanted to open a salad bar straight after leaving school," she says with a laugh. "It failed. So what?" In doing so, she dispels the myth of the perfect career. Nobody has to be flawless to make a difference. You just need "more people who just do it" - and preferably together. The audience nods and breaks into loud applause.

The entrepreneur speaks openly about the minority of women in the start-up scene. But that is precisely where the strength lies, says Pausder: "See it as a strength that you are one of the few. I'm not saying you have it easy. But see it as an opportunity to be visible." Instead of being discouraged by structures, she advocates using your "underestimated" status. Her message: those who are underestimated have the freedom to break the rules.

A glance at the audience shows what Pausder means: students, founders, entrepreneurs, investors - a mixed audience that doesn't talk about each other, but with each other.

Moderator Lilli Germann opens the day with the sentence: "Entrepreneurship knows no boundaries." She makes it clear that female leadership thrives on diversity and creativity. Antonia von Achten, a student at Zeppelin University and part of the initiative's General Management Board, also makes it clear that although female leadership culture is taken for granted at ZU, "there is still a lot to do out there."

Together with co-leader Nele Amen and a team of fifteen, the initiative manages to create a space for exchange. It creates encounters that often do not take place outside of established networks: especially for women who want to start or lead a business. In doing so, the event took a step in exactly the right direction.

For the first time, the Female Founders Night will be complemented by an artistic component. Curator Till Leander Schröder is transforming the campus into a temporary museum with works by international female artists expressing their feminist perspective. The exhibition demonstrates that equality is not only an economic task, but also a cultural one.

Written in white chalk on the black blackboard walls of the ZF campus: "I am fucking angry because it is still an insult to be called a girl." On the purple program booklets: "Society hates women and its fucking disgusting." Both sentences are by the artist Lise Bøgh Pedersen and show how angry she is at the patriarchal structures that still prevail.

The gravity of the topic is also physically palpable on this day: a loud and demanding soundtrack by artist Mathilde Zeuthen, played before Pausder's keynote, vibrates through the hall. It makes it uncomfortably clear that equality is not a project of harmony. Inequality is emotional, social and therefore political.

Alongside Pausder, it is entrepreneur Isabel Bonacker, Deputy Chairwoman of the Babor Beauty Group, who brings the topic of leadership back to its core: Responsibility does not begin in title or gender, but in the decision to do something. She appeals: "Company comes from doing something." So don't wait for someone to give you responsibility, take it, because "the most important voice is your own."

Lena Winter, founder of the Berlin auction house am Grunewald, and Nicole Srock.Stanley, CEO of the design agency dan pearlman, talk about the power mechanisms in the creative market in the panel "Beyond the Frame". Winter describes the art market as a structure that makes female talent invisible. In order to build an alternative system in which art is accessible and not tied to elitist spaces, Winter "recovers treasures from the second tier: often from female artists who have never been seen."

Srock.Stanley goes one step further and talks about the need for new infrastructures: "Every woman must have the freedom to shape her own life." The designer is referring to childcare options, flexible working models and financing options for female founders. She says that in the early years of her children's lives, her salary went almost exclusively towards daycare and after-school care. She also adds: "Creativity isn't everything. But without creativity, everything is nothing." It's an attack on old ways of thinking, because what is considered soft is often underestimated. But this is precisely where the great power lies.

Both artists agree: female leadership means building an infrastructure to be able to cope with everyday working life in a male-dominated world. This includes private framework conditions as well as awareness in their own company. By founding her auction house, Winter built her "own cosmos that is non-toxic and less elitist".

A further five panels and two workshops will deal with similar questions about female leadership and start-ups during the afternoon. However, this panel makes the seriousness of patriarchal structures particularly clear. "We have to argue with relish - otherwise nothing will change," Srock.Stanley concludes.

What the Female Founders Night 2025 makes impressively clear is that it is not about making women stronger. They already are. It's about creating structures in which female leadership is not seen as a diversity measure, but as the norm. This progress is needed, and it happens in places like Zeppelin University, where people listen to each other and take responsibility.

The importance of this space was also emphasized by Lord Mayor Simon Blümcke and ZU Managing Director Thomas Brandt in their welcoming speeches. Perhaps this is exactly what Verena Pausder meant when she said goodbye: "I'm so envious of you. I would love to be young again and study here!"