WoW Woman in EdTech | Dora Palfi, CEO and co-founder of imagiLabs
Interview by MarijaButkovic
Dora Palfi is CEO and co-founder of imagiLabs, the all-female founded Stockholm-based startup that aims to bridge the gender divide in coding.
Dora has years of experience teaching programming to children and teenagers as well as advocating for women in technology.
Prior to founding imagiLabs, Dora co-founded Women@EIT, a community, and network of women affiliated with the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). The network strengthened female presence in the field and supported the development of students and alumni at EIT.
Dora, who has also worked as a developer at Morgan Stanley and as a UX Designer at Cisco, has a Bachelor's degree in Neuroscience with a minor in Computer Science from New York University Abu Dhabi and studied Human-Computer Interaction at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.
Dora is originally from Hungary and currently resides in Stockholm. She was listed among Hungary’s Forbes 30 under 30 in 2020, is one of the European finalists of the 2020 edition of the Cartier Women’s Initiative, and won the Best Startup at the Women in Tech Awards 2020.
Dora, how did you get into this industry? Tell us a bit more about your background and your projects so far.
I always liked science and I also had lots of tech gadgets but I never really felt like technology, and especially programming was something I could choose as an academic route, let alone a career.
I started to code as part of research when studying neuroscience at New York University Abu Dhabi. I had to analyze large amounts of data as I was researching how our brain works and how we think.
I remember the moment I became really excited about programming was when I built my first web app, which let students choose different study programs and provided them with a course plan. The idea that I could build something that others would find useful was really empowering, and from then on I always looked at coding as being a tool that would let me achieve the things I wanted to achieve, and as a tool for building something meaningful.
When it comes to my particular focus of driving diversity in the STEM fields, this also started at university. Noticing the disproportionate ratio of males to females in classes, and the fact that practically all of my professors were male, I questioned why this was the case. Together with Beatrice (who is my imagiLabs co-founder), we started a student organization called weSTEM (women empowered in STEM), so I have been working in the field since 2015.
Fast forward to 2018 and I started my company, imagiLabs. We create both the tools and the community for girls to gain coding superpowers.
What does your current job role entail?
My official role is CEO (which by default falls upon you if you are starting a company) and in the early days, this really stands for Chief Everything Officer. I like to say that as the CEO I pretty much get to do the first version of everything, and then find people who can actually make it happen, and do it much better than I could. A good example is the first prototype of the imagiCharm, which I created by simply putting an LED shield on top of an Arduino.
We are still a small and young company with quickly shifting priorities, and the variety of tasks I have to attend to on a daily basis is just astounding. One moment I could be talking to investors and the next minute handwriting a note for a customer who just came by our office to pick up the imagiCharm they purchased.
Our team sometimes jokes that the E in my role stands for emoji - because I like to add emojis to most of our communications. Having a background in UX makes me think of all the work I do from a user-centric perspective because our users (Gen Z) do love emojis, so it has become core to our brand.
What projects are you working on at the moment?
Our biggest focus with imagiLabs right now is on our community building and ensuring that we can create a long lasting impact through continuously providing value for our users, our imagiCoders! We are really excited about having launched the imagiCharm on the market this year and having reached more and more teens with it - which we will continue to do.
As entrepreneurs we have very much been following an MVP creation process and there is a lot more we will build and add to the experience we offer. Creating regular online events, challenges, workshops and opportunities for our community to meet each other is our biggest project right now.
How long did it take you to be where you are now? What was the biggest obstacle?
The idea of creating a product that would make coding more fun and relevant for girls emerged from a research project I did during my Masters degree at KTH (The Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden), at the beginning of 2017. From there, it wasn't a straight path. At the time I didn't really think of myself as an entrepreneur but through a series of accidental encounters, such as attending startup events and meeting young female founders, I heard about the opportunities to apply for prototyping grants, and I started playing around with the idea of taking it a step further.
It wasn't an overnight decision, but something that just started to take up more and more space in my life. Finally, I decided to officially found the company in the summer of 2018, and start working on it full time. It took us 10 months from then to receive our first investment and launch a successful Kickstarter campaign - followed by another year of product development and setting up for mass production until we could finally launch the imagiCharm and the imagiLabs app on the market.
What are your biggest achievements to date?
Hmm, I’d have to say imagiLabs?! Within imagiLabs I am most proud of the girls who have already gained not only coding skills but also the confidence that they can code! Some of our imagiGirls ambassadors have led workshops themselves and recorded tutorial videos.
I am of course extremely proud of our team as well for having brought a hardware product along with a user-friendly app and an array of supporting materials that can support complete beginners in getting started with their coding journeys.
On a higher level, I think one of my biggest achievements has been simply getting started. It is easy to look back and reflect on milestones that are "big enough" to be publicly recognized but what I think is under-appreciated is having had the confidence and conviction to get started when everyone around you thinks you are somewhat crazy for going down on a rather unconventional and risky path. But to me, it has been the most important to put my time and energy towards something that I believe can make a difference.
What has been the biggest challenge in working in education in particular in STEM?
I think one of the biggest challenges for us is staying focused on the smallest solvable problems, and not getting carried away with exciting new opportunities. For any educator, seeing superusers who are extremely engaged with your content and eager to learn, is the ultimate success, and it is extremely fulfilling.
However, at imagiLabs our first step is to make sure that everyone who has a spark of interest in coding can get from zero to one, that they can write their first lines of code.
So the ultimate challenge for us, and in education in general, is finding the right balance between fun and challenge, which is extremely difficult as that balance might differ between people.
If you had an unlimited budget for education, what would you do for children and students in STEM-based activities?
What a question to ask an entrepreneur who every day is conscious of being as capital-efficient as possible! That being said, I believe that learning happens when we are having fun and are engaged, but also when we are challenged. One of the best ways to learn is to solve problems that are relevant to us, that we are genuinely interested in. Therefore, I think allowing for more personalization would be a great way to spend an unlimited budget.
For example, for a student who might be interested in horseback riding, teaching them STEM principles through examples that are related to horses will probably be a win - but for her classmates, this might not stick very well.
In education, do you see a difference in boys and girls when they are learning or take on STEM subjects?
There are several studies looking at the differences between girls and boys having an interest in technology and the STEM fields.
According to a study by Google and Gallup, up until the age of 11, girls have a similar interest in technology as boys do, but during our teenage years, the majority of girls drop this interest. In Sweden, for example, while at age 11 86% of girls are interested in technology, at the age of 16 this drops down to just 36%.
We believe this is due to a drop in confidence and a lack of role models - there just isn’t the necessary invitation and encouragement.
At imagiLabs we are not looking for differences between boys and girls but instead have taken a girls-first approach to the design, branding, marketing of our solution. It isn't about excluding boys but about expanding STEM learning to an audience that currently doesn't feel like they are included and invited.
What does the #WomenInTech movement mean to you? What are the challenges of being a woman in STEM?
At imagiLabs we like to refer to this simple exercise of logic:
If: technology = future
And: women = technology
Then: women = future
I believe technology is our most powerful tool to shape the future, but today women make up less than 20% of the tech workforce in Europe. Hence, today we do not have an equal chance to contribute to shaping our future. I started imagiLabs to break this trend and to create a solution that would equip and empower teenage girls to shape the future with technology.
For any young company, establishing a wide reach and trust for one’s brand is a challenging process. As a product innovation-driven company a lot of our early work revolved around research and development and we are just starting to learn how to reach wider audiences with our message. This is why I truly appreciate the work that Cartier does in highlighting the stories of female impact founders who might not otherwise have the means to reach beyond their existing networks.
In your opinion, what will be the key future trends in the edtech space?
Edutainment, personal learning experiences, and immersive and multidisciplinary learning.
I strongly believe that making learning experiences more immersive is definitely the way forward. We have so much knowledge about how to motivate people and how to get them "hooked", through psychology, marketing, and product design. This knowledge often has negative connotations as it is used in gaming or in social networks to keep users "scrolling", or playing what some consider an unhealthy amount. I think it's time that we actually take some of the knowledge and principles used in the tech and gaming industry to create habit-forming products and apply them to help people learn.
Of course, new technological innovations such as VR and AR are also creating exciting opportunities for immersive learning, while AI and machine learning might help us make learning experiences more tailored.
What is the most important piece of advice you can give to children and students in STEM, as well as founders and entrepreneurs in the edtech space?
While learning about science and technology is an interesting and fun activity in itself, it is all about the bigger picture - what is it that you can achieve with all that knowledge? Who can you help and what difference can you make? If you decide to get a STEM degree or pursue a STEM career you will inevitably face many difficulties, particularly if you start your own company.
When reflecting on this, it’s important to remember the problem that you want to solve. Maybe you will use your medical or pharmaceutical knowledge to save lives, your engineering skills to contribute to a more sustainable planet, or you are working on an edtech solution to enable the next generation of problem solvers.
Who are your 3 inspirational women in STEM and edtech?
Ayah Bdeir, Founder and CEO of littleBits
Debbie Sterling, Founder and CEO of GoldieBlox
Linda Liukas, Founder of Hello Ruby
Find out more about imagiLabs on their website.
Twitter: @dorapalfi // @imagiLabs
Instagram: @imagiLabs // @doripalfi
LinkedIn: LinkedIn.com/imagiLabs // LinkedIn.com/DoraPalfi
This interview was conducted by Marija Butkovic, Digital Marketing and PR strategist, founder, and CEO of Women of Wearables. She regularly writes and speaks on topics of wearable tech, fashion tech, IoT, entrepreneurship, and diversity. Follow Marija on Twitter @MarijaButkovic.