Meet Our Team
Vincent is the technical visionary behind VenusGuard. Mr. Leskowich has led the core engineering and innovation efforts from the earliest concepts to the current model, and will also be the lead of designing future improvements. He has over forty years of experience as an engineer specializing in product design, development, and commercialization, particularly for medical devices.
He has intentionally remained behind the scenes to ensure VenusGuard is represented by strong female voices from a survivor-informed perspective.
Vincent’s commitment to this mission stems from a deep belief in empowering women with a right to personal safety. His effort in creating a VenusGuard that is trusted to perform properly has taken decades of meticulous research, outreach, and engineering creativity. The dedication to our product’s performance is instrumental to the core of our mission.
Vincent Leskowich | Inventor and Product Designer
Our design team consists of experienced medical professionals who have dedicated more than 20 years to developing this protective device. Their expertise in medical product design has been shaped by extensive research and thoughtful collaboration with a wide range of specialists. We have incorporated direct input from thousands of rape survivors worldwide, along with convicted rapists, and consultations with criminologists, law enforcement officers, medical clinicians (including gynecologists, surgeons, and urologists), psychologists, trauma counselors, legal experts, polymer and materials scientists, and design professionals. There are a lot of people who have helped us get to where we are now.
All of this work has been carried out on a volunteer basis to ensure VenusGuard is safe, reliable, and truly effective. Our volunteers put themselves at great risks by promoting a product that regards this subject matter. There is a lot of support, but also a lot of backlash. Our business operations and approach have to be very delicate and deliberate.
To those who have followed the project for a long time: yes, this is the same product initiative you may have seen before! The original name created significant barriers to media coverage and public acceptance, despite the urgent need for open discussion around sexual assault prevention.
Recognizing the need to reach the widest possible audience, we made a deliberate decision to pursue parallel paths. The VenusGuard brand was created specifically for markets that apply strict social media content guidelines, AI moderation, and greater sensitivity around graphic language. This allows us to reach more women effectively while still navigating local community standards and platform rules.
One of our original co-inventors, Sonnet Ehlers, continues her own important work promoting and educating about Rape-aXe in South Africa and other regions where more direct terminology is readily accepted. VenusGuard is our pivot to open ears and bypass censorship in Western cultures. She is aware of the pivot happening with VenusGuard, but she still keeps the old name in her country.
VenusGuard Founding and Origin