A Successful Mix of Technology, Philanthropy and Sustainability

From the perspective of Estefanía Vega, recognized by the World Economic Forum in 2015 thanks to her technological contributions to topics such as smart cities and low-cost prosthetics for children, the women who stand out make the decision to listen to themselves, to mark a particular path, to write their story, the one they want, not the one others want.

Between smart cities, home gardens, her role as wife and mother of the two-month-old baby that life gave her and whom Camilo baptized, and projects that come to mind any day at 3 in the morning, the great ball of yarn is unrolled of thread that is the daily life of Estefanía Vega, a young, intelligent and purposeful woman who moved away from preconceived gender scripts to write her own story.

She is a historian and architect from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia: "I combined these two careers because I understood that it is necessary to understand history, know the past, to conceive the present and the future."

On this academic basis, Estefanía built a proposal that would permeate the dynamics of companies and people, a proposal whose backbone is technology and which is called MindKo Lab: “It is a consulting company for digital transformation and future employment for support organizations and individuals to take a positive turn, always based on their particular needs. We designed a transformation proposal precisely for the digital age with the idea that those who come to us better understand the combination between their own roles and the technological tools that emerge every day. Trends transform the industry of each company and each person”.

MindKo Lab offers a personalized 7-week consulting program developed in several stages, at the end of which each person will discover paths to new fields of study and job opportunities in the digital world that you may never have thought of applying to.

Smart cities

The themes of urban planning and technology came to the academic life of Estefanía Vega to stay. She did her graduate thesis on computational models to analyze urban dynamics: "I was interested in understanding the behavior of people in cities to make proposals based on planning, administration, and design based on technological references." Applying her ideas in our country is possible, there are already advances in the use of data and technological tools to positively affect cities like Bogotá. "These tools allow us to know the needs of rural and urban areas and make decisions on the way to a better operation", explains Vega.

Precisely that transfer through technology linked to specific topics that affect the purpose of improving the lives of their peers has generated Estefanía recognition beyond the borders of her native country, Colombia, to the point that in 2015 her professional practice applied to exponential technologies, was recognized at the World Economic Forum.

Prosthetics for children

Her passion for technology also led her to participate as a protagonist and creator, together with her French colleague Philipe Parmentier, of the 3D Materialization Foundation, or M3D, to which they move philanthropic objectives, very commendable and this is how Estefanía Vega explains: “We started to develop prostheses for children who have lost an upper limb and at the same time we provide knowledge of this technology to people who might be interested in understanding it and applying it to use it in the generation of prostheses created by themselves, achieving it at low cost.”

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Orchards that grew in quarantine

As the multifaceted woman that she is and to honor the passion of her husband, Julián Diosa for sustainable home practices and the joint vision of a natural future for all, Estefanía participated in the birth of Rhaika Futuro Natural home gardens in May 2020, a practice that began as a timid undertaking to become a large corporate project that has been developing during the pandemic: “We began by offering people in forced confinement due to the effects of COVID-19, a toolkit to make home gardens, which includes soil and germinated seeds.” The result was so positive that many companies chose to give these kits to their employees and customers for Christmas.

Women without preconceived scripts

Estefanía Vega, that professional woman whose brilliant ideas usually appear in sudden awakenings at 3 in the morning, is also passionate about the role of mother but she performs it in her own way, “like a daily self-discovery that makes me want to be a better person for that little boy without adhering to the duty dictated by society or attending to stories already created but foreign.”

This is how Estefanía Vega guides her life as a professional, mother, wife, and woman, without preconceived scripts because, according to her, “cultural standards have been created for women that indicate that we are born, grow up, study, get married, have children, work and fulfill with duties already established for us. I believe that each person should write hisher own story in the order heshe wants. What makes a woman stand out is precisely her decision to listen to herself, to mark a particular path, to write her story, the one she wants, not the one others want.”