Adamaka Ajaelo built a successful career in corporate America, working in people analytics and strategic workforce planning. She helped companies forecast the future of work, identify talent gaps, and optimize systems from the inside. Then she saw the deeper problem. The same systems she was helping optimize were connected to the inequities she cared about most. She was measuring the digital, talent, and skills gaps, but she wanted to do more than quantify them. She wanted to close them.
In this episode, Adamaka shares why she left corporate stability to focus full-time on Self-eSTEM, a nonprofit equipping youth and young adults, especially girls and women from under-resourced communities, with confidence, coding, leadership, STEM, and AI skills. She talks about the fear of leaving, the pull of purpose, the future of AI equity, and why confidence is not a soft skill. It is infrastructure.
Enjoy!
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Website: https://www.adamakaajaelo.com/
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Self-eSTEM: www.selfestem.org
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