We present an efficient algorithm for learning mixed membership models when the number of variables p is much larger than the number of hidden components k. This algorithm reduces the computational complexity of state-of-the-art tensor methods, which require decomposing an O(p^3) tensor, to factorizing O (p/k) sub-tensors each of size O(k^3). In addition, we address the issue of negative entries in the empirical method of moments based estimators. We provide sufficient conditions under which our approach has provable guarantees. Our approach obtains competitive empirical results on both simulated and real data.