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The Team

Co-founder

Kristie Colton

Kristie Colton is a co-founder of this organization and a lifelong advocate for inclusion and connection. She’s been visually impaired since the age of nine due to a degenerative eye condition called Stargardt’s. Originally from Utah, she grew up running trails and snowboarding in the mountains, and she ran her first marathon at sixteen. Today, she continues to run and snowboard with the help of her close friend and guide, Jungyeon Park.

Kristie studied computer science at Harvard and works as a software engineer, and her passion for creating more accessible communities led her to co-found this organization. She believes that being a good ally to blind people doesn’t require special training—just curiosity, empathy, and the willingness to learn. Her approach is rooted in the idea that allyship starts with everyday relationships and shared experiences.

Through this work, Kristie hopes to give sighted people the tools and confidence to show up for the blind—not just as bystanders, but as thoughtful, supportive friends, coworkers, teammates, and guides.

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Co-founder

Jungyeon Park

Jungyeon co-founded The Vorden Initiative after becoming an ally to the blind community through her friendship with Kristie. Originally from Seoul, South Korea, she now lives in Berkeley, California.

She studied Biology and Computer Science at Harvard and is passionate about the questions that bridge human and machine intelligence. Professionally, Jungyeon works as a machine learning engineer at Google and conducts research in artificial vision at Stanford.

She first learned to guide while running and snowboarding with Kristie, and now regularly runs with blind and visually impaired athletes across the San Francisco Bay Area through Achilles International.

Woman wearing a hat is looking into the camera and smiling. She is wearing a blue puffer jacket and is in front of a mountain range.

Founding Team Member

Anna Filochowska

Anna is a management consultant specializing in the latest tech innovations. She earned her MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2024, where she worked on PocketDot, a startup revolutionizing Braille display technology. Interviewing over 100 members of the blind and visually impaired (BVI) community deepened her understanding of accessibility and allyship, ultimately leading her to join the Vorden Initiative, where she continues to deepen her passion for fostering meaningful allyship.

Ania’s journey began in Warsaw, Poland, where she started formal violin training at age six, and her early musical experiences included performing at the Center for the Blind in her country. She later studied at The Juilliard School in NY and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and performed internationally with world-renowned musicians and orchestras such as the Berliner Philharmoniker.