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“TONL” Co-Founder Karen Okonkwo on Liberation Through Representation
Karen Okonkwo is a Nigerian-American serial-entrepreneur based in Seattle. Her level of hustle is worthy of respect. Not only does Karen have a full-time day job in medical sales, but she owns an online marketing business, a party planning company, and is the co-founder of the subject that sparked our conversation: the amazing stock photography venture TONL.
Karen’s fantastic work in this enterprise has landed her on Inc.’s 2018 30 under 30, and on the pages of many well-known media outlets such as Forbes, Create Cultivate, The Huffington Post, and AdWeek.
TONL’s mission is to “transform the idea of stock photography by displaying images of diverse people and their stories around the world,” and it’s the product of becoming aware of the reality that people of color are vastly underrepresented online.
A few years ago Karen was running an online blog called The Sorority Sisters. “One day, a friend who was an African American approached me asking why we didn’t showcase more people of color on our blog. My initial reaction was: ‘excuse me? Of course, we’re doing this’”, Karen told Mindful Feminism. Once she went to check, it turned out her friend was actually right, and she immediately wanted to rectify the embarrassing fact. “I remember I spent hours looking for these images, and…
