Waira Mungai

Human connection, community, and culture

Waira cares about technology that serves human connection, culture, and joy. That purpose shapes their work at The & Company building &tags, a privacy-respecting identity layer for the web. In early 2026 they gathered Kansas City's entrepreneurs, artists, and connectors to preview that work, and in May led a conversation on joy as infrastructure at Keystone CoLAB. In 2020 they joined the city's entrepreneur community in asking Kansas City to invest more in small businesses. Waira enjoys bringing people together, organizing events that spark new connections across Kansas City. That instinct for connection goes back to their University of Kansas years, when they interned at a Kansas City Startup Village company and founded Lume Lifestyle in 2015 after listening to what people wanted. From McPherson, Kansas, they studied entrepreneurship and business at KU and now call Kansas City home.