When Mariam Nael ’18 was a student, she wouldn’t have been surprised if someone had told her that her path after Colgate would involve social justice and DE&I. But starting her own business within five years of graduating? “I never could have envisioned that,” she says.
On Tuesday, October 18, Nael presented at a Center for Women’s Studies Brown Bag Series event co-sponsored by E&I where she talked about her business, Untangle, a mission-driven organization making sex and consent education inclusive, accessible, and shamelessly fun, and introduced attendees to her first product, an intimacy-building card game exploring sex, identity, and relationships.
As a student, Nael attended a women’s studies brown bag during her first week on campus and “found a home in that space,” eventually becoming a women’s studies major. During her time on campus, she was involved with initiatives focused on sexuality, consent, and sexual violence prevention. She facilitated and led Yes Means Yes, a six-week positive sexuality seminar, and directed This is Not a Play About Sex. Her senior thesis focused on race and hookup culture at Colgate.
After Colgate, Nael worked as a consultant for EY-Parthenon. She is now associate director and DEI lead at Social Finance, an impact finance and advisory nonprofit. Her academic experience — which also included a minor in economics — directly equipped her for the job she does today. My work at Social Finance “incorporates the two things I studied: how society works, and how money drives that,” she explains.
Untangle the game is also informed by her time at Colgate. “My experiences [at Colgate] have inspired this game,” she says. Nael came up with the idea in February 2021 after a conversation with friends that touched on many of the same aspects of sex and relationships that are addressed in the game. Her goal was to create an approachable and fun way to talk about these often-taboo topics, while also bringing identity into the conversation. “Other offerings in this space either take an approach that is clinical, scary, and punishing, or they swing wildly in the other direction: raunchy and shocking. I wanted to bridge the gap.”
A year and a half after that initial spark, Nael concluded a successful Kickstarter campaign that funded the first production run of the game. Along the way, she refined her idea, prototyped, incorporated user feedback, and iterated. On the business side, developed a successful monetization strategy and business model to “ensure that [she] would make this a viable product to realize both social and financial impact.” She made a deliberate decision to embed DE&I and social justice into the business operations. “It was important to me that our mission influenced all aspects of the business and product — from the questions in the game, to the vendors and partners we work with, to the relationship that I have with my business partner,” she explains.
Her advice to students who have an entrepreneurial idea? “You just have to start somewhere,” she says, encouraging someone who has an idea to create a pilot — even minimal and basic — and start getting feedback from users. This was one of her takeaways from participating in TIA her senior year. Although that experience only lasted around six months, learnings like that stuck with her. She engaged in extensive user testing and feedback throughout the product development process for Untangle the game, conducting focus groups and getting feedback from content experts in the space. This helped her refine the questions in the game down from 200 to 55 and ensure that it was delivering an experience that matched the needs of her target audience.
Now that the game has been launched, one of her goals is to find ways to bring it to college campuses, as she believes it can be a powerful tool to help students to talk about these topics in an approachable and fun way. She’s also thinking about the next stage for the business; she envisions the game as just the first product in support of its mission and is thinking about what might be next, while also considering how to balance growing a startup while working a full-time job. When reflecting on the impact she’s made so far, “I think Untangle helps people have open conversations they might be avoiding,” she says.