Kaya Thomas

Last updated
Kaya Thomas
Born1995 (age 28–29)
Staten Island, New York, U.S.
Nationality American
Occupation App developer
Known forWe Read Too
Website https://kaya.dev/ https://github.com/kmt901

Kaya Thomas (born 1995) is an American app developer. She is the creator of We Read Too, an iOS app that helps readers discover books for and by people of color. Thomas is a volunteer mentor with Black Girls Code and a Made with Code role model. She has received recognition for her work to improve diversity in the tech industry and was honored in 2015 by Michelle Obama at BET's Black Girls Rock! award show and was named one of Glamour 's 2016 College Women of the Year.

Contents

Early life and education

Thomas is originally from Staten Island, New York. In high school, Thomas was an avid reader and realized that there were not enough black girls in the young adult novels she was reading. [1] She wished that there was a resource that would show books written by and for black girls and women. This experience would eventually be the inspiration for her app, We Read Too. [1]

Thomas graduated in 2017 from Dartmouth College, where she studied computer science. [1] [2] Initially enrolled in environmental engineering, she switched to computer science after teaching herself to code through Codecademy. She credits a TED Talk by Kimberly Bryant, founder of Black Girls Code, with sparking her interest in the tech industry. [3] [4] Thomas is particularly interested in the role technology can play in improving people's day-to-day lives. [5]

Career

One of Thomas' first professional experiences was with Time Inc. as an intern with the Entertainment Weekly brand working on their mobile site. [6]

After she graduated from Dartmouth in 2017, Thomas worked full-time as an iOS engineer for Slack. [7] Currently, she is working for Calm, a wellness company based in San Francisco, California. [8]

In 2015 Thomas was named a CODE2040 Fellow. [2] The following year she was appointed a role model as part of Google's Made with Code initiative, which provides girls with coding support and training to encourage their entry into technology-based fields. [3] She was also named one of Glamour's 2016 College Women of the Year. [9]

Software

We Read Too

Thomas began working on the iOS app We Read Too in 2014 while working as an intern at Time Inc. The app highlights books written by people of color featuring characters of color. [6] Aimed at improving access to books for and by diverse communities, We Read Too helps young readers find books with protagonists they can relate to. The app is free to remove barriers to entry. [10] This was made possible by crowdsourcing efforts.

The idea for the app was based on Thomas' experience as a young reader who struggled to find diverse books. She explained to BET in 2014 that: "Whenever I tried to find books with characters of color, I would have to look in sub-categories or search longer than I should have had to. I created this app so that books created by and for people of color can be found easily and in one central location." [11] She was honored for her work on the app by Michelle Obama in 2015 as part of BET's Black Girls Rock! award show. [12]

As of April 2017 the app had been downloaded 15,000 times, [13] [14] and as of March 2020 its directory contains almost 1,000 titles. [8] To achieve these numbers, Thomas launched an Indiegogo campaign in March 2017 to achieve the goal of 1,000 listed titles featuring Black, Latinx, Native, Indigenous, Asian, and Pacific Islander characters. Part of the identified work was launching an Android version of the app and undertaking a redesign of the iOS version. [15] By mid-April she had surpassed the initial goal of $10,000, indicating that additional funds would be put toward developing a website for the app and introducing fiction titles aimed at adults. [13]

Other work

In 2015 she spoke at BookNet Canada's 10th annual Tech Forum where she advocated for the importance of children, from all backgrounds, being exposed to diverse book characters. She encouraged the traditionally white publishing industry to include ethnicity based metadata about authors to improve discoverability of diverse writers and publications. [16]

In addition to writing for various news sites, including TechCrunch and Model View Culture, Thomas has appeared on podcasts Another Round and Code Newbie to discuss her work.

Thomas is a volunteer mentor with Black Girls Code and the founder of the YouTube series Code With Kaya. She has expressed her commitment to helping women learn to code and promoting the diversification of both the tech and publishing industry. [6]

Accolades

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Faith Ringgold</span> American artist (born 1930)

Faith Ringgold is an American painter, painting on different materials including fabric, a published author, mixed media sculptor, performance artist, and intersectional activist, perhaps best known for her narrative quilts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jodi Picoult</span> American author

Jodi Lynn Picoult is an American writer. Picoult has published 28 novels, as well as short stories, and has also written several issues of Wonder Woman. Approximately 40 million copies of her books are in print worldwide, translated into 34 languages. She was awarded the New England Bookseller Award for fiction in 2003.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kathryn Finney</span> American author, entrepreneur, innovator, and businesswoman

Kathryn A. Finney is an American author, researcher, investor, entrepreneur, and businesswoman. She is the founder of Genius Guild, a $20 million dollar venture fund & studio that invests in Black entrepreneurs building scalable businesses that serve Black communities and beyond. She is also founder and Board Chair of The Doonie Fund, a social platform that provides micro-investment to Black women entrepreneurs. Finney first made her mark as a tech entrepreneur when she sold “The Budget Fashionista” after running the site-turned-media company for 11 years.

Allie Esiri, formerly Allie Byrne, is a British writer/poetry curator and former stage, film, and television actress.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cindi Leive</span>

Cynthia Leive is a journalist, media leader and advocate for women. She is the CEO of the media company The Meteor, a podcast host, the former editor-in-chief of both Glamour and Self magazines, and the author or producer of numerous books including the 2018 New York Times bestseller "Together We Rise," about the making of the March for Women's Lives. Leive has interviewed heads of state, Hollywood and fashion's biggest personalities, and iconic leaders from all walks of life. She is also a senior fellow at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kimberlé Crenshaw</span> American academic and lawyer (born 1959)

Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw is an American civil rights advocate and a leading scholar of critical race theory. She is a professor at the UCLA School of Law and Columbia Law School, where she specializes in race and gender issues.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ComiXology</span> Online comic distribution platform

Iconology Inc., d/b/a ComiXology, was a cloud-based digital distribution platform for comics owned by Amazon, with over 200 million comic downloads as of September 2013. It offers a selection of more than 100,000 comic books, graphic novels, and manga across Android, iOS, Kindle Fire, Windows 10, and the Internet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barnes & Noble Nook</span> Android-based tablet and e-reader

The Barnes & Noble Nook is a brand of e-readers developed by American book retailer Barnes & Noble, based on the Android platform. The original device was announced in the U.S. in October 2009, and was released the next month. The original Nook had a six-inch E-paper display and a separate, smaller color touchscreen that serves as the primary input device and was capable of Wi-Fi and AT&T 3G wireless connectivity. The original Nook was followed in November 2010 by a color LCD device called the Nook Color, in June 2011 by the Nook Simple Touch, and in November 2011 and February 2012 by the Nook Tablet. On April 30, 2012, Barnes & Noble entered into a partnership with Microsoft that spun off the Nook and college businesses into a subsidiary. On August 28, 2012, Barnes and Noble announced partnerships with retailers in the UK, which began offering the Nook digital products in October 2012. In December 2014, B&N purchased Microsoft's Nook shares, ending the partnership.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mariéme Jamme</span>

Marieme Jamme is a Senegalese-born French-British businesswoman and technology activist. In 2016 she founded the iamtheCODE initiative and is on the board of the World Wide Web Foundation. In 2017, Quartz Africa included Jamme in their "Quartz Africa Innovators 2017" list. In 2013 she was nominated as a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. In 2017, she won the "Innovation Award" in The Goalkeepers Global Goal Awards, curated by UNICEF and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, for globally supporting girls and young women and advancing the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. That same year, she was listed as one of BBC's 100 Women.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black Girls Code</span> Not-for-profit organization

Black Girls Code (BGC) is a nonprofit organization that focuses on engaging African-American girls and other youth of color with computer programming education to nurture their careers in tech. The organization offers computer programming and coding, as well as website, robot, and mobile application-building, with the goal of placing one million girls in tech by 2040. Kimberly Bryant, an electrical engineer who had worked in biotech for over 20 years, founded Black Girls Code in 2011 to rectify the underrepresentation of African-American girls and women in tech careers. In October 2023, Cristina Jones became CEO; she was previously an executive at Salesforce.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Regina Honu</span> Ghanaian software developer

Regina Honu, is a Ghanaian social entrepreneur, software developer and founder of Soronko Solutions, a software development company in Ghana. She opened Soronko Academy, the first coding and human-centered design school for children and young adults in West Africa. Honu has received multiple awards, including being named by CNN as one of the 12 inspirational women who rock STEM. She was also named as one of the six women making an impact in Tech in Africa and one of the ten female entrepreneurs to watch in emerging economies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Girls Who Code</span> Nonprofit organization

Girls Who Code is an international nonprofit organization that aims to support and increase the number of women in computer science. Among its programs are a summer immersion program, a specialized campus program, after-school clubs, a college club, College Loops, and a series of books. The organization is based in New York and has programs in all fifty states, Canada, India, and the United Kingdom. As of 2022, there were over 500,000 Girls Who Code alumni.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Samantha John</span>

Samantha John is an American entrepreneur, known for being the co-founder of Hopscotch, a learn-to-code application.

<i>The Hate U Give</i> 2017 young adult novel by Angie Thomas

The Hate U Give is a 2017 young adult novel by Angie Thomas. It is Thomas's debut novel, expanded from a short story she wrote in college in reaction to the police shooting of Oscar Grant. The book is narrated by Starr Carter, a 16-year-old African-American girl from a poor neighborhood who attends an elite private school in a predominantly white, affluent part of the city. Starr becomes entangled in a national news story after she witnesses a white police officer shoot and kill her childhood friend, Khalil. She speaks up about the shooting in increasingly public ways, and social tensions culminate in a riot after a grand jury decides not to indict the police officer for the shooting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lyndsey Scott</span> American model and iOS mobile app software developer

Lyndsey Scott is an American supermodel and software developer. She was the first African American to sign an exclusive runway contract with Calvin Klein, and has worked for Gucci, Prada, and Victoria's Secret. She writes mobile apps for iOS devices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amanda Gorman</span> American poet and activist (born 1998)

Amanda S. C. Gorman is an American poet and activist. Her work focuses on issues of oppression, feminism, race and marginalization, as well as the African diaspora. Gorman was the first person to be named National Youth Poet Laureate. She published the poetry book The One for Whom Food Is Not Enough in 2015. She rose to fame in 2021 for writing and delivering her poem "The Hill We Climb" at the inauguration of Joe Biden. Gorman's inauguration poem generated international acclaim and shortly thereafter, two of her books achieved best-seller status, and she obtained a professional management contract.

Young adult fiction and children's literature in general have historically shown a lack of diversity, that is, a lack of books with a main character who is, for example, a person of color, from the LGBTQIA+ community, or disabled. The numbers of children's book authors have shown a similar lack of diversity. Diversity is considered beneficial since it encourages children of diverse backgrounds to read and it teaches children of all backgrounds an accurate view of the world around them. In the mid-2010s, more attention was drawn to this problem from various quarters. In the several years following, diversity numbers seem to have improved: One survey showed that in 2017, a quarter of children's books were about minority protagonists, almost a 10 percent increase from 2016.

Dhonielle Clayton is an American author and chief operating officer of We Need Diverse Books. She has written multiple book series, including The Belles (2018-2023). She also collaborated with Tiffany D. Jackson, Angie Thomas, Nic Stone, Ashley Woodfolk, and Nicola Yoon to write Blackout (2021).

Tia Williams is an American novelist and editor. She has published six books and is best known for The Accidental Diva (2004), The Perfect Find (2016), and Seven Days in June (2021). She is also a long-time fashion editor and the current editorial director for the Estée Lauder Companies.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "She Reads, She Codes, She Rocks". www.dartmouthcollegefund.org. Dartmouth College Fund. 22 August 2016. Retrieved 7 December 2016.
  2. 1 2 Goredema, Octavia (8 January 2016). "Student software developer Kaya Thomas shares her passion for computer science - Twenty Ten Talent". Twenty Ten Talent. Retrieved 7 December 2016.
  3. 1 2 Lewis, Taylor (29 February 2016). "How Coder Kaya Thomas Wants to Bring BlackGirlMagic to the Tech World". Essence.com. Retrieved 7 December 2016.
  4. ↑ Summers, Erin; Ghadiyali, Zainab. "This is what a female engineer looks like". Quartz. Retrieved 7 December 2016.
  5. ↑ Burns, Terri (13 May 2016). "STEM Student Spotlight: Kaya Thomas". Scientific American Blog Network. Retrieved 7 December 2016.
  6. 1 2 3 Albright, Charlotte E. (25 April 2016). "Kaya Thomas '17 Wins Kudos for Young Reader App". news.dartmouth.edu. Dartmouth News. Retrieved 7 December 2016.
  7. ↑ "Kaya Thomas Believes People Of Color Should See Themselves In Books, And She's Making It Happen Through Coding". Bustle. Retrieved 2020-07-12.
  8. 1 2 "Kaya Thomas, the iOS Dev Working to Achieve Inclusivity". www.welcometothejungle.com. Retrieved 2020-07-12.
  9. 1 2 Militare, Jessica (5 April 2016). "2016 College Women of the Year: Kaya Thomas". Glamour. Retrieved 7 December 2016.
  10. ↑ Harrington, Samantha. "How This App Developer Is Reminding Minority Kids That Their Stories Matter". Forbes. Retrieved 2020-07-12.
  11. 1 2 Peck, Patrick. "Looking for Children's Books With Black Characters? There's an App for That". BET.com. Retrieved 7 December 2016.
  12. ↑ Chung, Hannah Hye Min (5 April 2015). "Michelle Obama honors Kaya Thomas '17". The Dartmouth. Retrieved 7 December 2016.
  13. 1 2 Herman, Lily (12 April 2017). "This College Senior Couldn't Find Books About People of Color — So She Made an App for That". Teen Vogue. Teen Vogue. Retrieved 8 May 2017.
  14. ↑ Geddes, Jennifer Kelly. "College Student Creates App to Lead Young People To Diverse Books". School Library Journal. School Library Journal. Retrieved 8 May 2017.
  15. ↑ Dupere, Katie (10 April 2017). "This college senior's app connects young readers of color to books they can relate to". Mashable. Retrieved 8 May 2017.
  16. ↑ Godfrey, Laura. "Millennials, Diversity Big Topics at BookNet Canada's Annual Tech Forum". PublishersWeekly.com. Retrieved 9 January 2017.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.