Winnie Karanja is the founder and CEO of Represented Collective, and is making products including Nakira's World Decoder Puzzles and the Legendary Card Collection.
Winnie Karanja is the founder and CEO of Represented Collective.
Winnie Karanja is the founder and CEO of Represented Collective, and is making products including Nakira's World Decoder Puzzles and the Legendary Card Collection.
Winnie Karanja is the founder and CEO of Represented Collective.
When tech entrepreneur Winnie Karanja launched her Madison nonprofit Maydm in 2015, she noticed a curious pattern.
“When you ask people to name an engineer, an innovator, a STEM leader, they say: Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk,” said Karanja, who founded Maydm to provide girls and youth of color in grades six to 12 with skill-based training for the technology sector.
Highlighting the contributions of women and people of color in STEM — and training the next generation of tech leaders — is part of the mission of her latest venture, a new media company called Represented Collective.
Represented Collective collaborates with educators and businesses to promote equity and representation in STEM, through activities and educational programs for learners of all ages. The company makes products that promote the contributions of women and Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPoC) to the STEM fields.
Karanja’s transition from the nonprofit realm to Represented Collective came from wanting to move from “something that was very localized… to building a company that has an impact, not only an educational product, but doing work with corporations.”
She said that will involve public campaigns and community work, but also “creating educational content in the K-8 space.” Represented Collective will also be launching trainings and content for businesses to build equitable teams and workplaces.
On the education side, Karanja and Represented Collective created a set of puzzles called Nakira’s World. Kids can check out Nakira’s World activities at Dane County public libraries. The program is part of The Ripple Project, an effort by the libraries to involve the community in meaningful conversations about race.
“Nakira's World centers (on) an 8 year old Kenyan immigrant — who I like to call my ‘mini me’ — and her and her friends’ adventures around them,” said Karanja, who moved from Kenya to Madison when she was 8 years old.
For the Nakira’s World activity, “Can You Find the Hidden Object? Decoder Puzzle Adventure,” students will piece together decoder puzzles and use their decoder glasses to uncover hidden, STEM-related mystery items in illustrated scenes. After that, they will make their own pair of custom decoder glasses.
The next session with Nakira’s World will be Sept. 27 at the DeForest Area Public Library from 4:30-5:30 p.m.
Karanja’s work with Represented Collective also focuses on honoring Black women and women of color who are doing transformative work. Another project she created, the Legendary Card Collective, shares untold stories and histories of women of color who have been pivotal to the technologies the world currently uses.
The cards feature 41 profiles of women in STEM across disciplines including biochemistry, mathematics, aerospace engineering, physics and medicine.
Some of the women featured include Alice Ball, a chemist who developed the “Ball Method,” the most effective treatment for leprosy in the 20th century. Another, Dr. Patricia Bath, invented an improved device for laser cataract surgery.
Others include Dr. Lillie Rosa Minoka-Hill, the second Indigenous woman to receive a doctor of medicine degree from the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1889. And Dr. Vivian Wing-Wah Yam, who is currently a professor at the University of Hong-Kong, whose research focuses on inorganic and organometallic chemistry and photochromic materials.
The Legendary Card Collection can be purchased online for $40 and in stores in Houston. Karanja moved to Houston in 2021, and splits her time between Texas and Madison.
Karanja said that Represented Collective is an amalgamation of all the things that matter in terms of her work, while “it's addressing these critical points in education, corporate spaces (and) community discourse.”
Share your opinion on this topic by sending a letter to the editor to tctvoice@captimes.com. Include your full name, hometown and phone number. Your name and town will be published. The phone number is for verification purposes only. Please keep your letter to 250 words or less.
Become a Cap Times member today and enjoy great benefits.
Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device.