Bi-partite ribbon graphs arise in organising the large $N$ expansion of correlators in random matrix models and in the enumeration of observables in random tensor models. There is an algebra $\mathcal{K}(n)$, with basis given by bi-partite ribbon graphs with $n$ edges, which is useful in the applications to matrix and tensor models. The algebra $\mathcal{K}(n)$ is closely related to symmetric group algebras and has a matrix-block decomposition related to Clebsch-Gordan multiplicities, also known as Kronecker coefficients, for symmetric group representations. Quantum mechanical models which use $\mathcal{K}(n)$ as Hilbert spaces can be used to give combinatorial algorithms for computing the Kronecker coefficients.