What kind of role model do you want to have?
Kate, Founder of BeyondABC, noted the impact of role models on her career aspirations growing up. She said her brothers had all these amazing people like tech founders, athletes and musicians to look up to, while she had fashion models. Given these role models, she started modelling at 13 with the goal of becoming a Victoria Secret model. When she found herself at 16, alone, travelling to Singapore on an agency contract, she realised what she was doing was not a good plan. She noted modelling is a hard industry and also very unhealthy. She came home from Asia unsure as to what to do given that she had already finished high school at 16.
In her searching path, she came back to Toronto and decided to move to Montreal. She found an apartment from a friend of a friend of a friend and started working at a café. She humbly noted she was the worst barista ever given that she had never made coffee, but through this, she found an internship. She was working for an online magazine and Kate became interested in what the developers worked on. Soon after, she moved to Savanna, Georgia to an art and design school to study fashion. Besides the culture shock, already at that point, she realised her passion was in tech. She stayed there for a semester and then decided to move back to Montreal, where she then applied for a software engineering program at McGill and a program at Parsons. Now, she is entering her final year in the design and tech undergrad program at Parsons, and this is where her entrepreneurial journey really began.
The start-up she has founded alongside her Co-Founders Danny Dang and Ker Thao is called BeyondABC and is a game to teach children living in India the basic skills to protect themselves. It has 10 different levels, and each level focuses on a specific lesson, which is a fun way to get the message across. This way the children can tell their friends about it and become safety ambassadors, for it takes a whole community, not just one person to know this information. This idea came from a grant opportunity where Parsons gave a student $3000 to do a research project, and Kate applied in her sophomore year and was awarded this grant. She decided to travel to India for 2 months over her break and worked at a medical software start-up and started doing research into human trafficking. As a first time traveller to India on her own, she noted that she really didn’t have much of a plan and didn’t know what to expect. She knew the first week she would go to Goa with her co-workers and then would figure it out. One co-worker let her stay with his family. Now, Kate’s team is working with a non-profit called Goal, are re-building prototype 2 and are planning to head back to India in January!
As part of this grant, her research paper started out focused on the connection between education, poverty and human trafficking; she conducted research and realised kids don’t have the safety skills they need to protect themselves, even the basic skills like when someone offers you a job that sounds too good to be true, or don’t give your personal papers to people. While focused on education, she tried to figure out why all these kids were in the streets and not at school. She noted every question led to 20 more questions and it really came down to human trafficking and child exploitation. She interviewed people, worked with the kids, while working on the product design and built an SOS feature for the start-up she was with. This start-up was working on connecting tourists and travellers to healthcare professionals, for this can be difficult if you don’t speak the language.
A part from the language barriers and geographic distance from India, they have faced some other challenges. She noted a start-up is such a huge undertaking and a huge time commitment, and it is hard to find a reliable team. There are many Saturday nights spent working and luckily, and she noted her partners have come through many times—she is very confident in them. She noted it’s also hard finding partners in India. Her partner travelled to India this summer and figured it all out; she noted you just have to go even if you don’t have a solid plan and make it happen. They have tried google hang-outs, but Kate noted you really have to just go in person and build a face-to-face connection. And of course, she noted that travelling to India costs money, and each time they need funding, but so far they have been lucky with that aspect.
Growing up, she had a number of role models she looked up to, but she noted that it took her a while to get out of the media head space that told her Victoria Secret models were what she should aspire to be. She recently read Sheryl Sandberg’s book “Lean In,” and she started looking for different role models. She realised she could also look up to Mark Zuckerberg if she wanted, she noted that the world needs more young female entrepreneurs, and that’s what drives her. She noted that Sheryl Sandberg is amazing, but is not likely that a 13 year old is like “oh that’s who I want to be.” They look to people closer to their age like Selena Gomez. She noted her parents have also been really inspiring growing up. Her dad owns a medical software company and her mom came from a rough background and worked really hard at school to become a physiotherapist and own her own clinic (all while having 3 children). Kate noted the New Challenge and the Next 36 programs have also offered a lot of great support.
Get to know Kate a bit better:
Nerdy moment #1: In Grade 4 when everyone was obsessed with American Girl Dolls, she was obsessed with Mongolia. She worked on this project and end up having lunch with the President of Mongolia because he was in town. She noted that when you are young there is this culture where it’s not cool to be good at school; young people should be proud of their hard work in school!
Nerdy moment #2: In Grade 6, Kate and her classmates made airplanes for a science class, where there would be a competition to whose flew the furthest. Most people used paper and cardboard, but Kate used…Cheese! She noted she was very dedicated to making this cheese airplane. Somebody ate it because they thought it was the Grade 3 snack, then it became moldy…but she won!
Embarrassing moment: When she arrived in India, it was the mother’s birthday in the family she was staying with, so she brought flowers. She was in the living room with the Grandmother who didn’t speak any English so they were trying to communicate through hand signals. Long story short, the flowers ended up behind the couch!
Coolest place travelled: India! She’s done a lot of travelling. She’s really enjoyed the people and culture in South Africa like in India and she’s also recently travelled to Tokyo.
Kate has a lot of great advice! Something she wished she knew earlier was to make the hard decisions faster. She noted that sometimes she knew things weren’t working and once you’ve invested time, it’s hard to pivot. Just keep moving forward. You learn the most in difficult and uncomfortable situations. The hardest part is starting. Just go for it and get started even if it doesn’t feel perfect.
And don’t forget to check-out Kate’s Book List! Thank you so much for reading this post! If you would like to find more information about BeyondABC, please check them out here. If you have any feedback for me, please feel free to e-mail me here.
