She was seventeen. And the solution didn't exist.

Source: fowes.org/robin-petrogiannis Published: May 25, 2026 · Posted by Support@Fowes.Org Series: Women Who Rise · FOWES Feature Category: Inspiration

This is the story of Robin Petrogiannis, Founder and CEO of OurPwr, and the safety technology she built because the world had not built it for her.

OurPwr · Montreal, Canada · Safety Tech & Innovation

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The Beginning

She was seventeen when she searched for a solution and found none. Every app was a panic button. Reactive. Incomplete. Built without the real-world scenarios women actually face.

Robin Petrogiannis was seventeen when she experienced workplace harassment. The kind of moment that, for most people, becomes a memory carried in silence. For Robin, it became something else: a question that would not let her go.

She searched for a tool that could have helped her. A system. An app. Anything. What she found instead was a market full of panic buttons — tools designed to be pressed only after something had already gone wrong. Tools that assumed a woman would have one free hand, a clear mind, and the time to act in the worst possible moment of her life.

The gap was not subtle. It was glaring. And it became her mission.

Robin Petrogiannis, Founder & CEO, OurPwr — Montreal, Canada.

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The Product

Not a panic button. A full solution.

OurPwr is the first full-solution safety app for women. Not reactive. Not partial. Proactive, predictive, and preventative. It is the only safety app built to protect women before, during, and after a dangerous situation — not just when it is already too late.

The distinction matters. A panic button is a final line of defence. By the time it is pressed, the worst has already begun. OurPwr was designed around a different question: What if the technology could see it coming? What if it could help a woman avoid the situation in the first place, support her through it if she could not, and stay with her in the aftermath?

1st — Full-solution safety app	OurPwr is the first app of its kind, built end-to-end around the real situations women face rather than a single panic moment.
3 — Phases of protection	Before, during, and after a dangerous situation. A complete approach rather than a single feature dressed up as one.

This is what separates OurPwr from everything that came before it. It does not wait for the worst moment. It is designed to prevent that moment from arriving.

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The Vision

Three principles. One mission.

"Every app on the market was a panic button. But by the time you press a panic button, the worst has already begun. Women deserve a system that works before that moment — not just one that responds to it."

OurPwr was not built in a vacuum. It was built by someone who lived through the moment the existing market was designed to ignore. It is technology with lived experience inside of it. That is the difference. And it is the reason it works.

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The Philosophy

Robin's belief is simple, and it is the foundation of everything OurPwr does: women already have the power. They always have. What has been missing is not strength, courage, or capability. What has been missing is a system that respects that power and makes sure it can always be used.

OurPwr is not a rescue tool. It is an enabling one. It does not save women. It stands beside them so they can keep saving themselves.

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About Robin Petrogiannis

Engineer by training. Founder by conviction.

Robin Petrogiannis is a Montreal-based entrepreneur who holds a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering. She brings to OurPwr what very few safety-tech founders can: both the technical rigour to build the product and the lived experience to know what it needs to be.

Her path through the entrepreneurial ecosystem has been deliberate, and the recognition has been substantial. She completed District 3's competitive Validation Program at Concordia University. She was selected for the M51 Founder Lab — a national accelerator dedicated to equipping high-potential women entrepreneurs with the strategies and investor access needed to raise capital. She won the Gina Cody School Innovation Fund Award. She is currently in the League of Innovators, Canada's largest free accelerator for founders under 30.

These are not participation badges. They are competitive, selective programs — and Robin has moved through them while building a product designed to change an entire category of technology. She is not asking for permission. She is building the thing.

OurPwr — safety technology designed around the real-world scenarios women face, every day. Robin with her mother and sister — the women behind OurPwr.

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The Mission

Power that was always there. Made usable.

OurPwr's name is not a slogan. It is the entire thesis. Robin believes women already have the power — the awareness, the instinct, the strength. What technology has consistently failed to do is make that power usable in the moments that matter most.

That is what OurPwr was built to fix. Not to replace a woman's judgement. To stand behind it. Not to take over in a crisis. To make sure no crisis arrives unanticipated. The app is, in many ways, an act of trust — trust in women, in their decisions, in their right to move through the world without fear shaping every step.

"Women already have the power. OurPwr just makes sure they can always use it."

This is what a generational shift in safety technology looks like. Not louder alarms. Not faster response times. A complete reimagining of what a safety tool is supposed to do — and who it is supposed to serve.

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This Series

Women Who Rise is a FOWES editorial initiative spotlighting women across the globe who are rising from the fall and building systems of change: through enterprise, community, and conviction. If you are, or know a woman who leads with conviction and selflessness, that story belongs here — because it is no longer the story of one woman, it is the story that inspires every soul.

Initiative	Women Who Rise
Series type	Editorial Feature
Reach	Global
Members supported	3,200+
Countries	8+

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A Note from the Chair · FOWES

Women Who Rise was never meant to be a celebration.

Celebrations are for the past. Women Who Rise is a declaration about the future. It exists because we refuse to live in a world where the most transformative work being done by women goes unseen, filed away under "inspiring story" and forgotten by morning.

When we look at a woman like Robin Petrogiannis, who took the worst moment of her early life and turned it into the foundation of a company that could protect millions of women, we are not looking at an exception. We are looking at what becomes possible when a woman refuses to accept the world as it was handed to her.

FOWES was founded on a simple and non-negotiable belief: that systems change when women lead, communities thrive when women lead, and economies grow when women lead. Not eventually. Not in theory. Now.

Women Who Rise is our commitment to making that visible, one story at a time, told with the depth and respect it deserves. Not a headline. Not a quote card. A full accounting of who these women are, what they built, why it matters, and what it cost them to do it.

If you see yourself in these stories, you belong here. FOWES is not a finishing school for women who have already arrived. It is a living, growing ecosystem for women who are still in the middle of becoming, and who deserve to do that alongside a community that sees them clearly.

To every woman featured in this series, and to every woman reading it: We are proud of you.

We refuse to live in a world where the most transformative work being done by women goes unseen.

Sabah Hussain — Chair · FOWES

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"Women already have the power. OurPwr just makes sure they can always use it."

OurPwr is a testament that the most powerful kind of innovation is the kind built from lived experience: rigorous, intentional, and fully on the side of the women it was made for.