Reinventing Education in the 21st Century 🎓👩🏽💻
FemWealth Issue #26
Happy Sunday, FemWealth Friends! ☀️
It's back-to-school season, and today's edition of FemWealth shines a light on women who reinvent education in the 21st century, from children's education to life-long learning:
Dee Saigal, CEO & Creative Director, Erase All Kittens
We’re designing a coding game that girls genuinely love — one that places a huge emphasis on creativity. Girls can see instant results as they code, there are different ways to progress through the game and learning is seamlessly blended with storytelling. - via TechCrunch
(C) Erase All Kittens founders Dee Saigal and Leonie Van Der Linde
Dee Saigal is the mastermind behind Erase All Kittens (EAK), a Mario-style adventure game designed to equip children with transferable digital skills and inspire more girls to code. The startup she funded in 2015, together with Alex Dytrych and Leonie Van Der Linde, aims to give millions of young children – particularly girls – the confidence and skills to believe in their own abilities and potential.
A graduate of Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, Saigal was passionate about game design from a young age but lacked coding skills. After working in the advertising industry for several years, she decided to pursue her childhood passion and set herself to create a game that helps kids develop digital skills.
EAK teaches kids web programming foundations (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) by immersing them in a fantasy Internet Universe filled with quirky characters, strange stories, magical worlds and cute fluffy kittens. It currently has more than 150,000 players worldwide, of which 55% are girls.
📖 Dee Saigal: “Young Women Who Can Code Will Always Have Confidence In Their Own Potential”
📖 Can Cats Teach Girls To Code?
Ana Lorena Fabrega, EDUpreneur & Chief Evangelist at Synthesis
Imagine if work and school revolved around projects—not curriculums, quotas, or tasks. Wouldn’t kids (and adults!) be more engaged? Wouldn’t this lead them to love school and learning?
Growing up, Ana Fabrega attended 10 different schools in 7 countries. Her interest and passion for life-long learning led her to pursue a career in education. As a primary school teacher, she taught hundreds of kids in New York, Boston, and Panama. But frustrated by a school system that forces teachers to teach a one-size-fits-all curriculum that rewards grades and standards over creativity and choice, she reevaluated her role as an educator. She left the classroom in the summer of 2019 to search for new approaches to teaching and learning.
She found her calling as an EDUpreneur — a passionate educator outside the classroom building learning alternatives to break the mold. In early 2020 she co-created Write of Passage Summer Camp, a virtual learning experience where kids from different parts of the world meet to work on projects they care about.
She is currently Chief Evangelist of Synthesis - an innovative online enrichment program for curious and ambitious kids who want to learn how to build the future.
Subscribe to Ana’s newsletter Fab Fridays.
📖 Raising Antifragile Children
📖 I WAS A TEACHER. I LOVED IT. I QUIT.
📖 Meet Ana Lorena Fabrega, the Educator Focused on Independent Thinking and Mental Models
Rachel Romer Carlson, CEO and Co-founder of Guild Education
We are in a moment as a society where we have a workforce craving something more and wanting to better themselves. We also see a desire from employers to provide educational and training opportunities to grow the talent within their companies.
Drawing on her extended family's experience with access to college education, Rachel Romer Carlson founded Guild Education in 2015 together with Brittany Stich. On a mission to unlock opportunity through education and upskilling for workers throughout the United States, Guild has a double bottom-line business model that does well by doing good.
Guild's technology platform allows employers (including Walmart, Target, Waste Management, and Chipotle) to offer education-as-a-benefit programs for frontline employees, connecting them to a learning ecosystem of the best universities and learning providers, with tuition paid by the company. So far, more than 400,000 working adults have begun exploring their path back to school with Guild.
A certified B Corporation, Guild has raised upwards of $370 million from investors, including General Catalyst, Felicis, Bessemer, Cowboy Ventures, and Lauren Power Jobs (Emerson Collective).
🎧 The Secret Method for Adopting a Learner's Mindset
📖 ‘Don’t wait to be perfect:’ 4 top startup tips from a unicorn’s founder and investor
👩🏽💻 More Education Companies and Organizations Founded by Women
Andela, co-founded by Christina Sass
Ascend, founded by Shivani Berry
Black Girls Code, founded by Kimberly Bryant
Fox & Sheep, HABA Digital and Digitale Bildung für Alle e.V., founded by Verena Pausder
imagiLabs founded by Dora Palfi, Beatrice Ionascu and Paula Dosza
Juni Learning, founded by Vivian Shen and Ruby Lee
Robo Wunderkind, co-founded by Anna Iarotska
Hello Ruby founded by Linda Liukas
Girls Who Code founded by Reshma Saujani
Code First Girls & Entrepreneur First co-founded by Alice Bentinck
Women Thought Leaders in Online Learning Education via Virtually
Are you an educator or the founder of an EdTech startup or organization? Share a link in the comment section.
FemWealth Curated News
the female factor launches Europe’s first job platform for female talents
This Startup Sees a New Business Opportunity: Teaching Gen Z About Money - founder and CEO Amira Yahyaoui aims for Mos to become a financial super app
She’s the Investor Guru for Online Creators - the New York Times profiles Li Jin, founding partner of Atelier Ventures
(C) Li Jin of Atelier Ventures via The New York Times
TechCrunch covers the most exciting startups at the Y Combinator’s Summer 2021 Demo Day: Part I & Part 2 - only 37% of the founders in this cohort are from underrepresented groups (according to YC’s Michael Seibel the accelerator defines as Black, Latinx or female.)
FemWealth Recommended Event
📅 What’s the gender data gap, and how can we fix it? with Elvie’s CEO Tania Boler in conversation with Caroline Criado Perez, author of the best-selling book 'Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men' | Monday, September 6th from 6pm BST/1pm EST
Thank you for reading FemWealth! ❤️ Please share your feedback and insights on how to make the newsletter more valuable to you in the comments section or by replying to this email.
Wish you a successful week ahead!
Anamaria
Founder & Writer @FemWealth