Choosing to Prosper

Introduction: You Have to Tell Your Story

Be empowered and bold and know you have a voice that no one can make you bury.

As a child, I thought I would grow up to be a doctor. It was a big dream of mine. I would line up my dolls in my pretend doll hospital and treat them for made‐up ailments. I was a great doll doctor. But in real life, the sight of blood made me queasy and I quickly realized that career path was a no‐go for me. I wasn't sure what else I wanted to do until one day in high school in Nigeria, my dad brought a Compaq desktop computer home for our family. It was a massive thing with a standalone central processing unit that hummed and purred, but it was new and exciting. After spending hours and hours on the computer each weekend, I taught myself how to use MS DOS (Yup, it was the mid‐1990s!) from books my dad bought me. With my love for computers, I wound up deciding to study computer science and business with a certification in website development when I got to college. That decision was inspired by both my parents, who would always tell me, “Bola, computers are the future, but if that doesn't work out, you can always fall back on business.”

My dad was a PhD‐holding mathematician, econometrician, and later the head of the technology department at the government job where he worked. He was educated in Nigeria, Russia, and the United States. My mom, on the other hand, studied economics, had a master's degree in finance, and got her education in Nigeria, Austria, ...