Karlie Kloss is sitting in a glass-walled SoHo office holding court with five teenage girls. Over video chat with several more, they are brainstorming how to support scholars of Kode With Klossy once class is out. The teenagers are all graduates of Kode With Klossy summer camps, an initiative by Kloss’ education nonprofit that aims to teach girls the basics of computer programming.
In her off-duty uniform of a Planned Parenthood T-shirt, black jeans and Gucci loafers, the 6&#8217;2&#8243; supermodel listens intently. One young woman wearing a white Kode With Klossy top suggests a custom app for students to communicate through. Kloss nods and encourages more ideas. Perhaps Kode With Klossy could upload lesson videos for scholars to look back on, or start a newsletter with events and internships. Another girl in glasses says she posts tricky coding problems on Snapchat and scholars from her camp offer solutions.
As the meeting concludes, Kloss hugs the girls before rallying them to put their hands in for a cheer. &#8220;Klossy Posse!&#8221; they shout in unison.
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A 36-time Vogue cover girl is an unlikely candidate to launch a charity that has taught more than 500 young women how to code. But the 25-year-old has leveraged her giant social audience &#8211; some 12.6 million followers across platforms &#8211; to grow a burgeoning nonprofit that aims to balance the scales of software engineering’s gender disparity.
&#8220;I didn&#8217;t go into this with the plan to build an education nonprofit,&#8221; says Kloss, a member of the 30 Under 30 Class of 2018, over vegan cupcakes and cookies in her Manhattan office. &#8220;I really went into all this out of my own curiosity of wanting to learn what the heck coding was, because it was building massive enterprise value for people in a short period of time.&#8221;
Her first taste came in 2014, when she signed up for a two-week boot camp at adult-education company the Flatiron School in Manhattan to learn the basics of computer programming. &#8220;I didn&#8217;t actually know who she was,&#8221; says Avi Flombaum, cofounder of the Flatiron School, who taught Kloss’ class. &#8220;She was the best student in that group and I was surprised by how enthusiastic she was.&#8221;
Kloss covered the basics of Ruby on Rails, a popular web development framework. But she quickly noticed that her classes weren’t gender equal, an imbalance that mirrored the tech workforce. &#8220;I was curious, why are there not more women in this space?&#8221; recalls Kloss. An idea for how to help took form: &#8220;I realized, here I am with this platform and reach to young women across the country and around the world,&#8221; Kloss explains. &#8220;If I could just help a handful of girls that would be really meaningful.&#8221;
<div id="attachment_34682" style="width: 330px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34682" class=" wp-image-34682" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Karlie-Kloss-INSIDE-234x300.jpg" alt="Karlie Kloss " width="320" height="410" />Karlie Kloss (Photo by Jamel Toppin)</div>
In 2015, Kloss spent more than $20,000 to personally underwrite 21 scholarships for teenage girls to the Flatiron School’s two week pre-college coding class &#8211; the very class she had taken the year prior (Flatiron School matched the donation).
But she was itching to do more. Last summer, Kloss took the initiative in-house, launching her own two-week summer camp for teenage girls aged 13 to 18 in New York, Los Angeles and her hometown of St. Louis. Kloss helped pick candidates, design the curriculum and select teachers; its graduates have gone on to win hackathons and land places at Ivy League universities. In June, the program expanded to 12 cities across the U.S., with plans to grow further.
Adults are also included: Last July Kloss launched a year-long online scholarship with the Flatiron School that selected one woman every month to enroll in its full stack web development course. And while other nonprofits with similar missions, such as Girls Who Code and Black Girls Code, are far more established, Kloss&#8217; reach brings her objective to millions.
To date, funding for Kode With Klossy programs has come from Kloss herself and the brands she poses for. According to a familiar source, Kloss has personally contributed into seven figures to Kode With Klossy since 2015. She has also redirected a slice of her modeling contracts with companies such as Adidas, Swarovski and Express to fund and support Kode With Klossy. Ford&#8217;s STEAM Experience — an initiative focused on science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines as well as the arts, part of the car maker&#8217;s philanthropic arm — lent additional support to this summer’s camps.
Such initiatives are sorely needed. Half a million more jobs related to computers are expected to be added by 2024. Though 74% of high school girls are interested in STEM, women only earned 18% of all undergraduate computer science degrees in 2015. That impacts employment, especially among minorities: Women made up just over a quarter of the tech workforce last year, though African-American women comprised a mere 3% and Latina women counted for only 2%.
&#8220;There are so many young women who really could change the world with this kind of opportunity, girls who self-select out because they don&#8217;t see others in the industry that look like them,&#8221; says Kloss.
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The daughter of an emergency room physician, Kloss&#8217; favorite subjects as a child were math and science. Had she not been discovered at a charity fashion show in a mall, aged 13, she might have become a doctor or a teacher, she says. Instead, she booked her first advertisement in 2007; that same year she landed her first major runway show, walking for Calvin Klein.
Her career quickly took off, but it went into overdrive with the advent of Instagram. Thanks to social media, says Kloss, &#8220;I could be seen as well as heard.&#8221; As her followers swelled, her fees increased. She premiered on Forbes’ highest-paid models list in 2014 banking $4 million pretax; this year, her contract earnings soared to $9 million in the 12 months prior to June 2017.
&#8220;When social media arrived, models came back into the spotlight because now everyone could see what was behind the velvet rope,&#8221; says Maja Chiesi, SVP at IMG Models, the agency that represents Kloss. &#8220;The next evolution is brands wanting the full, 360-degree sense of who these women are&#8230; They want women with a voice.&#8221;
Enter Kloss, who has long presented herself as more than just a pretty face. In 2012, she started a charitable cookie line called Klossies with Manhattan dessert spot Momofuku Milk Bar; the treats donated to meals for children with each purchase. After taking the odd night class at New York University, in 2015 she enrolled (mentor and supermodel-turned-philanthropist Christy Turlington wrote her recommendation letter). With her busy schedule, she has opted for approximately one class a semester, so far notching credits in creative writing and feminism.
She is eager to expand her platform through a YouTube channel, launched in 2015, that documents her travels and baking forays. Next up: A talk show, Movie Night with Karlie Kloss, airing on the Disney-owned Freeform in December.
All of it serves to raise awareness for Kode With Klossy. As she focuses on the nonprofit, she has pared down her modeling contracts to the most lucrative partnerships. Today, says Kloss, she works with &#8220;partners that really are excited to work with me because of not just what I look like, but because of what I stand for.&#8221; It makes sense that her bookings have shifted from conventional beauty and fashion to tech; she can be seen in recent advertisements for electronics giant Samsung and website builder Wix.
For now, the aim is to grow quickly and cost-effectively. &#8220;I&#8217;ve been thinking about Kode With Klossy like a startup,&#8221; says Kloss. The nonprofit&#8217;s team is lean, with Kloss, her manager, business partner and SVP of SB Projects Penni Thow, five full-time employees and consultants plus help from three members of her management.
And, Kloss says, she is just getting started.
&#8220;I plan on building a big business at some point, too.&#8221;
Startups, you’re on notice.
&#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Natalie Robehmed</a>, FORBES STAFF

Karlie Kloss – Coding’s Supermodel

It is a chilly Friday morning in New York and I am sitting in the back of a black SUV on its way to pick up supermodel Alek Wek from her brownstone Brooklyn home. It was meant to be a glamor photo shoot in the wide open spaces of upstate New York with the supermodel-turned-businesswoman-turned-activist. The temperamental weather in New York had other ideas and simply would not let us be great outdoor Africans. A weather advisory warning of a snow blizzard had been issued. New Yorkers are overly sensitive about the weather for good reason; Hurricane Sandy had torn at the city earlier in the year. I took the cue from my New York crew and booked a studio close-to-home in Brooklyn to minimize travel and exposure to inclement weather.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-31063 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/DONE_3T4A9124-232x300.jpeg" alt="" width="232" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DONE_3T4A9124-232x300.jpeg 232w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DONE_3T4A9124-300x388.jpeg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DONE_3T4A9124-600x776.jpeg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DONE_3T4A9124.jpeg 612w" sizes="(max-width: 232px) 100vw, 232px" />
Wek is as much a supermodel as she is the girl-next-door. She commands the runways in the name of fashion designers such as: Chanel, Hermes, Donna Karan, Christian Lacroix and Zac Posen. Her career has thrived in Paris, New York, Milan and London and she has also appeared on the covers of high-end fashion magazines such as Elle, Glamor, Cosmopolitan and Essence. She has also been the face of campaigns for Benetton, Kenzo and Saks Fifth Avenue.
No small feat for an African girl born in Wau, Sudan, now South Sudan, in 1977 to a family of nine. Speaking softly in her British accent, Wek talks of her life, between sips from the coffee cup clasped between her hands.
“Our careers define us to an extent, but then there’s you as a person. You are not born with that career even though you have it already in you. For most of us, and especially us African women, we have to overcome a lot of obstacles to get there. And even when you get there, however you define there for yourself, there is still more to accomplish.”
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-31065 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/DONE_3T4A7868-300x225.jpeg" alt="" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DONE_3T4A7868-300x225.jpeg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DONE_3T4A7868-600x450.jpeg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DONE_3T4A7868-768x576.jpeg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DONE_3T4A7868.jpeg 864w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Despite the fact that she is one of Africa’s global icons, she has a pleasant disposition and we chat like old friends as the driver deftly drives us through the snowy roads to the studio.
That Wek has defied all beauty standards is obvious. Dressed in skinny jeans, layered tops, winter jacket and her trademark head scarf, she stands at 180cm tall, with short hair. Wek is from the Dinka tribe of South Sudan, with piercing, oval-shaped brown eyes, high cheek bones and teeth whiter than white. It is an understatement to say Wek’s features are striking: very model material in a nouveau kind of way.
“I came into the industry at a time when some people would say: ‘she’s odd, she’s weird, she’s bizarre.’ But I never saw myself that way and the true people, the legends, the talented, saw me.”
As Wek slips into a gown made by fellow African David Tlale, of Johannesburg, she also assumes her professional power. In front of the camera, she epitomizes the confidence of the new generation of African leaders.
Her head wrap is more than a fashion statement. It is a reminder of the place she came from, where her fragile frame survived only through incredible strength and resilience.
“I have gone through the civil war where we were barricaded in our house for three days because of the shootings and bombings. The scariest thing for me was feeling like there is nobody to protect you and nobody’s life is accounted for. I used to have nightmares when we fled to England. It took me some years to get over that.”
Wek has never forgotten these desperate days. As her fame rose, she found her voice to speak for the millions of huddled and vulnerable refugees around the world.
“I know firsthand what it feels like to walk for weeks and weeks. I know what it feels like to eat whatever you can find in the bush. I know what it is like to be voiceless,” she declares as she describes the journey she undertook as her family fled from rebel and government forces, when civil war raged in her hometown in 1985.
Wek arrived in London, aged 14, and was discovered soon after by a Models 1 scout in a South London market and has been a model ever since.
“I model in moderation now. It is not the quantity, but the quality of my work. I also want to make time and space for the next phase of my life. I would love to settle down, get married and have children.”
So much so, that Wek has scaled back her work so she can live a more grounded life. This year, she ended a five-year relationship.
“For him, it was more like a three-year relationship since I traveled a lot. I then realized that I have to live in the same country as the man in order for this marriage thing to happen!” Not one to pine for long, she is back in the dating scene and also dotes on a fox terrier by the name of Lil Bit.
Wek says her mother is a true African mother.
“Whenever I visit mom in England, and we sit down to have supper, the first question is always: ‘The babies?’ So, I get to practice with my Lil Bit,” laughs Wek.
At 36, she is a grown woman—an African woman with a strong sense of self and purpose in life.
“If anything, fashion and modeling has not only given me trips to the most exotic locations around the world, fantastic perks, stays in five-star hotels and expensive gifts. Most importantly, it has given me a platform with which to make a difference on important issues that matter to me.”
This stance earned Wek a position as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in which she travels to war-torn nations.
In 2011, South Sudan split from the Sudan, as part of a 2005 peace agreement that ended decades of protracted war in the continent’s largest country.
“Freedom is so special and so precious,” she speaks cautiously, as if she were reliving her traumatic childhood.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-31066 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/DONE_3T4A8551-300x212.jpeg" alt="" width="300" height="212" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DONE_3T4A8551-300x212.jpeg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DONE_3T4A8551-600x424.jpeg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DONE_3T4A8551-768x542.jpeg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DONE_3T4A8551.jpeg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
For the first time, since she fled from the region with her family, the Sudanese refugee-turned-supermodel went back to South Sudan.
“Going back after South Sudan became independent was very emotional for me. I never really thought that we would attain independence. It was a very surreal moment for me,” she says fighting back tears.
She is guarded when I ask her to rate the new president of South Sudan, Salva Kii.
“It would be unfair to try to rate him so soon and I will tell you why. When someone has been in the bush for decades fighting a war and now has to make a considerable switch to lead the country, you have to cut him or her some slack.”
Wek is mindful that South Sudan is a collective effort—a collaboration among stakeholders including the government and citizens.
“I truly believe that it is our generation. Us. You and I and the rest of the continent and diaspora. We are the ones we have been waiting for.”   FL

Tag: Supermodel

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