Laura Boccanfuso started her PhD in computer science after being a stay-at-home mother for eight years to her three kids. She’s been building AI-enabled classroom tutors ever since.

As the founder and CEO of Van Robotics, Boccanfuso wrote the original code in her home workshop while undertaking postdoctoral studies at Yale University, far from her home base in South Carolina. Her mission? To find ways to support children with autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and other special needs, in their classroom learning time.

Like all entrepreneurs, Boccanfuso faced pushback when she initially approached venture capitalists (VCs) to fund her business. Yet her hurdles were different: one VC wouldn’t support her because her husband wasn’t part of the business or leading it with her, and another because she held too much equity, even though it was her first round of funding.

“There was this perception that women don’t have technical capabilities,” Boccanfuso said, adding VCs would address technical questions to men even though she wrote the code herself. VCs also pushed her to design a retail model of her robot, named “ABii,” even though its purpose was to support classroom learning—not double as a babysitter or tutor.

Boccanfuso ignored them and found talent and resources from her academic circles in child development and robotics, and ABii by Van Robotics is now being used in schools and homes in 38 US states and seven countries.

More than 100,000 students and teachers have already benefited from robotic reinforcement in the classroom—as well as from Boccanfuso’s experience as a stay-at-home mother, which helped her build a learner-centric, school-based solution. “I think moms are phenomenal problem solvers,” she said.