Former sailor Emily Pyke founded UndaTech, an Australian company developing fire-resistant undergarments for women, earning her Westpac Female Founder of the Year for 2026.
Created in 2023, UndaTech develops protective and high-performance PPE and apparel tailored for women in Defence, fire, emergency services and other high-risk industries.
The company combines specialised fabrics with female-specific design features to improve safety and endurance while meeting workplace compliance standards.
“We started with the biggest critical gap within the PPE ensemble, which is the base layer,” Ms Pyke said.
“We wanted to create a product that women could wear in operational environments without having to choose between being protected and being comfortable.”
Having served 13 years in the Navy, Ms Pyke identified a critical gap in the protective ensemble: women were held to the same safety standards as their male counterparts, but had no compliant, fit-for-purpose base layer to meet them in.
This left them exposed to preventable risks, from melt injury caused by synthetic commercial undergarments worn beneath their PPE, to injuries caused by poor integration between the bra and equipment such as body armour.
Those experiences highlighted the need for equipment designed around female physiology, which inspired her to develop the fire-resistant bra and menstrual brief, along with a thermoregulating performance undershirt, all designed to support safety and operational effectiveness.
“Whether you’re on board a ship, in an aircraft or out in the field, if there’s a fire or a high-heat incident, every layer you’re wearing matters, yet nothing was issued to us, and the commercial options we could buy were never designed for those environments,” Ms Pyke said.
While being named Westpac’s 2026 Female Founder of the Year marks a significant milestone, Ms Pyke said the recognition reinforced the importance of continuing to improve protective clothing and equipment for women.
“There are still gaps to address, and we’re only just getting started,” she said.
