meet izzy.

Hear how and why she started spHlash.

I started spHlash because I’ve lived what so many women live : the pain, the shame, the silence around our intimate health. But I’ve never been good at staying quiet. I’ve always questioned the rules, whether it was in engineering classrooms full of men, on stage moving my body with freedom, or simply refusing to accept that women’s health should be treated as an afterthought.

For me, it’s about fairness, truth, and empowerment. I believe our bodies deserve respect, not quick fixes that harm us. I believe in movement, in pleasure, in science, and in rethinking the norms that never served us. That’s why I built spHlash — not just as a product, but as a rebellion, a celebration, and a promise that women can finally have solutions made for us, by us.

Women’s Health Innovation.

  • ⧫ Support the safe and efficient use of new medical technologies by reviewing and approving clinical research involving medical devices.

    ⧫ Coordinate action to identify and reduce risks from medical devices, ensuring patient and staff safety through incident reviews, trend analysis, and compliance with national safety regulations.

  • ⧫ Spearheaded the development of a biofeedback wearable for women’s sexual health.

    ⧫ Developed prototype using my expertise in 3D printing, electronics, software, biosensors and AI.

    ⧫ Conducted extensive user-centric validation and community building for the device.

  • ⧫ Spearheaded the first collaboration between two labs resulting in a novel drug-delivery system that had dual therapeutic and diagnostic function.

    ⧫ Mastered cell culture, chemical synthesis and characterisation, merging wet-lab and chemical engineering expertise.

    ⧫ Invited to showcase research at an international biophysics conference.

Awards for Women’s Impact.

  • Secured £10 000 funding for my women’s health inequalities research.

  • Supported women’s health equity by coordinating global biotech reagent distribution to labs in underserved regions.

    • Mohara AI in Femtech

    • Skype-a-Scientist

    • Teakink Podcast

    • Growing Up with Delia Burgess

Education.

  • ⧫ Graduated with distinction

    ⧫ Key modules: Management of Technology (81%) Biosensors and Bioelectronics (80%),

    Materials and Molecules: Modelling, Simulation and Machine Learning (82%), Molecular

    Biology (81%)

  • ⧫ Graduated top student every year – 1st class honours

    ⧫ Key modules: Machine Learning (92%), Medical Imaging (90%), Signal & Image Processing (91%),

    Electrical Engineering (92%), Mathematics (94%)

  • ⧫ Graduated with a 96% average, 7th in South Africa for Computer Science