Five years ago I was leading strategic partnerships for a World Bank agricultural research institution. I was “living my best life”, travelling all over the world and making an “impact” — at least that’s what I thought until I found myself on a rooftop in Nairobi, Kenya with a filmmaker, a designer, and a restaurateur who would change my life forever. That night, inspired by the courage, drive, and resilience of my peers I realized that disrupting the narrative on Africa in a way that did not involve “selling poverty”
Meet Tsion Behailu, a Google Software Engineer in the San Francisco Bay area. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a bachelors in Computer Engineering. Tsion is not only a diligent and driven person, she also has a heart of gold. She is dedicated to helping others reach their highest potential. I’m lucky enough to have her as my cousin and mentor. When she’s not out conquering the world, she travels, spends quality time with family and friends, and inspires others to pursue computer science. Tsion was born in Metehara, Ethiopia and came to Atlanta, Georgia with
For the first time ever, someone besides my father gave me money do something. It was not just anyone either, it was the CEO of Y-Combinator Michael Seibel. The money is being used towards empowering Black Entrepreneurs in a monthly group I am organizing, but his contribution represents something fundamentally important that is hard to obtain — empowerment. Starting a successful venture is a complex undertaking that requires more than just the idea, but a good team, a strong network, strategy, capital and other important attributes. Black Entrepreneurs face a greater challenge
This may seem confusing and quite drastic upon initially skimming over the title, but there is a back story that provides context to a unique problem and an equally viable solution that sprouted in my life for the past year, looking back, and looking forward into 2018. I am your typical and atypical nerd. I grew up playing video games everyday, reading sci-fi/fantasy books, illustrating, writing stories, composing music, playing horn instruments obnoxiously loud in the garage, and studying any subject I found and deemed intriguing and significant to the human
Culture can be defined as customs, social forms, beliefs, and practices exhibited by a group of people. When it comes to the African American, we had to develop our own unique culture starting from slavery almost 400+ years ago. It was nothing short of miraculous after everything was taken away from us, we recreated our own identity from scratch. While our culture has many positive features that heavily influences mainstream trends, it also carries negative aspects that may prevent us from moving forward. One such aspect is our reluctance to
The founder of an early stage company, which is still trying to figure out product/market fit, was asking me questions about getting acquired. He’d reached out because of some thoughts I shared in my newsletter. He’d latched onto my suggestion that Big Companies are slow and, suggested, that they hold the bulk of the cash in his industry and were consequently stifling innovation. He wanted to know how he might get the attention of BigCo to get his company acquired. It would have been laughable if he wasn’t so serious.
In this piece, I talk about my journey, building a meeting room personality, and Apple’s hostile work environment. #MyFamily When I was younger, I loved reading. I would read on average four books a day. My brother would read to me as I fell asleep. My father would tell me stories in the morning and at night. He was a writer, with passion. Words, sentences, novels— they shaped my childhood. Another thing that subconsciously shaped my childhood was my perception of the working world. My father was a kickass engineer; he
What comes to mind when you hear the word mentor? If you’re a Star Wars fan like me, you might think of Yoda. Or maybe you’re thinking of that special person who’s guided all your big career decisions in life. Maybe having a mentor is a concept that’s still intangible. They might be an all-knowing, super helpful person who could solve all your job issues with a silver bullet if only you could find them. After years of doing mentorship while working at companies like Amazon, Groupon and HotelTonight and
Recently Aytekin Tank, founder of JotForm wrote a compelling piece titled, “Why startups are dying left and right.” In this article, he shared the less glamorized view of entrepreneurship where he demystifies the experience. The slow, patient road, at times, bootstrapped, always tough, riddled with lessons from failure and prioritizing profit over growth. I shared this article with the community at ustwo Adventure. It was encouraging and enlightening to see some of the common strands that resonated with this collective of ‘less glamorized’ entrepreneurs. In this article, I have shared the top 3 of
This is a collaboration with onchek.com, a platform that helps you shop luxury fashion from Africa [You can purchase all the looks worn via their site]. They spoke to Software Engineer Iheanyi Ekechukwu, someone who should be familiar with POCIT audiences. He featured as one of our very first spotlights all the way back in 2015! Here he talks about his style, his fashion inclinations and of course some tech talk. Enjoy. It was about 9 AM, right before it started raining, that Iheanyi walked into the studio, wearing layers
