After graduating from Princeton and working at Bain & Co., Yaw co-founded LMNS - a venture-backed hiring platform designed to increase minority representation in marketing. He then worked in business roles at various tech companies before enrolling at Yale School of Management.

During his time in the tech industry, he noticed that he was often the only Black person in the meeting or on the team. In fact, he remembers being able to count the number of his Black colleagues on his fingers. While at Yale, he began to research the causes of this lack of representation and saw that the problem was even bigger than he thought. Not only is Black representation in tech half of what it is in other private industries, Latinx tech workers are significantly underrepresented as well. He learned much of this was due to knowledge & network gaps in the Black & Latinx communities that were the result of institutional racism. In March of 2023, he founded ajuma to provide the necessary knowledge and network to help Black & Latinx undergrads break into the tech industry.

This fall, ajuma launched aspire - its inaugural student program - to introduce Black & Latinx college students to careers in product management and marketing. The program introduced 8 students from schools including Yale, Brown, & Spelman to 11 tech workers from companies including TikTok, Google, & IBM. It also provided career workshops where students took tactical steps to prepare for applications. Students loved the experience, giving the program an NPS of 100%.

Here's what our students had to say:

"I've learned a lot about day-to-day expectations in roles I'd never heard of before. I have already began using the advice for reaching out to people in industries and companies I'm interested in."

"The Aspire program has been a fantastic experience for me! I've found it incredibly insightful because it has introduced me to the world of the tech industry, even though I didn't have much prior knowledge before. I've particularly enjoyed the opportunity to learn about various roles in the industry, especially from the panel we had last week. It was interesting to see how others were able to transition into the industry and it kind of gave me an idea of possible paths I can follow."

In the upcoming year, ajuma plans to expand to reach 1000 students and 200 tech workers by conducting more programming, delivering online & offline educational content, and hosting tech meetups. Our flagship investment for 2024 is the ajuma platform which will help educate students about tech opportunities and provide a forum for students and tech workers in the ajuma community to collaborate.

Help build the ajuma platform

The ajuma platform will feature introductory tech courses for Black & Latinx undergrads and a discussion forum for the ajuma community