Hi, I’m Cristina

I have stopped building someone else's strategy.
Now I’m building things I’m truly proud of.


Strategic product designer. Entrepreneur & Founder.

Cristina Méndez Palencia, strategic designer and founder of The Woman Entrepreneur Lab, Stockholm

You're probably caught
in a loop that looks like this:

Most women aren't failing to act because they lack courage or capability. They're caught in a cycle with no good exit — until someone shows them there's a third option.

01.

Something is off

The career looks right. The salary is real. But somewhere along the way, you started feeling like you're putting your best energy into someone else's vision. You have an idea. It's been with you for a while — clear enough to keep you up at night, not yet real enough to act on.

02.

The gap feels impossible

Quit without proof it works — and risk the financial security you've spent years building. Stay and keep waiting — and watch another year pass. You need evidence before you can act. But the only way to get evidence seems to be acting first. So you freeze.

03.

Another year passes

You stay. You tell yourself: when I have more runway. When things settle. When I finally feel ready. But "ready" never quite arrives. The conditions keep shifting. And the idea is still an idea. And the gap feels wider than ever.

The loop breaks when you have a third option: test your idea while your salary is still intact. Real customer conversations. A working prototype. A first paying client. Before you resign. That's what The Lab is built for.

🚀 The Woman Entrepreneur Lab

The Flagship Program.


Most women I talk to aren't stuck because they lack ambition.
They're stuck because they're facing a false choice:

Stay in a draining job and keep the financial safety.
Or quit without a plan and risk everything.

Neither feels right. Because neither is right.
There's a third path: build it while you still have your job.
Test it with real customers before you invest everything.
Leave when the data tells you to — not when desperation does.

That's what The Lab is built around.


Fall 2026 cohort open.

About me

I make strategy tangible.
Through products, experiences,
and services people actually use.

Scania Unilever Business Models Inc. BSc Industrial Design Engineering MSc Strategic Product Design

The work

For over 15 years, I translated complex strategy into things people could actually hold, use, and experience — digital products, physical services, new business models. I worked with organisations like Scania, Unilever, and Business Models Inc., where the gap between strategy and execution is wide and expensive. Closing it was what I was good at.

The turning point

Then I burned out. Hard. And somewhere in that recovery, I had to ask a question I'd been too busy to face: whose vision am I actually building here? The answer was uncomfortable. The right people were benefitting from my work. They just weren't me.

"I realised I'd spent years being excellent at making other people's ideas real. I was very good at it. I was also completely hollowed out by it."

So I did something uncomfortable: I stopped. I took stock of what I actually cared about, what I was genuinely skilled at, and what I wanted to build that was mine. That question led to The Woman Entrepreneur Lab — and to the most value-aligned work of my career.

I'm still a designer and an engineer. I still make strategy tangible. The difference is that now, I choose whose strategy — and whose future — I'm building.

See what I'm building now →

WHY WORK WITH ME

You don't need another course.
You need a method and a room.

Most programs for aspiring entrepreneurs are either a solo online course (cheap, lonely, easy to abandon) or a one-on-one coach (expensive, no peer accountability).
The Lab is neither.

I've spent years doing this professionally — running customer discovery, shipping digital products alongside development teams, and learning what separates things people say they want from things they'll actually pay for. That's the method I brought to building the Lab, and it's the method I'll teach you.

I also lived the process.
My exit wasn't a leap — it was a plan. And I built the Lab from the evidence I gathered along the way.

Cristina working at her desk, building her entrepreneur program for women

A Stockholm community.

A closed community for women who show up for each other — physically, monthly, intentionally. First Thursday of every month.

womeninmotion.global

🏃🏻‍♀️ Women in Motion

My design podcast.

A closed community for women who show up for each other — physically, monthly, intentionally. First Thursday of every month.

→ Listen on Apple Podcasts
→ Listen on Spotify

🎙️ The Curious
and Creative