Sophie Defauw, born in Colombia in 2000, began studying Art at the Mexican Institute of Fine Arts at 13. She later earned a B.A. in Art History and a postgraduate degree in Design Thinking for Manufacturing from the University of Florence. Recently, she became certified as a professor by the University of Salamanca and has been speaker and lectured at universities in North America and Asia, including UC Berkeley about design thinking.
In entrepreneurship, Sophie has built two successful startups. Her latest venture, AthleteIQ, Inc. is VC backed by Entrepreneur First and Transpose.
She has participated in prestigious programs such as Entrepreneur First and the Hardware x AI residency at Founders Inc. in San Francisco, And DPS in Munich.
She has won several international hackathons and engineering competitions such as Elon Musk's Not-a-Boring competition 2021 and Vodafone Italy hack.
In art and design, she has won national awards in drawing, poetry, and photography, She has developed brand identities and content for companies in EU and LATAM. In addition, she published her first novel this year.
As a pro-athlete, Sophie was part of the Mexican national windsurfing team, ranking in the world’s top 50 and North America’s top 5. She raced the Olympic qualifiers.
