June 5, 2025

( Stacie Banton)

The healthcare sector offers women a wealth of fascinating career opportunities, ranging from recent occupations like women’s health nurse practitioners and administrative roles to traditional ones like nursing and midwifery. The industry also offers specialized jobs in areas including gastroenterology, family medicine, and obstetrics and gynecology. More significantly, women in the medical field may become teachers or mentors.
Numerous women in the healthcare sector have achieved tremendous career success and are now considered role models for the next generation of female professionals. One of these guiding stars is the well-known Swedish general practitioner, healthcare innovator, and entrepreneur Sara Loden.
Sara has a strong academic background. She has a Doctor of Medicine (MD) from Uppsala University, along with a number of additional professional courses. Her areas of interest include preventive care & digital health innovation, mental health, stress, reducing involuntary loneliness, creating accessible, people-first healthcare systems, and global collaboration for long-term health impact.
Sara is the founder of ProActLife, through which she is building a global movement to transform how we think about health — not just by preventing disease, but by nurturing community, connection, and compassion.

In the beginning, ProActLife was an innovative online tool for determining the risk factors for long-term conditions including cancer, diabetes, and obesity. However, it has grown into something far more significant: a movement for awareness, behavior change, and collective action. Through education, self-monitoring, and support, it enables people to take control of their health. ProActLife is evidence of Sara’s creativity and passion to transform healthcare.
Success comes to those who embrace challenges. Sara is a wonderful example of this. She worked very hard and overcame many challenges to become the lady she is today.
“One of the biggest challenges I’ve faced in working with preventive health has been the gap between political ambitions and the realities of everyday healthcare. There’s a lot of talk about the importance of prevention, early interventions, and personal responsibility—and many policymakers genuinely want to make a difference. But in practice, it’s hard to create long-term initiatives that actually work, especially within primary care, where time is limited and needs are overwhelming.

Many decisions are made far from the clinical frontlines, based more on how people think things work than on how they actually do. Projects may receive funding but often lack the continuity, grounding, or practical understanding needed to succeed. I’ve personally seen promising ideas get stalled or fade away, even when the need and solution were crystal clear.

At times, that has been deeply frustrating—but it has also fueled my motivation to create new paths. With ProActLife, I want to prove that truly proactive healthcare is possible: grounded in people’s everyday lives, using simple yet powerful tools that lead to real change—both for individuals and for society,” she stated during a recent interview.
Sara has achieved a lot during her more than 10 years in the healthcare sector. Her most recent nomination for the 2025 Hong Kong Fluxx Award is a testament to her outstanding career success.
Having same-gender role models is extremely beneficial for young women because it inspires them to succeed in their careers, particularly in highly competitive and male-dominated areas. Career role models like Sara Loden may inspire young women to achieve their professional goals and boost their self-esteem.

( Naeem Ul Hassan)
Several female leaders have received extraordinary recognition for their outstanding contributions to the healthcare industry. Sara Loden, a well Swedish general practitioner, healthcare innovator, and entrepreneur, is one of these big names. Sara is a nominee for the 2025 Hong Kong Fluxx Awards.
Since general practitioners are the main point of contact for healthcare in society, offering preventative care, diagnosing common ailments, and referring patients to specialists when necessary, their significance cannot be overstated.
Sara has a strong academic background. She has a Doctor of Medicine (MD) from Uppsala University, along with a number of additional professional courses. Her areas of interest include preventive care & digital health innovation, mental health, stress, reducing involuntary loneliness, creating accessible, people-first healthcare systems, and global collaboration for long-term health impact.
Dedicated to empowering better lives and revolutionizing primary care, Sara is a visionary general practitioner and entrepreneur. She is reinventing what it means to truly care, from creating the groundbreaking digital health tool ProActLife to planning a rural clinic that welcomes both people and pups. Her path is centered on prevention, empathy, and connection—building communities where people’s health is prioritized.
“I’m a physician by training—but more than anything, I’m a human being on a mission to shift how we think about health, healing, and well-being.
After over a decade working in primary care, I’ve seen how modern life chips away at us—slowly, subtly. People arrive exhausted, anxious, sleepless, and disconnected. Often, they don’t need more pills or tests. They need support, space, and tools to reconnect with themselves and with what truly matters.
Meanwhile, those of us in healthcare are burning out at alarming rates. Across the world, physicians are walking away from a profession they once loved—not because they no longer care, but because the system makes it nearly impossible to care in a way that feels human.
This is where ProActLife begins. Not just as a digital platform, but as a movement to reimagine what health can look like—for patients and for professionals alike,” she stated during a recent interview.
There are too many achievements for Sara to mention them all here. Given her remarkable contributions to the healthcare sector, it would be accurate to say that she has emerged as one of the most inspirational female healthcare professionals.

( Naeem Ul Hassan)
Despite the traditional male dominance in the aerospace sector, women are now making notable progress in a variety of positions, such as pilots, engineers, and industry leaders. An excellent example of this is Wanjiku Chebet Kanjumba, an influential figure in the aerospace sector.
Born and raised in Nairobi, Kenya, Wanjiku has a strong academic background. She is currently enrolled at the University of Florida, pursuing a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering and certifications in Engineering Leadership, Engineering Innovation, and Engineering Project Management. With distinction, she graduated from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University with a Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering and a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering, with a minor in Space Operations.
Wanjiku is the CEO and chairwoman of the renowned firm Vicillion, which she co-founded in 2021. Vicillion is a forward-thinking US-based company dedicated to revolutionizing the aerospace and technology sectors. Wanjiku’s amazing creativity is demonstrated by the organization’s goal of building the world’s first equatorial commercial spaceport—the Omega Spaceport. Her amazing entrepreneurial success at a young age may inspire the next generation of women to pursue entrepreneurship, which is the key to their economic empowerment and autonomy.
Apart from being an entrepreneur, Wanjiku is employed/involved with several organizations, such as the European Space Agency as a citizen scientist, the University of Florida under a graduate assistantship (MAE), Deep Space Initiative as a space architecture researcher (Andromeda Pioneer Program), and Project PoSSUM as a scientist-astronaut candidate program graduate. She is also a member of the Space Generation Advisory Council. Previously, she worked with Switched Source, SPARC (K), Birds Eye Aerial Drones, Southwest Airlines, and Gulfstream Aerospace.
Wanjiku’s story is truly inspiring. She has always been interested in redefining the impossible, the unknown, and the unobtainable, which led her to the space sector from a young age. Her older brother’s studies at the esteemed Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in the USA further fueled her interest in space and her desire to learn about the workings of the cosmos. During her high school years, she showed a strong will to succeed and follow in the footsteps of her brother, as well as her late father’s footsteps with her pursuits in entrepreneurship.
Equipped with her love of space exploration, her ambition to follow in her brother’s footsteps started to come true in 2016 when she was accepted into Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, where she studied for a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering. She also pursued a minor degree in Space Operations.
In addition to attending Embry-Riddle, she furthered her education by joining the Advanced PoSSUM (Polar Suborbital Science in the Upper Mesosphere) Academy, a citizen-scientist group devoted to enhancing our knowledge of upper-atmosphere processes. She became the first Kenyan-born to graduate from this academy’s scientist-astronaut program in 2018. While pursuing her education, she began an entrepreneurial career in 2021, after receiving her bachelor’s degree in 2020.
She is presently managing her own business, working for many, and pursuing a Ph.D., showing the next generation of women that balancing work and education might be difficult, but it is not impossible if you have passion and ambition.
Wanjiku’s accomplishments set her apart from other professionals in her industry. She was recognized as one of 2024’s Top 40 Under 40 women leaders in Kenya. She has received several awards, including Global Infrastructure Firm of the Year (2023), Best Collaborative Aerospace Infrastructure R&D Partner (2023), Most Collaborative Aerospace R&D Partner (2023)—USA, Graduate Student of the Year 2020-2021 Award, Outstanding Undergraduate Student Professional Development Award, and 2020-2021 Resident Advisor of the Year Award.
Wanjiku has shown exceptional leadership acumen and creativity in everything from overseeing flight operations and certifying various aircraft vehicles to collaborating with internationally renowned powerplant and aircraft manufacturers. Her areas of expertise include Engineering Project Management, Flight Operations (Aviation and Space), Independent Research (Aviation and Space), Airworthiness and Certification Engineering, and Entrepreneurship.
Outside her pursuits in the aerospace industry, she enjoys a variety of extracurricular activities including, but not limited to, taekwondo, kickboxing, fencing, playing the piano, golfing, swimming, Shaolin kung fu, tai chi, capoeira, and archery.
There are too many achievements for Wanjiku to mention them all here. Due to her outstanding accomplishments, she has emerged as one of the most inspiring aerospace engineers and entrepreneurs.
Her ultimate goal in life is to contribute significantly to research and development in transformative, innovative products and concepts within the aerospace, mechanical, and civil industries to enhance human ingenuity in a positive way (while making history along the way) and to solve critical global challenges. To show that the impossible is possible.