My seven-year-old daughter’s bedroom is decorated with colorful stickers and family photos, along with assorted stuffed animals tucked into a small circus tent. I know all of their names. There’s also a toy house from the movie Encanto, and another house for her L.O.L. Dolls. Behind that is a soft pink toy box that holds the motherlode.
Among the mayhem of toys is an array of Barbies and their accessories. Plus there’s one Karma doll — a brown-skinned little girl with curly hair from Netflix’s animated children’s series, Karma’s World, created by famed rapper and actor Chris “Ludacris” Bridges.
At this point I have no idea where all these toys came from: Christmas? Birthdays? Gifts from family? But that Karma doll, I know exactly where it came from. I remember going out and specifically buying it because my daughter and I both like the show, and because I was inspired that one of the people who helped create the doll is from Oakland.
“That was one of the most exciting projects that I’ve worked on,” says Jendayi Smith, graphic design manager for Mattel’s dolls portfolio. She worked on a team that saw that project from pitch to product, and she even sang in a video proposal that was delivered to the Karma’s World team. “Ludacris probably heard me sing when he heard this pitch,” Smith, a huge Ludacris fan, tells me.
The beauty of working on that toy wasn’t just Smith’s brush with stardom. It was the fact that Smith and her team created a doll that represents something much bigger. “To see Karma, a Black girl with big hair like me,” says Smith, “I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is the brand that I wanted as a child.’”