REIMAGINING REIMAGINE
REIMAGINE NEWSLETTER: WOMEN IN EDTECH
What I do
I’m an investor. I look for promising tech startups with a double bottom line – ones that have both social and financial returns. I’m personally interested in the potential applications of frontier technologies like AI/ML, AR/VR, and blockchain to the education sector, especially when they can help support refugee, immigrant, and/or other minority populations. I served as a judge for the Algorithm for Change Competition, a national competition funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and organized by the NYU Social Entrepreneurship Program, to support innovations that help low-income, underrepresented minority, and first generation (LIMFG) students get to and through college. We also fostered innovations like this, where blockchain technology and biometric data provide digital identities, allowing refugees to access food without requiring paperwork (that often gets destroyed during conflict or migration) – innovations which excite me. Additionally, I’d like to support and invest in more female founders and other minority groups, and to serve as a voice and advocate for traditionally marginalized groups in the tech and financing industries. I am a former child refugee, female, low-income, minority, first-generation myself. We need to get, and keep, more representation and voices like mine at the table. If you’d like me to join a panel, be a judge, be an advisor, be a mentor, etc, feel free to reach out anytime. I’d be happy to help.
How I got here
Previously I worked at early-stage education startups and have experience building out companies from the ground up and scaling their growth via business strategy, business operations, and/or business development roles. I’ve also been an educator (facilitating leadership development workshops for college students, serving as a founding writing teacher to grades 7-12, and teaching computer science to kids as young as 4), an entrepreneur (Founder & CEO of my own company, reimagining the nail and beauty industries in ways that support workers’ rights and education), and a Financial & Management Consultant to NYC under the Bloomberg administration where I managed the allocation of $4.5B to over 50 city agencies for Hurricane Sandy recovery efforts. I am a Bill & Melinda Gates Millennium Alumni Scholar who earned my AB in Social & Cognitive Neuroscience from Harvard and my MA & EdM in Leadership, Policy and Politics from Columbia.
I value learning and leaving a positive social impact in all that I do.
The challenge
“You can’t make everyone happy. You are not an avocado.” This t-shirt has been a source of amusement lately, but the sentiment also really resonates with me. I am, more typically than not, usually the minority voice in a room and often have an opposing opinion, offered in the interest of sharing different perspectives. As women, we tend to worry about being liked, which can often lead us to staying silent when our voices are most valuable, or when we question or disagree with something. Not everyone is going to like you, your opinions, or what you have to say, but that shouldn’t stop you from standing by your beliefs and defending them.
If you don’t, who will? You matter, and your opinions matter. I hope you, too, take steps to help others see and hear you.
For example, here is a piece I wrote to share my thoughts on access in technology (spoiler alert: even though I work in tech now, I didn’t have access to the internet for most of my life) and you can learn more about me and my other thoughts on my website here.