Women's Entrepreneurship: Collaborating for success and navigating the innovation ecosystem

Rose Matthes spent three years designing Poplight and thinking through everything needed in an ideal wall light. She started Poplight because she and her wife had a problem with their home’s lighting options and learned other people were also struggling with adding cute wall lighting on a budget without risking their security deposit or spending thousands on an electrician. As a solution to their problem they created Poplight, the world’s first stick-on wall light that adheres securely to almost any finished wall surface. It has been featured in Apartment Therapy, The Wall Street Journal, and Design Milk. Matthes and her wife also appeared on Shark Tank landing a deal with Kevin O’Leary.

Julie Pearl is an executive with over two decades of experience in the tech industry. Previously, she was a Senior Director of Engineering at Google where she spent more than 16 years building and leading various product, technical, and business teams.  Since moving to Boulder, she has developed a passion for helping founders and companies grow as an advisor and investor.

Dr. Carletta Stewart is a retired combat veteran, published author, and scholar of program design. Dr. Stewart graduated with her advanced degree, Doctor of Education, Leadership for Educational Equity from the University of Colorado, Denver. Her strong focus on STEM education and careers led to her research titled, "The Underrepresentation of Women STEM Leaders.” As founder and President of Lady Trailblazer, Inc. she has put her research to work by developing STEM Persistence programs for girls and women. Her strengths lie in her diverse experiences in leading organizational change, program development, and problem-solving. “When I retired from the military, I knew this was what I wanted to do. I recognized the need for a nonprofit organization that would help young girls develop and shape vital skills of leadership and problem-solving, and most of all help them discover their 'why.' I believe every girl deserves the opportunity to learn, persevere, and thrive, and that is why I founded Lady Trailblazer.” Her commitment to serve is a part of her DNA. She is committed to empowering the next generation of women leaders by developing equitable and sustainable curricula and relevant problem-solving applications.

Her motto is “Don’t leave anything unfinished."

As the chief executive of the USPTO, she leads one of the largest intellectual property (IP) offices in the world, with more than 13,000 public servants and an annual budget of more than $4 billion. She is the principal IP advisor to the President and the Administration, through the Secretary of Commerce, and is focused on incentivizing and protecting U.S. innovation, entrepreneurship, and creativity. Vidal was named to Forbes’ 50 over 50 in the innovation category in 2024 for her work bringing more underrepresented inventors and entrepreneurs into the innovation ecosystem, and as one of Managing IP’s top 50 most influential people in IP in 2022. She leads an agency whose mission is to help American workers and businesses compete and collaborate, especially in ground-breaking technologies and across all demographics. As Director of the USPTO, Vidal is working to expand American innovation for and from all, and to bring more ideas to impact, including serving as the Vice Chair of the Council for Inclusive Innovation (CI2), alongside Secretary of Commerce Gina M. Raimondo and the Council members, a Co-Chair of the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (NACIE), and the Co-Founder, with the Secretary, of the Women’s Entrepreneurship (WE) initiative. Read more here.

Sean Wilkerson is an Innovation Outreach Specialist at the USPTO. In this role he works closely with USPTO colleagues and leadership, federal agency partners, national organizations, and industry to design and implement programs and initiatives that bring innovation resources to independent inventors, small businesses, entrepreneurs, makers, underresourced communities, and universities. Wilkerson uses his experience from working across multiple areas of USPTO outreach to consistently contribute to a variety of initiatives across the agency, including helping create the Veterans Innovation, Hispanic Innovation, and Proud Innovation annual programming. He leads programming for the Women’s Entrepreneurship Symposium and co-leads the development and management of the Empowering Women’s Entrepreneurship (WE) programming.  

Wilkerson joined the USPTO in October of 2008, initially serving in the Global Intellectual Property Academy (GIPA) as an education program specialist for international programing and outreach. From 2012-2014, Wilkerson served as program manager for the inaugural Select USA Summit, developing the structure and outreach efforts for this U.S. government-wide program housed in the International Trade Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce. Wilkerson worked with the New York engagement team to manage and develop the 2015 Future of Urban Innovation Startups Summit in coordination with Columbia University and the USPTO. He later served in the Office of the Undersecretary as an acting Regional Outreach Officer for the Southwest Regional Outreach Office to help coordinate the office’s opening and to develop stakeholder connections in the region. Prior to joining the USPTO, Wilkerson served as the Director of Events for the National Association of Homebuilders in Washington, D.C. and as the Ideas Exchange manager for Accenture in Reston, Virginia.