Service became a pillar in my life early on. In the third grade, I joined Girl Scouts of America and maintained my membership through high school graduation. Year after year, our troop did everything from taking care of our local park to performing musical numbers for nursing home residents to organizing food pantries. From that point on, service was an irrevocable part of life. In high school, my focus on service amplified even more. When I connected with my community, life got bigger. I spent weekends helping run the 5ks that brought everyone from our hometown together, no matter their age, ethnicity, or socioeconomic background. I served food in soup kitchens. From each of these events, even if it was only for the day, I made connections with people who showed me that life is expansive and the best way to feel alive and human is by helping ease one anothers’ burdens. Perhaps it is due to the connection I felt early on that now, I don’t feel like myself if I am not involved in my community. At Northwestern University, the first extracurricular activity I joined was the Campus Kitchens Project. Rather than waste the remaining food from the dining halls each day, my team and I packaged the meals for residents in our community who needed it, following any dietary restrictions or guidelines. I was also actively involved in tutoring students in downtown Chicago through the Youth Organizations Umbrella (Y.O.U.) Program. As a build participant through Habitat for Humanity, I was able to contribute to building affordable houses in the suburbs of Chicago. After graduating, at Accenture, I decided to become involved in Corporate Citizenship right away. As I had spent my first year out of college teaching, education was of utmost importance to me. The Possible Project, a non-profit organization that teaches under-served high school students entrepreneurial skills, was located across the street from my apartment. I learned about the organization and fell in love. Over the course of several months, I was able to not only host volunteer events leveraging the backgrounds of the experts in my company but also turn The Possible Project from an organization that was not on my company’s radar into a full corporate citizenship partner. Our company now provides grants to The Possible Project to help further its mission. Outside of work, I continue my regular volunteering through One Brick, a volunteer organization that partners with a number of nonprofits. I joined the organization on my second day in Boston and, over time, become an Event Manager. Through my work, I organize events from creating meal packages for community residents to serving meals to veterans to writing letters to inmates. Service has and will continue to be a key pillar in my life. Following my graduate degree, I intend to dedicate my life to service by improving educational opportunities through education technology. My goal is to build an education technology business that creates a customizable teaching approach for students that builds their confidence and skills so that they can reach their goals. This company will create flexible learning plans so that students who, especially in underprivileged situations, have more concerns than just their school work, can still keep moving forward. My years of volunteering have connected me with young people who are simultaneously trying to feed their families, take care of young children, or even simply maintain their safety. These are the students who I am targeting with my company. We are far past the time when the zip code someone is born into should determine their future.

Creation is the true source of value. I love taking an idea from nothing and building it until it grows into something that can stand on its own. Entrepreneurship allows one to build a career around connecting the dots and shooting for an opportunity that others may not be able to see. As a first-generation American, I grew up watching my parents work to connect the dots. Education created the opportunity to move to this country and entrepreneurship to create a living within it. While simultaneously raising four children, my mom tried different ventures ranging from being an Avon makeup representative to being the adult diaper supplier for the retirement community near our home. She was always observing, trying to figure out what people needed and how she could have a hand in filling that need. Her scrappiness provided not only the means to support our family but also the inspiration for me to use creativity to build something greater. Entrepreneurship pushes the founder to lean into a challenge wholly. As a human-centered designer and consultant by trade, my career hinges around obsessing about the problem. Entrepreneurship is the purest form of this mindset. To build a successful venture and a truly great product, entrepreneurs must focus on understanding their end-users. Successful ventures focus on building truly great products. My first step into entrepreneurship began a year after graduating from Northwestern University when I was healing from spinal surgery. After an active year of traveling and teaching at a university in Hong Kong, my spinal fusion left me bedridden for months. Simultaneously, my student loans were no longer in forbearance and the debt that I owed was increasing daily. So, I decided to get started. I asked myself, what skills do I have to share? How can I help? Leveraging my teaching ability from a year in the classroom, I decided to become a remote tutor, helping students from Baltimore to Singapore with everything from basic math to applying to college outside of their home country, all from bed. I learned that even if I do not yet have the traction to build a full company, I can start creating a business by seeing where I can contribute. Outside of work, I teach traditionally under-served high school students entrepreneurial skills through partnering with The Possible Project. As education has always been important to me, I also consult for 1Room, an education technology start-up that expands educational access for “second chance learners” in Kenya who have not completed high school. I am also an IDEX Social Enterprise Intrepreneurship Fellow through which I partner with a global cohort to create new business opportunities for social impact organizations. Impact defines my career. Like my family, the path that I choose to follow is that which enables others to go further. I will build my career around magnifying educational opportunities for those who, because of the circumstances to which they were born, may not be able to have otherwise. My business will curate high-quality content, accessible in the students’ own time, so that underserved populations can better balance conflicting priorities. Specifically, my goal is to help students with a lower socioeconomic status invest in building toward a future with more opportunities while having a network to help them manage the realities of the present. We are far past the time when the zip code someone is born into should determine their future. With my continued dedication, vision, and expansion opportunities from my degree, I will become a leader at the forefront of that change. Any large change takes small action starting now.

Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Cinderella” will always have my heart. This movie was the first time I saw someone who looked like me as, finally, a princess. I love that the casting for the movie is truly race-blind and expansive with a Black and White King and Queen giving biological birth to a Filipino son. I love that it places people who are not typically seen in lead romantic roles, an Asian man and a Black woman, at the forefront. I love that it is so fun, colorful, and alive. Growing up, my sister and I watched the VHS at least three times a week after school. I remember putting on dresses that flipped outward for the occasion so that we could dance around the basement with the proper amount of drama during the musical numbers screaming the lyrics at the top of our lungs. We must have driven our parents to the brink of insanity. I remember watching it so many times and then, one day, when a little cousin came over to play, he accidentally ripped the tape out of the VHS, ruining it permanently. I was heartbroken. But years later, the movie resurfaced on Youtube and, only earlier in 2021, on Disney+. With each release, I dove back into the movie with the same unbridled joy I felt when I was five. My favorite song from the movie features a Brandy and Whitney Houston duet. The lines from the song are still some that I find myself humming on days that are particularly outside of my comfort zone. "But the world is full of zanies and fools, who don’t believe in sensible rules. And won’t believe what sensible people say. And because these daft and dewy-eyed dopes keep building up impossible hopes, impossible, things are happening every day."

What lives on? To me, legacy is what remains after you move on. Moving on can mean from this life, but it can also mean from the space that you are in. Leaving a strong legacy means that when people remember you and what you have done, you have left that space better in a way that lasts. One’s legacy can have a range of scales. There can be the giant legacy of building something, a business or nonprofit, that lasts. There can also be the smaller legacies of making life a bit brighter for those around you. Sometimes, the individual hours of our lives can seem like they blend together. If you were to ask me what I did last Tuesday, I would have to check my Outlook calendar and, even then, only speak in summation. This meeting or that, this seminar, that presentation. The details, easily lost in the drive to move forward tackle the next huddle. How can one build a legacy through the hours? But looking at the day through the hours obscures the significance. With the lens of the giant legacy, that same Tuesday could be a key building block in creating skill sets that will allow me to, in the future, and a product that changes lives. From the smaller lens, it’s not so much about the hours but about the moments within them. How did I make someone feel championed? How did I impact the culture of my team and the confidence of those who I mentor? Did I get an exhausted colleague a cup of coffee or take 5 extra minutes with a nervous new joiner to make them feel important and heard? Those moments can mean absolutely everything. The legacies that we leave live on. If you do your work well, it can live on even beyond your name. It can live on in the way that you have inspired those with whom you have come in contact or in laying the foundation for someone’s life to improve. The legacy I want to leave is one where I am remembered as someone who made people confident in themselves. I want my life to be defined by the people I impact and who have impacted me. That can be those as close as family members and friends who I show up for in times of need or strangers who, even in passing, I leave a little bit of light with. My career will be dedicated to leaving a legacy of impact. I will build my career around magnifying educational opportunities for those who, because of the circumstances to which they were born, may not be able to have otherwise. My goal is to build an education technology company that allows students from underserved backgrounds to continue progressing towards their goals utilizing a flexible curriculum that takes into account the other challenges they may have to balance in their daily lives. We are far past the time when the zip code someone is born into should determine their future. COVID-19 has expedited the need for rapid change in education. With my continued dedication, support, and expansion opportunities from my degree, I will become a leader at the forefront of that change. My legacy will not only be in my business itself but it will also live on in the lives of the students that engage with it and the opportunities they then go on to create. This is how I chose to live on.

Community engagement is what makes us understand the humanity in one another. It is important because it bursts the bubbles that many of us can fall into by just seeing the world as the size of our neighborhoods. It creates a series of tiny moments and pictures that helps us understand one another more. Service is as much about the day-to-day support that it provides to those with whom one is connecting as it is about the longer-term opportunities and pathways it opens up. By equipping a family with groceries for the week, a parent or a grandparent can focus on being there for the people that matter most to them and building a better life. By helping student entrepreneurs shelf books and run their book store, you are aiding in building up tomorrow’s business leaders. By more people becoming involved in their communities, we build toward the collective good for all. Service became a pillar in my life early on. In the third grade, I joined Girl Scouts of America and maintained my membership through high school graduation. Year after year, our troop engaged in a number of volunteer activities from taking care of our local park to performing musical numbers for nursing home residents to organizing food pantries. From that point on, service was an irrevocable part of life. In high school, as a part of the National Honor Society, my focus on service amplified even more. I often volunteered more hours than the membership required because I loved it so much. When I connected with my community, life got bigger. I was no longer focused on the teenage drama that guided many others’ lives because a large portion of my life was outside of those halls. I spent weekends helping run the 5ks that brought everyone from our hometown together, no matter their age, ethnicity, or socioeconomic background. I served food in soup kitchens. From each of these events, even if it was only for the day, I made connections with people who showed me that life is expansive and the best way to feel alive and human is by helping ease one anothers’ burdens. Perhaps it is due to the connection I felt early on with serving my community that now, when I move cities, states, or even countries, I don’t feel like myself if I am not involved in my community. When I went to college at Northwestern University, the first extracurricular activity I joined was the Campus Kitchens Project. Rather than waste the remaining food from the dining halls each day, my team and I packaged the meals for residents in our community who needed it, following any dietary restrictions or guidelines. I was also actively involved in tutoring students in downtown Chicago through the Youth Organizations Umbrella (Y.O.U.) Program. As a build participant through Habitat for Humanity, I was able to contribute to building affordable houses in the suburbs of Chicago. After graduating, as a part of my company, I decided to become involved in Corporate Citizenship right away. As I had spent my first year out of college teaching, education was of utmost importance to me. The Possible Project, a non-profit organization that teaches under-served high school students entrepreneurial skills, was located across the street from my apartment. I learned about the organization and fell in love. Over the course of several months, I was able to not only host volunteer events leveraging the backgrounds of the experts in my company, but to also turn The Possible Project from an organization that was not on my company’s radar into a full corporate citizenship partner. Our company now provides grants to The Possible Project to help further its mission. Outside of work, I continue my regular volunteering through One Brick, a volunteer organization that partners with a number of nonprofits. I joined the organization on my second day in Boston and, over time, took on additional responsibilities to eventually become an Event Manager. Through my work, I organize events from creating meal packages for community residents through the Red Cross Food Pantry to serving meals to veterans, to writing letters to inmates. Service has and will continue to be a key pillar in my life. Following my graduate degree, I intend to dedicate my life to service by improving educational opportunities through education technology. My goal is to build an education technology business that creates a customizable teaching approach for students that builds their confidence and skills so that they can reach their goals. This company will create flexible learning plans so that students who, especially in underprivileged situations, have more concerns than just their school work, can still keep moving forward. My years of volunteering have connected me with young people who are simultaneously trying to feed their families, take care of young children, or even simply maintain their safety. These are the students who I am targeting with my company. Impact defines my career. I will build my career around magnifying educational opportunities for those who, because of the circumstances to which they were born, may not be able to have otherwise. We are far past the time when the zip code someone is born into should determine their future. COVID-19 has expedited the need for rapid change in education. With my continued dedication, support, and expansion opportunities from my degree, I will become a leader at the forefront of that change. Sometimes, it’s not about the big picture. Sometimes, engaging with our communities is about the little picture, the tiny picture. And taking the time to notice it.

Instead of an alarm clock, I awoke to howling. Dawn was breaking and the wolves of Mission: Wolf woke were letting us know the day was about to begin. Prior to COVID-19, I spent spring break in university participating in Alternative Student Breaks. After a quarter of studying wolves, the environment and sustainability, we were spending a week camping in the remote mountains of Colorado taking care of wolves on the Mission: Wolf conservation. Mission: Wolf is a 501(c)(3) non-profit educational wolf sanctuary that focuses on sustainability, operates on solar power, and builds with recycled materials. It connects people with nature using hands-on experiential education. Through volunteer internships and its education programs, the organization inspires individuals to become stewards of the earth. For one reason or another, the wolves at the sanctuary were no longer able to care for themselves in the wild. Some were domesticated, used on movie sets like that of Twilight or cross-breeds between wolves and dogs. Accordingly, Mission: Wolf provides a home for rescued wolves and horses, and creates opportunities for growth through community service and personal interactions with animals. As a volunteer, our goal was to feed the animals as well as to help expand the space in which they could roam. Days on the mountain were long and strenuous but our goal was clear and bonded us: to make our small piece of the environment incrementally healthier. Waking up in the mountains and being surrounded by such breathtaking nature opened my eyes to what, living in Chicago at the time, I did not often see. It renewed my love for nature and inspired me to build more of my life around it. Since then, the great outdoors has become my refuge. I spent my first year out of university teaching in Hong Kong and, while the bustling city is often the first image to come to mind, Hong Kong’s nature has a much stronger appeal. One can hike from the city through the mountains to the beach or explore its many neighboring islands. The MacLehose Trail provides over 100km of mountains to explore and I spent my year determined to see as much of it as possible. Later, on a road trip through California, a close friend of mine and I made sure to explore both Yosemite and Alabama Hills. We saw mountains and valleys, encountered coyotes, saw the full glory of the stars, and hiked through so much openness. I had never felt so awake. As we have all lived the past year in our homes, staying physically distant from one another, the times I have been able to escape to the outdoors have kept me sane. Whether it is hikes through the woods to the waterfall near my home or day trips to the ocean, being outside reminds me how much more there is than the four walls we seclude ourselves to. There, in the grand vastness of it all, I feel almost meditative. My internal senses are heightened, I can feel the satisfaction of the dirt crunching below my feet, and, when I eventually emerge, I feel renewed. From my experience with the wilderness, I have learned resiliency. I see resiliency in the plants that continue to grow no matter what storms they face and the rivers and creeks that always find a way to move forward. I have also learned that, in protecting the environment, collaboration is everything. When other people leave litter on trails or continue to use single-use plastic, what seems like a minute change to them has massive and grave implications at scale. I am going to graduate school because I want to dedicate my career to education. As we build up the next generation, environmental and sustainability-focused education needs to be fully entrenched in our core curriculum. Growing up, sustainability was taught as an after-thought and that lack of underscoring its importance has accelerated the damage we as the human species have inflicted. As I build my education technology platform, I aspire to make sustainability as core of a focus as history and begin building that collaborative mindset early. Reducing the damage that we have done to our planet is going to take all of us. The wilderness is unparalleled and irreplaceable. In today’s society, while sustainability is slowly becoming more of a consideration, we are not moving in the right direction quickly enough. Going to the wilderness, seeing the glory and the wonder of not only the landscape but the animals it supports, watching sunset over a mountaintop, seeing the stars unencumbered by the pollution of city light -- these are moments that change you. There is only one Earth and it is going to take all of us to save it.

No force of will, no force of strength, a no force planning could have prepared any of us for COVID-19. And while life in quarantine often feels like it is in pause, it stops for no one. At the beginning of 2020, I had so many plans. There were friends I would see, places I would visit, events to engage in, always something to strive for. Growing up in the U.S., and as the child of immigrants who have spent their lives investing in building a foundation for me to derive better opportunities, I have historically aligned my self-worth to my achievements. There were schools to get into, promotions to strive for, always more. My go-go-go mentality was how I defined myself - someone in motion. But when COVID-19 changed all of our lives in an instant, all of my speeding forward came to an abrupt stop. Without all of the constant movement, I was forced to recognize that I did not know who I was in stillness. Without the next goal, the next checkbox, I was forced to sit and be. To lean into the in-between moments and figure out what actually mattered to me, not to who I wanted society to see me as. And that was more of a challenge than I originally thought it would be. Partially because of the relentless stress of the world we now found ourselves in and partially because of the need to discover who I was in stillness, I started exploring meditation. There was something about dedicating time to a blank mind -- to breathing and to focusing on your feet on the ground -- that opened up my mind and honed my sense of focus in a way I had never before experienced. Meditation became part of my morning routine. Its emphasis on mindfulness slowly permeated into other aspects of life. Rather than having to externally find signals of being alive through new restaurants or events, I finally began to feel it in the more mundane moments. I felt it in going for a socially distant walk with my dad, dancing to virtual Zumba with my mom, in cross country Zoom dates with my college roommate, in waking up, stretching, planting my feet on the floor -- in the now. More than anything, I felt alive in the interpersonal connections that I invested in, no matter how many miles apart. Life cannot be done alone. No matter how strong we think we might be, mentally or physically, life’s challenges are such that our individual strength is not enough. True value lies in how we build into each other and in how we build each other up. Who I am today is someone that wants to dedicate her life to helping others move forward with their dreams a little more easily. I want to be remembered as someone who shows up. COVID-19 taught me that significant change comes not only in big leaps and strides but also in the opposite -- in the abrupt stops and the forced pivots. While this has unquestionably been a challenging and often painful time for most, never before has there been such a unifying experience that forces each of us to see the similarity and humanity in one another. COVID-19 has changed me. It has changed us. I hope, for the better.

I am my ancestors’ wildest dream. In one generation, education has allowed my family to leap from blighting poverty into a world of opportunity. Education creates belief in oneself: you understand that while you cannot know everything, you can learn anything. Globally, too many brilliant people are limited by their circumstances and lack access to quality education. I want to dedicate my career to creating their bridge to a better future. My parents instilled in me the drive to maximize each opportunity. My father grew up working on a farm in rural Nigeria. With eight children and limited resources, his family could not afford to send him to high school for five years. Through dedication, scholarship, and luck, he eventually graduated with the opportunity to come to America. In our family, if you are able, you should always be helping someone. Education is my way to help. I spent summers in college evaluating learning from multiple perspectives. In 2013, I taught through HelpChat, a program that allows students in the Czech Republic to practice English conversational skills. For the first time, I was in front of a classroom, understanding what made people care, and what makes them excited to show up day after day. After teaching, I wanted to understand education in the context of business. At Harvard Business Publishing, I initiated improvement of leadership and management training simulations. The following summer, at Google, I expanded my technological skills and organized onboarding education for new hires focused on education in context of scalable technology. To expand my experience in education, I sought to serve as a full-time teacher. Through Princeton in Asia, I taught first-year students at Shue Yan University in Hong Kong. There, I learned that a critical aspect of creating better educational access is understanding students’ varied life circumstances, and how they impact their educational trajectory. I learned to better connect with people – a skill that made me a better educator and leader. Upon returning to America, I realized I needed to build greater business and technology acumen in order to scale impact beyond my classroom. Consulting with Accenture, with its project-oriented work structure, quickly allowed me to learn about business and how to run a successful company. Within the public service practice, I engaged in projects ranging from sourcing candidates from non-traditional backgrounds to join the apprentice program to improving transportation services for mentally and physically disabled persons. Later, after deciding I wanted to understand more about human-centered design in order to build strong education technology products, I moved into our innovation practice. Outside of work, I teach traditionally under-served high school students entrepreneurial skills through The Possible Project and consult for 1Room, an ed-tech start-up that expands educational access for “second chance learners” in Kenya who have not completed high school. My road has always led back to education. Realizing it was the right path for me was not a single moment but rather a series of them, all pointing me in the same direction.

As education has allowed my family to escape poverty and move to the United States, it has always been a pillar in my life. In my first year after graduating from Northwestern University, I decided to live and work in Hong Kong out of the drive to invest in educational opportunities for others and out of curiosity about a new culture. I dove fully out of my comfort zone and pursued the personal growth that came with that. There, I taught over 100 first-year college students. This image is during an exam for my students when I was teaching.

Just get started. Beyond any other lesson that I have learned as an aspiring entrepreneur, just getting started is both the simplest and most challenging one. Entrepreneurs are people who get things done. The fear of “what if it doesn’t work out” mitigated by leaning into more stable foundations is what holds many back from being successful. As a first-generation American, choosing a path away from the stability my family has dreamed of for me has oftentimes been difficult. Unlike clearer paths like medicine or law, successful business and entrepreneurship are not promised. My first step into entrepreneurship began a year after graduating from Northwestern University when I was healing from spinal surgery. After an active year of traveling and teaching at a university in Hong Kong, my spinal fusion left me bedridden for months. Simultaneously, my student loans were no longer in forbearance and the debt that I owed was increasing daily. So, I decided to get started. I asked myself, what skills do I have to share? How can I help? Leveraging my teaching ability from a year in the classroom, I decided to become a remote tutor, helping students from Baltimore to Singapore with everything from basic math to applying to college outside of their home country, all from bed. I learned that even if I do not yet have the traction to build a full company, I can start creating a business by seeing where I can contribute. Since joining my full-time role as a management consultant at Accenture, I have focused on continuing to build up my entrepreneurial mindset by being an intrapreneur. No matter my role, I work to push our teams’ way of working to more innovative mindsets. Consequently, I sought out Accenture’s Innovation Hub where I worked with executives across Fortune 500 companies to workshop business strategies. Six months into my tenure with the Innovation Hub, I was selected to pilot Innovation Explorers, an intrapreneurship program reevaluating how to train early career talent in design thinking. The program aims to find consultants who “think differently” and question pre-existing structures to forward our innovation agenda. My work has led to, today, I partner with internal acquisitions such as ?What If! And Fjord to continue to build human-centered design skillsets. Outside of work, I teach traditionally under-served high school students entrepreneurial skills through partnering with The Possible Project and consult for 1Room, an ed-tech start-up that expands educational access for “second chance learners” in Kenya who have not completed high school. I am also an IDEX Social Enterprise Intrapreneurship Fellow through which I am partnering with a global cohort to consult non-profit and social impact organizations in real-time. My goal is to build an education technology business that contextualizes students’ experiences while supporting them in meeting their educational and professional goals. My business will curate high-quality content, accessible in the students’ own time, so that underserved populations can better balance conflicting priorities. Specifically, my goal is to help students with a lower socioeconomic status invest in building toward a future with more opportunities while having a network to help them manage the realities of the present. COVID-19’s education crisis has even more so underscored the importance of finding a way to work with education technology in a way that actively takes students’ needs into account. Like my family, the path that I choose to follow is that which enables others to go further. I aspire to see the big picture impact in educational accessibility and understand that any large change takes small action starting now.

Society’s rate of change is currently at the fastest it has ever been and simultaneously the slowest it will ever be again. From cloud to voice assistants, technology is engrained in how we function today. I am driven by curiosity and believe in deliberate innovation in technology leading to social progress at an unprecedented scale. I have both seen and experienced the power of technology and education to transform lives. In one generation, education has allowed my family to leap from blighting poverty into a world of opportunity. Education creates belief in oneself: you understand that while you cannot know everything, you can learn anything. Globally, too many any brilliant people are limited by their circumstances and lack access to quality education. My mission is to use that power to allow traditionally under-served populations to reach their full potential. I want to dedicate my career to creating their bridge to a better future. Accordingly, my long-term goal is to build an education technology business that contextualizes students’ experiences while supporting them in meeting their educational and professional goals. My business will curate high-quality content, accessible in the students’ own time, so that underserved populations can better balance conflicting priorities. Specifically, my goal is to help students with a lower socioeconomic status invest in building toward a future with more opportunities while whill having a network to help them manage the realities of the present. In the short term, I will learn what it takes to build and manage a strong product as a product manager at a mid to large-sized technology company. COVID-19’s education crisis has even moreso underscored the importance of finding a way to work with education technology in a way that actively takes students’ needs into account. I spent summers in college evaluating learning from multiple perspectives. In 2013, I taught through HelpChat, a program that allows students in the Czech Republic to practice English conversational skills. For the first time, I was in front of a classroom, understanding what made people care, and what makes them excited to show up day after day. After teaching, I wanted to understand education in the context of business. At Harvard Business Publishing, I initiated improvement of leadership and management training simulations. The following summer, at Google, I expanded my technological skills and organized onboarding education for new hires focused on education in the context of scalable technology. To expand my experience in education, I sought to serve as a full-time teacher. Through Princeton in Asia, I taught first-year students at Shue Yan University in Hong Kong. There, I learned that a critical aspect of creating better educational access is understanding students’ varied life circumstances, and how they impact their educational trajectory. I learned to better connect with people – a skill that made me a better educator and leader. Upon returning to America, I realized I needed to build greater business and technology acumen in order to scale impact beyond my classroom. Consulting with Accenture, with its project-oriented work structure, quickly allowed me to learn about business and how to run a successful company. Within the public service practice, I engaged in projects ranging from sourcing candidates from non-traditional backgrounds to join the apprentice program to improving transportation services for mentally and physically disabled persons. However, I realized that many of the solutions we implemented were retrofitted rather than tailored to our client’s specific problems. In order to have the impact I envisioned in education technology, I needed to understand how to deeply analyze user challenges and build solutions accordingly. Consequently, I sought out Accenture’s Innovation Hub where I worked with executives across Fortune 500 companies to workshop business strategies. Most recently, I was selected to pilot Innovation Explorers, an intrapreneurship program reevaluating how to train early career talent in design thinking. The program aims to find consultants who “think differently” and question pre-existing structures to forward our innovation agenda. Today, I partner with Fjord through Accenture to continue to build human-centered products for which the design truly reflects the diverse customer base. Outside of work, I teach traditionally under-served high school students entrepreneurial skills through a partnership with The Possible Project and consult for 1Room, an ed-tech start-up that expands educational access for “second chance learners” in Kenya who have not completed high school. Recently, I was also accepted into the IDEX Social Enterprise Fellowship program where I am partnering with a global cohort to build a lasting foundation in the tools needed to drive real social change. Through my role, I am consulting non-profit and social impact organizations in real-time. As we build a system that works, active consideration of diversity and students’ varied backgrounds needs to be at the forefront. Too often, some of the technologies that we have seen develop from face recognition to “automatic” sinks do not have a representative audience in mind when they are developed. Rather, developers have historically chosen a random sampling of their peers, often people with similar demographic backgrounds to test their products. This leads to a disproportionate misrepresentation for larger audiences. I develop my education technology company, I will use my human-centered design background to ensure that the technology developed is truly for everyone. My work will build upon my time consulting as well as teaching at Shue Yan University in Hong Kong, HelpChat in the Czech Republic, and tutoring students globally from Chicago to Singapore. I aspire to see the big picture impact in educational accessibility and understand that any large change takes small action starting now.

I am my ancestors’ wildest dream. In one generation, education has allowed my family to leap from blighting poverty into a world of opportunity. Education creates belief in oneself: you understand that while you cannot know everything, you can learn anything. Globally, too many brilliant people are limited by their circumstances and lack access to quality education. I want to dedicate my career to creating their bridge to a better future. I have both seen and experienced the power of education to transform lives. Accordingly, my goal is to build an education technology business that contextualizes students’ experiences while supporting them in meeting their educational and professional goals. My business will curate high-quality content, accessible in the students’ own time, so that underserved, specifically lower socioeconomic status, populations can better balance conflicting priorities of preparing for the future while managing the present. My parents instilled in me the drive to maximize each opportunity. My father grew up working on a farm in rural Nigeria. With eight children and limited resources, his family could not afford to send him to high school for five years. Through dedication, scholarship, and luck, he eventually graduated with the opportunity to come to America. In our family, if you are able, you should always be helping someone. Education is my way to help. I spent summers in college evaluating learning from multiple perspectives. In 2013, I taught through HelpChat, a program that allows students in the Czech Republic to practice English conversational skills. For the first time, I was in front of a classroom, understanding what made people care, and what makes them excited to show up day after day. After teaching, I wanted to understand education in the context of business. At Harvard Business Publishing, I initiated improvement of leadership and management training simulations. The following summer, at Google, I expanded my technological skills and organized onboarding education for new hires focused on education in the context of scalable technology. To expand my experience in education, I sought to serve as a full-time teacher. Through Princeton in Asia, I taught first-year students at Shue Yan University in Hong Kong. There, I learned that a critical aspect of creating better educational access is understanding students’ varied life circumstances, and how they impact their educational trajectory. I learned to better connect with people – a skill that made me a better educator and leader. Upon returning to America, I realized I needed to build greater business and technology acumen in order to scale impact beyond my classroom. Consulting with Accenture, with its project-oriented work structure, quickly allowed me to learn about business and how to run a successful company. Within the public service practice, I engaged in projects ranging from sourcing candidates from non-traditional backgrounds to join the apprentice program to improving transportation services for mentally and physically disabled persons. However, I realized that many of the solutions we implemented were retrofitted rather than tailored to our client’s specific problems. In order to have the impact I envisioned in education technology, I needed to understand how to deeply analyze user challenges and build solutions accordingly. Consequently, I sought out Accenture’s Innovation Hub where I worked with executives across Fortune 500 companies to workshop business strategies. Later, I was selected to pilot Innovation Explorers, an intrapreneurship program reevaluating how to train early career talent in design thinking. The program aims to find consultants who “think differently” and question pre-existing structures to forward our innovation agenda. In my role, I created and ran an emerging technology learning campaign that ended up winning an internal award. In my next role, I partnered with ?What If!, one of our innovation acquisitions, to pilot a new adaptive strategy offering. In addition, I am the co-lead for Accenture’s relationship with MassChallenge HealthTech, a startup accelerator that works to accelerate high-impact digital health startups by forming partnerships with industry-leading Champions. My work at Accenture has been defined by intrapreneurship and I am excited to build on my own outside of the company in and after school. Outside of work, I teach traditionally under-served high school students entrepreneurial skills through partnering with The Possible Project and consult for 1Room, an ed-tech start-up that expands educational access for “second chance learners” in Kenya who have not completed high school. I am also an IDEX Social Enterprise Fellow through which I am partnering with a global cohort to consult non-profit and social impact organizations in real-time. Entrepreneurs are people who get things done. What I learned by following curiosity and passion, became invaluable years later. Like my family, the path that I choose to follow is that which enables others to go further. I aspire to see the big picture impact in educational accessibility and understand that any large change takes small action starting now.

I have both seen and experienced the power of education to transform lives. Accordingly, my long-term goal is to build an education technology business that contextualizes students’ experiences while supporting them in meeting their educational and professional goals. My business will curate high-quality content, accessible in the students’ own time, so that underserved populations can better balance conflicting priorities. In the short term, I will learn what it takes to build and manage a strong product as a product manager at a company like Khan Academy. My journey inspires me to help others leverage the power of learning. My parents, Nigerian immigrants, instilled in me the drive to maximize each opportunity. Just one generation ago, my father was living in a village, working on the family farm. With eight kids, his family’s finances were tight, and they could not afford to send him to high school immediately. He had to wait five years before he could finally continue and, once there, he funded the rest of his way through by earning scholarships. He and my mother eventually emigrated to the United States where there was the promise of more. Education created the bridge across the chasm of opportunity. I grew up listening to his stories and how he leveraged education to open more doors of possibility. My father’s experience sparked my interest in education, and my own education solidified it as a cornerstone in my life. From Boston to Hong Kong, I have learned to embrace different cultures, traverse language and experiential differences to make learning engaging, and navigate ambiguity. In my first year post-graduation, I decided to live and work in Hong Kong as a university lecturer through a Princeton in Asia Fellowship. I was curious about a new culture, and excited to teach in a new setting. As I have found that I learn and grow the most through increasingly challenging situations, I actively seek out such experiences. At Shue Yan University, I learned that an important piece of creating better educational accessibility is learning to understand students’ different life circumstances, and how these circumstances impact their educational trajectory. While I loved my teaching experience, I wanted it to scale. I realized that in order to achieve my goal of eradicating the gap in educational opportunity, business is the best avenue for expansion and sustainability. Therefore, upon returning to the States, I pursued management consulting where I could accrue skills relevant to building a business quickly. At Accenture, I learned how technology is leveraged to modernize and improve business inefficiencies. In my first year, I engaged in public service projects to understand the intricacies of government processes and worked to improve Accenture’s internal Skills to Succeed apprentice program. Still, I wanted to move faster. Even with my team’s deep government expertise, restricted scopes often led us to retrofit solutions rather than addressing the specific client problem. Unless we could keep the end users at the center, any solutions presented could not achieve full value. My interest in problem framing drew me to innovation. My work shifted into user research where I led interviews and conducted analytical examinations into core client challenges. My work at Accenture has provided me with a wide-ranging core business skillset and a strong foundation in human-centered design thinking. It has also allowed me to serve in a role where I support lower socioeconomic status high school students in building entrepreneurial skills. We are far past the time when the zip code someone is born into should determine their future. In 2020, COVID-19 has expedited the need for rapid change in education. With my degree, I will develop into someone who can lead that change.