Karen Frame applies real intelligence to better health for quality-seeking shoppers and quality-driven brands.

BY LISA RICHMON

Using technology for good is in Karen Frame’s bloodline.

Buzzers not Barbies rapt Karen’s young inquisitive brain. By her fourth birthday, she was coding and was soon immersed in math and science on a Plato touchscreen. In her father’s science lab at the University of Illinois, lights, circuits, and buzzers were a constant source of fascination.

Watching hit shows like The Avengers and Lost in Space proved to be more than tender father-daughter bonding agents. The sixties-era science fiction genre was a catalyst for an experimental child’s FBI and lawyer aspirations.

Up the bloodline. Educator Peter Shoresman and pioneering activist Sarah Shoresman.   

“My grandma Sarah was a labor union organizer in Chicago in the early 1900s. The inequities she rallied against and public service she engaged in to make life better for others is ingrained in my DNA. Also, my father was a brilliant man, “says Karen. “He dedicated his entire career to teaching educators how to teach all the sciences.

When he died, there was a moment of silence in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate in his honor, because of my grandmother Sarah. ‘Sarah House’ is a space she funded that provides homeless and lower income citizens caring comfort when facing end-of-life challenges including AIDS.” 

Makeena is Karen Frame’s third tech startup. It’s personal on every level.

“I grew up on a lake across the street from a cornfield that was sprayed with pesticides every year. As a result, everyone in my family got sick and I am now fully recovered from thyroid cancer. I know firsthand the importance of what we put in and, on our bodies, and I’m not alone. 98% of consumers today demand transparency. 75% will pay more for organic.”

She also remembers being very poor growing up and her mother cutting coupons from the Sunday paper to buy groceries at the local A & P.   

In Makeena, science meets social work.

Before founding Makeena, Karen was a natural product consumer who experienced the pain point felt by many brands who deserve to be discovered but get lost in large spaces. As a recovered cancer patient (and daughter and granddaughter of social workers – her mom, Sandy, was also a social worker) she strived for easy access to healthier products.

Making healthy food affordable and accessible is just one play in a long game. 

Discovery is the bigger challenge.

Once downloaded, the Makeena app helps consumers find healthy, organic, eco-friendly foods and products in an otherwise crowded space that generates over $300 billion in sales yearly. All these natural food products are discreetly tucked away in the superstore abyss or littered on volumes of social media sites.

Location-aware software makes it easy for shoppers to find brands that sell the specific products they buy or want to buy – wherever there is distribution. Consumers scan the barcode, submit receipts through the app and get money back for buying healthy.

Sarah Shoresman and Peter Shoresman would be proud of their granddaughter and daughter for applying her native tech skills to a discovery engine that actually discovered a way to make brands and consumers healthier.

Whole Foods meets Rakuten meets Nielsen.  

Makeena partners with brands committed to the exclusive use of ingredients and processes that are better for people and the planet. In return, these eco-friendly brands receive granular shopper and redemption data. Knowing where your customer is and what’s in their cart helps brands devise a near bullet-proof marketing strategy. Insights gathered tell brands what they really need to know about their consumers (and their competition) in order to trigger trust and engagement to grow and scale.

At Makeena the moving parts have moving parts.

Engagement. Engagement. Engagement.

Tier one: Shoppers who buy healthy earn money back.

Tier two: They can also win points that are converted to cash or swag by taking pictures of the product on the shelf and sharing it with friends, writing reviews and completing surveys or watching videos. This level of engagement with the right consumers is the gold standard for any entity whether it be American Express or Simple Mills.   

Rakuten meets Whole Foods meets Nielsen

Makeena’s outreach is now well over a million healthy shoppers, and growing.

Karen is a mission-driven matchmaker. She collects valuable consumer data about consumer’s needs and points shoppers to Makeena-blessed brands that meet those needs.    

On behalf of healthy consumers and brands everywhere, Karen hopes to attract The Fourth Floor (soon to be The Fourth Effect) members who can use their platform to bring awareness to the savings feature for consumers and add an incentive for healthier shopping habits to boost their ESG and Sustainability ratings.

What’s in the stars for the science geek turned General Counsel, CPA, and serial founder who dreamt of feeding starving children in Africa about the same time three male astronauts made history walking the moon?

Karen Frame is intent on making Makeena history by closing strategic partnerships with companies like Instacart, Shopify, Kroger, Nestle, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and ABinBev.

The plan doesn’t limit itself to Fortune 500 companies. Employers of any size can make their company healthier just by adding a benefit that subsidizes the app for lower-income users.

Continually innovating and building AI on top of the technology in place, the formidable natural products discovery engine continues to stay a little ahead of the game.   

“If we win some great grants, we could share those wins with more people through Makeena.”

Investors are driven by love, greed, status and/or fear. It’s not hard to fall in love with an actualized vision of a healthier planet and its people.