Three Sigma Stories

Mona Azami: from Survival to System Change

In this episode, we speak with Mona Azami, co-founder of HolistiCare, a London-based HealthTech startup using AI to scale personalised, preventative care. Mona shares the extraordinary journey that fuels her work from a childhood marked by war and immigration to navigating her son’s diagnosis with complex congenital heart disease. These deeply personal experiences shaped her belief that health systems must become more proactive, human-centred, and inclusive. We talk about: * How Mona’s early life forged her passion for health equity * Building HolistiCare and the future of AI in wellness * What it means to lead with empathy and resilience as a founder and mother This is a conversation about survival, purpose, and the urgent need to reimagine how we care for ourselves and each other.

Tessa Clarke: Profit, Purpose, and the Radical Act of Giving Away Food

In this episode, we speak with Tessa Clarke, co-founder of OLIO, the food-sharing app that’s reshaping how we think about waste, community, and business. Tessa shares her journey from a childhood on a farm in North Yorkshire to studying at Cambridge, working in corporate strategy and consulting and experiencing a turning point during her time in Silicon Valley. We dive into the early days of building OLIO, the pivotal role the platform played during the COVID-19 pandemic and how Tessa and her team scaled a grassroots idea into a global movement. She opens up about navigating gender dynamics in entrepreneurship, the realities of fundraising as a mission-led founder, and why the business world urgently needs to evolve: placing social impact on equal footing with profit. This is a conversation about resilience, systems change, and why saying no to waste is also saying yes to connection.

Ivy Cavendish: on Startups, Strategy and Showing Up

In this episode, we sit down with Ivy Cavendish, the visionary behind TooWrite and current Director of Content and Platform Innovation at Springer Nature. Ivy shares her inspiring journey from developing a tool to assist her co-founder with his thesis to leading innovation in academic publishing. We delve into the challenges of startup life, the acquisition of TooWrite by Springer Nature, and Ivy’s insights on the future of scholarly communication.

Heather Hancock: Leadership, Land and Legacy

From the Yorkshire Dales to the boardroom, Heather Hancock has lived many lives - civil servant, university leader, sustainability advocate, and more. In this episode, she joins us for an unfiltered conversation on leadership, legacy, the future of rural Britain, and why clear thinking matters more than ever. It’s a journey through values, decisions, and what it means to do good work.

Jenny Button: from Law School to Launching a Hardware Startup

Menstruation, Medtech, and Making It Up As You Go. Jenny Button’s journey is anything but linear. In this episode, we sit down with the founder of Emm, a femtech company building a smart menstrual wearable designed to give people better data about their bodies. We talk about ambition shaped by her mother’s creativity, what she learned working with family offices, and how a solo founder with no medical background found herself building a device that lives inside the body. Jenny shares the origin story of Emm, the challenge of breaking into hardware and health, and the overlooked gaps in women’s health that fuel her mission. We also cover: • The underestimated power of asking the right questions • How to DM your way into a world-class product team • The reality of fundraising in femtech • Why stricter data laws might be Europe’s secret weapon Jenny brings clarity, grit, and a good sense of humour to some very serious problems. If you’ve ever wondered who gets to build the future of health, this episode is a great place to start.