Cadran Cowansage

Cadran Cowansage is the CEO and Co-Founder of Elpha, a professional network for women in technology based in Oakland, California. She developed the platform as an internal project while working as an Engineering Manager at Y Combinator, spinning it out as an independent company in 2019 with 7,500 members. Under her leadership, the Y Combinator-backed startup has since scaled its community to include over 100,000 verified professionals. Prior to founding Elpha, Cowansage worked as a Software Engineer on the Cloud Automation team at MongoDB and served as an early employee at Homer. She holds a Master of Science in Computer Science from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Tufts University. Her current focus remains on leveraging her software engineering expertise to build scalable digital communities for female professionals in tech.