Kara Dyer
Ever since she was little, Kara was fascinated with dollhouses, building and reading. She loved playing with her own dollhouse, which had real wallpaper, a working doorbell and a phone that rang, was always sketching rooms and building with Lincoln Logs, and adored books, especially the “Little House in the Prairie” series by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
As Kara grew up, she excelled at math and science so studying engineering seemed like a natural fit. When it came time for college, Kara left her hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma, to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she studied mechanical engineering and became enamored with product design. After graduating, Kara worked for a start-up in the consumer electronics industry. The challenges she and the start-up faced trying to get a new product off the ground inspired Kara to return to MIT for an MBA from the Sloan School of Management where she focused on marketing and entrepreneurship. During grad school, Kara and a team of three classmates traveled to India to help women in a remote village start a sustainable energy company that could provide power to their village. To this day, the women are still going strong and have made great advances.
In 2008, after several years working as a management consultant, Kara and her husband, Bobby, a fellow mechanical engineer whom she met in college, welcomed their daughter to the world. Eager for her daughter to have beautiful, well-made toys that allow her to actively play and inspire her to have fun and be creative, Kara soon founded Storytime Toys. Their son was born in 2013, the same year that Storytime’s first products were introduced!
In addition to watching her children play, which inspires her on a daily basis, Kara enjoys practicing Tae Kwon Do, learning to play the fiddle and tending to family’s two cats, Smokey and Red.
Mission
Inspire child to have fun and be creative
Kara Dyer's Chineasy Story
I work with a wonderful woman in China who coordinates our manufacturing. Her name is LINGZHI “ALLEN” XIONG but when we first knew each other she introduced herself to me as Allen (a traditionally male name in the US), and we only communicated over email. So for a long time, I thought she was a man! Of course, we now talk over skype and are both mothers of toddler boys and we have become good friends. I have come to admire respect her very much over many years of working with her and hope to visit and meet her in person one day!
