June 2021 Female Tech Leaders Magazine

KATHARINA
BEITZ
Founder,
Tech Strategist,
Columnist & Podcaster
Tell us about you and your career, Katharina!
I think my career is anything but typical. I studied philosophy, with a strong focus on social
philosophy and technologies. In the meantime, I got the opportunity to gain a foothold in the
Berlin club scene as one of the few female bouncers. I was pretty successful in that. The
network, feeling of community and loyalty between creatives and people doing something
always fascinated me.. At the same time, I just kept studying, getting more and more
interested in tech, applied ethics and digital tools.
Unfortunately, the real economy and tech hardly play a role in academic philosophy, so I had
to look elsewhere.
My MBA in Shanghai, Paris, London and Silicon Valley convinced me completely: we need to
think differently about the connection between entrepreneurial innovation, ethics and the
digital world. So I founded 2 companies: Overbites, with which I show young companies and
SMEs ways into working business models and fundings. And then the Initiative Digitale
Gerechtigkeit (Digital Justice Initiative), with which I have a lot of plans for the next few
months to initiate debates in society as a whole. We are currently producing a Germanlanguage
podcast. Last year, I added a third company to my portfolio: Resilient Resident. We
have developed roof module concepts and have been presenting the concept to policy
makers and expert panels for several months. With funding from the EU and the Berlin
Senate, we have already received a lot of publicity for this idea. The further development of
this will try to meet the climatic conditions of a metropolis and the claim of a real, social
smart city for everyone.