Joana, born 4th June 2001 in London, England is a teen entrepreneur and social activist based in Oxford.
She currently attends Oxford High School, where she attends Sixth Form. She co-founded Brush!, an attachment to your toothbrush joint with an app to help children clean their teeth better, at the age of 12, which after winning several awards, was presented to Her Royal Highness Princess Anne in Sales Force Tower to mark the launch of STEMettes' Outbox Incubator.
She also co-founded and is Managing Director of Botelle, an app to merge several shopping lists of groups within a community to save time, money and the environment, while studying at MIT Launch Summer Entrepreneurship camp in the summer of 2017. This year, she has also co-founded and is co-managing director of Zest, a company under Young Enterprise, which aims to reverse taught prejudice against social minorities through children's storybooks.
As well as founding her own companies, she is also a huge activist for social change, in particular areas surrounding female empowerment, pursuing STEM careers and helping underprivileged children. She ran a free to attend coding club joint with Barclays Bank for girls and boys ages 7-17, which was hugely popular within the local community. Further to this, she also runs Computer Science workshops at primary schools, which help teach the importance of internet safety, of STEM education, and provides the basics of computing. On top of primary schools, Joana gives talks at Universities (Oxford Brookes, Cambridge), Senior Schools (Oxford High School), Companies (Facebook, GDST) and Community groups (Guides).
For all of her work, Joana has achieved several awards, including Finalist in Everywomen Women in Technology Awards 2016, Winner of Everywoman Awards in the Rising Star Category 2017 (the youngest shortlister in the whole awards), Academic STEM Scholarship to Oxford High School, Head's Scholarship to Oxford High School, Academic Scholarship to Brighton College, Flagship Company at Outbox Incubator and Three x award winner at Emerging Tech Weekender at Oxford Brookes University.
She is also a passionate sports person, representing the u18 Oxford Junior Stars Ice Hockey Team and the top Field Hockey Team at her school, and an academic enthusiast, earning 10 A*s at GCSE as well as several academic awards.