Mercedes Werner

Mercedes is interested in education, technology and female empowerment. She has focused her professional development on projects aimed at generating education and employment opportunities. As a college student, Mercedes co-founded Paidiá, a project seeking to empower women through the commercialization of dolls. The startup employed former female prisoners to produce dolls of female role-models (Marie Curie, Amelia Earhart, etc) for young girls. Soon after Paidiá, Mercedes co- founded Coaching Kids, an online platform that worked as a community marketplace where parents could hire private tutors. This connected people with experience in education outside of the classroom with parents looking for help. Seeking to have a bigger impact, Mercedes joined the Ministry of Education of Buenos Aires, where she was part of the team leading the implementation of the One Laptop per Child project for the city. More recently, Mercedes designed and implemented Programá tu Futuro, the city’s program to teach coding.