Will You Leave a Mrk?

I love my iPhone case! Do you? How many cases have you gone through? Me, a few...but this one is it.  My nice blue Mrked case is the brainchild of 3 kids - yup, kids. Just your average college kids yet again deciding it's their right to change the world.  15% of the revenues from Mrked goes to teach young girls in emerging markets how to read.  Beauty & Benificence in one. Shahneel shares their story - read it and go get a case!

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Three sets of parents migrated from South Asia in order to provide their future children an opportunity to access better education.  The struggles our parents endured to make it in America motivated us to excel in our academic journeys.  This as well as our want to provide an opportunity for people, like you, to better the world we live in developed into the driving force behind Mrked.

Mrked is a tech accessories company that not only offers quality, fashionable products, but also a chance for you to “Leave a Mrk” on the world.  Fifteen percent of Mrked’s revenue helps support the works of Room to Read’s Girl Education Program.  Educating girls is to most effective and powerful approach to fight global poverty. Educating women will lead to them educating their children, which results in ending the literacy cycle by one generation.  

The idea of creating quality tech accessories came from fellow founder Safin Maknojia after he expressed his frustration with the accessories he saw in the market.  Walking into the Apple store, you may have noticed the vast selection of iPhone snap cases and high-end fashionable cases that barely offered your $500 investment any protection.  On the other end of the spectrum, there are cases on the market that offer great protection, from your waterproof cases to your extreme sports enthusiast cases, but took away from the aesthetics of the iPhone.  Our goal was to create a case that would protect a smartphone from the everyday bumps and dings and allows consumers to express their style through our designs. 

The idea of creating a philanthropic element to Mrked came from my background in international development studies and my desire to create a social enterprise like Warby Parker and Oliberté.  I’ve spent hours and hours throughout my years at Brown University reading about the issues in the developing world – health, education, political, and social issues.  All of which are elements that have led to today’s current state of global poverty.  After researching about the positive impact a proper education can have on a girl’s life in an Asian and African country, we knew this is what we wanted to support.  Finding Room to Read was just the cherry on top in our efforts to Leave a Mrk on the world.  

“But Shahneel, how does combining tech accessories and educating even make sense?”  Yes, Warby Parker’s partnership with Vision Spring does make sense.  And yes, a company like TOMS donating pairs of shoes does make sense.  But, who says everything we do in this world has to make obvious sense.  We wanted to take a product that we use everyday and provide girls in Asian and African countries with a concept that we also use everyday, education.  So is there a direction relationship between tech accessories and education?  Maybe, maybe not, but that debate is what makes our company beautiful and the reason why we wanted to enter this market and cause some disruption. 

After creating the idea of Mrked, we now had to bring it to life.  After sketching out the basic structure of our case, we then started to finalize the materials for the two parts.  We decided the outside layer should be made out of polycarbonate plastic because of its high-impact resistance and durability.  The inner layer would be composed of thermoplastic polyurethane because of its shock absorption, smoothness, and its ability not to attract lint like silicone.  After creating the 3-D rendering of our case, we now moved into designing the cases.  One of our main goals was to offer consumers an array of designs from which they could pick at least one favorite.  This idea led us to create five different categories: one color (Crayon Box), two color (Double Dutch), three color (Honor Roll), trendy designs (CLASSroom), and animal print (Jungle Gym).  Since Safin and I have always been into sneakers and fashion, we started looking through blogs, magazines, and Instagrams to see which color combinations and patterns were popular and trendy.  After creating the designs and getting the approval of our third founder Akil Momin, we finalized the 25 designs that currently comprise the 5 collections.  The final and definitely the most difficult process of this all was finding a manufacturer.  After months of conversations and samples, we were able to finalize our manufacturer.  This was the most draining and scariest process of creating Mrked because we knew our selection would impact the quality of the cases. 

If someone asked me, "Is Mrked worth all the late nights in the library trying to balance school and the company while sacrificing your 'normal' college experience?" I would undoubtedly smile and answer, "YES!"  We were able to create a solution to a problem that your everyday smartphone owner struggles with and accomplish a philanthropic ambition, which will aid young girls in providing a better future for their families and themselves.  My parents migrated to this country to provide me with a better education and give me the chance to do something great.  Attending an Ivy League university was part one. Hopefully, the success of Mrked will help me take steps towards part two: accomplish something worthwhile and Leave a Mrk on the world. 

Innovating Higher-Education

MOOCs (Massively Open Online Courses) are a very hot topic in higher education and corporate training.  Nabeel Gillani started Coursolve.org to connect organizations using MOOCs with students around the world to solve real world problems.  UVa’s Darden School of Business and University of Washington are finding unexpected value and learning by using Coursolve.  We are in a new age of education, and just leave it to our students to make sure they are front and center! Nabeel is pursuing a Master’s in Learning and Technology at the University of Oxford’s Department of Education and is also co-founder of Coursolve.org.  He finished his undergraduate education in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science at Brown University in 2012.  You can read more of his thoughts on MOOCs in Stanford Social Innovation Review as well.
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Every Friday, I try to remember how to multiply and divide 2-digit numbers as 9-to-11 year olds at St. Nicholas Primary School show off their math prowess.  Technically, I’m there to tutor them, but often they’re the ones teaching me.  Last Friday was no different:  with 15 minutes left, I walked over to David, a 10-year old math whiz.  Sensing his boredom, I asked him a classic question:  “What do you want to be when you grow up?”  He responded with “A scientist – probably an astronomer.”  And then, he took me to school.

“You know, outer space is like a big spikey ball that keeps on getting bigger,” he said.  I was stunned by his image of an expanding universe.  David proceeded to talk about the origin of black holes and the relationship between time and space.  He then discussed the big bang, conceptualized the possibility of multiple universes, and described “infinity.”  Up until that point, I knew David as the kid who kept talking as we took attendance at the start of each session, but in 15 minutes, he had dropped enough knowledge on me to make a first-year Physics undergrad take notes.

I am constantly reminded that students – many of them less than half my age – are capable of so much.  I spent the past four years at Brown University learning how to play basketball from an elementary schooler and watching 12 year-olds in Providence channel their creativity into building computer games.  Years later and halfway around the world, David gave me one of the most engaging Physics lessons of my life.  By enrolling as a student in formal institutions, what I’ve really done is become the student of other students.  I’ve been lucky to learn from people with unique interests and insights, backgrounds and experiences ready to apply their knowledge to shaping the world.

It is this observation – that students can use their talents to break down barriers and change the world – that has driven the development of Coursolve.  Coursolve is a platform that connects organizations with courses to empower students to solve real-world problems.  Over the past few months, I’ve been fortunate to work with some of my closest friends to explore how a wide range of students, learning both online and offline, can meaningfully contribute to solving hard problems. 

A key partner in this exploration has been Professor Michael Lenox of the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business.  As a part of his recent massively open online course (MOOC) on business strategy, Professor Lenox invited small enterprises, nonprofits and other organizations to join the course and solicit students to provide strategic analysis and insights as a part of their final projects.

We’ve been inspired by the results so far.  For entrepreneurs like Rajan, who solicited the help of students to significantly alter the course of his biotech startup’s business development, accessing insights from a diverse body of learners was game-changing.  But Rajan wasn’t alone.  Rebecca, co-founder of the Food Recovery Network, discussed the value students added by asking fundamental questions that challenged her existing business assumptions.  Ashutosh, the founder of a not-for-profit online language learning organization, mentioned how guidance he received from one student could help his initiative become financially sustainable. 

Over 100 organizations received, on average, about 4 final strategic analyses each.  Out of over 1,000 survey respondents that identified as part of an “organization”, 60% said they would want to work with students to address their challenges in the future. 87% felt that what they received from the course was worth their time and effort (most organizations – 55% – spent only 2-5 hours per week).  Moreover, over 80% of the respondents felt that people outside of their organizations could provide valuable advice on business challenges.  As for students, over 85% of the survey respondents left feeling confident in their abilities to help businesses address their strategic challenges, and 88% said that having real-world problem solving in future courses was important to them.

These results have given us immense hope for what the future holds.  Our latest partnership is with Professor Bill Howe’s Introduction to Data Science MOOC, where students will have an opportunity to help a wide range of organizations answer important questions by analyzing internal or public datasets.  The 8-week long course started on May 1^st, and already, we’ve seen research firms, environmental advocacy groups, and small community organizations post projects.  Since we are especially excited about what students in these settings have to offer, Coursolve is also working directly with course participants to gain insights into how we can improve our social media strategy. 

As Coursolve develops over the next few months with new partnerships and a more robust platform, it will continue to help enable students with different cultural backgrounds, academic interests, and life experiences learn by directly engaging with some of the toughest problems of our time.  If we help open doors to smart people around the world, there’s no telling who will step through —and what they will accomplish.  Who knows, some of them might even teach us a thing or two about the universe. 

Innovation & Entrepreneurship for the Next Generation

So honored to share the screen on Huffington Post Live with Angela Maiers, Saul Kaplan, Robin Chase, Whitney Johnson and Brian Cuban discussing Choose2Matter - helping our kids realize how much they have to offer and give -