IFR’s Women in Robotics 2025
10 Women Shaping the Future of Robotics
Mar 04, 2025 — IFR is promoting women in robotics, giving them more visibility and acknowledgment in order to inspire girls and young women to pursue a career in STEM subjects or robotics and help companies to reach gender equality and overcome shortage of staff.
Selected Women in Robotics 2025 (copyright International Federation of Robotics)
Supporting the closing of the gender gap is one of the heartfelt activities of the IFR. In times of demographic change and an increasing lack of skilled workforce, economies around the globe cannot ignore a certain share of it. Moreover, it also proves beneficial for companies to increase diversity in their teams to increase productivity, competitiveness and innovation.
While the gender gap is narrowing down and the female labor force participation rate overall is increasing in many parts of the world, there still is a significant gap in the manufacturing sectors, in particular when it comes to female engineers and scientists. Here, the female participation rate is only half that of the service sector in Europe, for example.
IFR thus each year acknowledges and highlights women in the robotics industry.
2025 awardees are:
- Albane Dersy, Co-Founder and COO of Inbolt, France
- Ashlie Taivalkoski, Director of Sales at SCHUNK, USA
- Dr. Caren Dripke, Head of Development Robotics at Lorch Schweißtechnik, Germany
- Julia Astrid Riemenschneider, CEO of Rethink Robotics, USA
- Kari DeSantis, General Manager, Corporate Marketing at FANUC America, USA
- Feng (Kate) Xu, Head of China R&D at ABB Robotics, China
- Kateryna Portmann, Senior Product Manager at ANYbotics, Switzerland
- Susanne Nördinger, UR+ Ecosystem Manager for EMEA and Head of Ecosystem Success at Universal Robots, Germany
- Yumie Kubota, Executive Officer and Department Manager, AI Robotics dept. at YASKAWA Electric Corporation/ President of AI Cube, Japan
- Yunzhi (Amber) Qi, Co-founder & General Manager of Overseas Business Division at YOUIBOT Robotics, China
We will introduce each woman one after the other on our website with a detailed profile, introducing her career path, explaining what made her decide for a career in robotics and her motivation to engage in STEM and robotics to inspire other young women to follow her way.
You can find more details on the selection criteria at https://ifr.org/ifr-press-rele...
