Learn about the women who changed entrepreneurship as we know it
Introduction to Leanne Kemp
**Leanne Kemp** is an Australian tech entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Everledger. She studied at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, earning a bachelor’s degree in Criminology and Cyber Crime in 2014, and also has a bachelor’s degree in Accounting and Commerce from James Cook University, Australia.
As a pioneer in her field and in recognition of her leadership role in technology, Kemp has received numerous awards and honors, including being named in UK Business Insider’s 26 Coolest Women in UK Tech in 2016.
She was awarded the AIM Global Allan Gilligan Award 2019, the Advance Global Australian Award 2018 for Technology Innovation, and Innovator of the Year 2016 and 2018 at the Women in IT Awards (London).
Kemp at Everledger
Kemp founded Everledger in 2015. **Everledger is a platform that uses blockchain – an unchangeable electronic database or ledger – and artificial intelligence to help verify valuable assets such as diamonds and other precious stones**. The platform is designed to help insurers, claimants and other stakeholders combat fraud and money laundering with verifiable sourcing, without the need for third parties to oversee transactions.
Everledger provides **clarity and confidence** in markets where transparency is imperative, with technology that creates a secure and permanent digital record of a valuable asset’s origin, characteristics, and ownership.
The startup’s technology helps clients demonstrate the lifetime story of an asset with greater efficiency and accuracy by digitally streamlining compliance processes. It was first used to track diamonds and is now being rolled out in further high-value industries including fine wines.
Kemp's Other Key Positions
A prominent figure in the technology sector, Kemp now co-chairs the **World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on the Future of Manufacturing** and is involved in the **Global Future Council on Blockchain**. WEF’s Global Future Council, an invitation-only community, is a network of more than 1000 experts around the world, across different disciplines, that come together to promote innovative thinking and share ideas.
From 2018 until 2020, Kemp was appointed Queensland Chief Entrepreneur in Australia, the first female entrepreneur to hold this position. In this honorary role of the Queensland Government, Kemp helped to further develop the state’s startup ecosystem, attract investment, and support job creation.
More recently, Kemp has been appointed an Adjunct Professor in the Institute of Future Environment at the Queensland University of Technology. She has also been appointed Blockchain Advisory Board Member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Introduction to Neha Narkhede
**Neha Narkhede** was born in Pune, India. Her parents encouraged her to follow her dreams from a young age and ensured that she did 3 things: learned how to use computers, attended the best schools and modeled women leaders. “My parents bought me my first computer when I was 8 years old. Then I began dreaming about working with technology,” Narkhede said in an interview with Forbes in 2017.
She earned a BSc in Engineering from Pune Institute of Computer Technology (PICT), University of Pune before getting her master’s in technology from Georgia Tech in 2007.
She is the cofounder and a board member of Confluent, **a streaming data technology company** whose services are used by major companies including Goldman Sachs and Netflix.
In 2017, MIT Technology Review named Narkhede as one of its ‘Innovators Under 35’ for “teaching companies how to swim” while “the business world is drowning in data,” and, in 2018, she won the Oracle Groundbreaker Award. In 2022, Forbes ranked Narkhede no.57 in its ‘America’s Self-Made Women’ list with an estimated net worth of US$490 million.
LinkedIn & Apache Kafka
Following her graduation from Georgia Tech, Narkhede worked for Oracle as a principal software engineer before joining LinkedIn as the lead of streams infrastructure. While at LinkedIn, Narkhede co-developed Platform Apache Kafka together with Jay Kreps and Jun Rao. The platform became LinkedIn’s open-source messaging system that helps the networking site manage its huge influx of data.
Apache Kafka gathers data from different sources of information including web analytics and social media and funnels it into a single stream that can be used to build and enhance projects. Largely, Kafka accepts **streams of events written by data producers which it then stores chronologically across servers**. The software has become integral in the tech world, so much so that Silicon Valley engineers display their Kafka expertise on their CVs.
Initially conceived as a messaging queue, Apache Kafka has now evolved into a full-fledged streaming platform. Examples of the software’s applications include managing passenger and driver matching at Uber and providing real-time analytics for British Gas smart home.
The software was named after author Franz Kafka, one of the key figures of 20th century literature, because it is “a system optimized for writing” and because Kreps liked Kafka’s work.
Confluent
In 2014, Narkhede, together with Kreps and Rao, left LinkedIn to start Confluent, **a streaming company** based in Palo Alto which helps organizations process large amounts of data on Apache Kafka. Confluent has a **cloud platform** which releases real-time data and acts as a central nervous system for companies, allowing them to connect all their applications around real-time streams and respond accordingly.
Of her decision to move on from LinkedIn, Narkhede said: “A lot of companies began adopting Apache Kafka, so the next step was to create a company around it. I pitched the idea to Jay and Jun, and they both agreed.”
Initially Confluent’s Chief Technology Officer, Narkhede now serves on the company’s board, which went public in June 2021 at a US$9.1 billion valuation. She’s been the driving force behind the platform’s adoption by major clients, including Goldman Sachs that uses it to help deliver information to traders in real-time, and Netflix which relies on it to collect data for its video recommendations.
