Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in the Bay area. It’s time for Bay Area Business Radio. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here, another episode of Bay Area Business Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show we have Adamaka Ajaelo and she is the executive Director and founder of Self-eSTEM. Welcome.

Adamaka Ajaelo: Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here. Lee.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about Self-eSTEM . How you serving folks?

Adamaka Ajaelo: Yes. So Self-eSTEM is a nonprofit organization that was founded in 2014 with the mission to ignite pride, purpose and possibility among girls and women by providing digital, technical and leadership skills that strengthens and sustains their Stem identities. The organization was really started throughout my own journey of navigating the Stem pipeline, going from high school into college and really seeing sort of the gaps in the the ecosystem of providing supports for young girls and then often girls from what I call untapped and overlooked communities. And so my background is in strategic workforce planning and analytics. And what I had in my career is really an understanding of where companies are going. What are they looking for in talent? And so with self-esteem, it’s really reverse engineering that that talent pipeline in that funnel to ensure that they have the skill sets not only to to thrive in these Stem fields, but also to thrive in the future of work, in the future of work is basically something that is continuously evolving, but it’s really evolving due to the technology advancements in particular that we’re seeing the AI fields.

Lee Kantor: Now having grown up and lived through this personally. And then did your career involve Stem? Were you involved in a career in Stem?

Adamaka Ajaelo: Yes. So my undergrad, I majored in math. So I actually became a math major by default. As I was going through my my journey, I wanted to become a civil engineer. However, unfortunately, through my experience in college of not having that support and actually having people in roles in positions actually putting up roadblocks, I then became a math major, and then I pivoted into my career in corporate America, and I was doing finance for HR. So that’s using, you know, data analytics and looking at financial data. And then when I think about my role as strategic workforce planning, that’s also using my math background. It’s around data and analytics. But the data that you’re analyzing is not marketing data or information by the computer. It’s human capital data. So analyzing information about employees and about the workforce, that’s really where I built my career of what I call the number side in the analytics and the data storytelling side of HR. And so that’s where I really built my career. Analyzing the workforce plans and labor trends for companies such as. At the time, it was Facebook but now known as meta, Cisco, visa, Adobe and Kaiser Permanente, and as well as workday.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you were going through school, elementary and high school and then college, you were still on a Stem track, right? Like you were you were the exception to the rule that was sticking with Stem. As a woman, as you progressed?

Adamaka Ajaelo: Yes. Correct. And what really kept me grounded was my childhood and upbringing. But that was also something unique. Um, so stem for me has, um, this, uh, personal connection in the sense that, um, my father came to this country from Nigeria as an immigrant to study chemical engineering, and Stem was an everyday part of my, my life. We were doing homeschooling before homeschooling, um, was a thing. And so I was really immersed in the stem, um, fields. And my father really encouraged me to not have any limits or bounds of what I could do and achieve in the Stem fields. So that really grounded me and had, uh, this support system. Although I experienced challenges in navigating my educational and career path, I knew that I had that Stem identity, uh, locked in. But when I think about the ecosystem, I thought, well, how many young girls don’t have that personal connection? And for me, I saw Stem provide this social and economic mobility for my father and my family. Um, him coming from a rural and remote village in Nigeria, coming to the United States to study chemical engineering and working for the oil companies. I saw the connection of the impact that it can have on your life. But I was also curious. I had the Stem curiosity, and so really taking a this solid foundation that I had in my childhood, also integrating some of the things that my father taught me were also incorporating, um, those activities within our programing of actually providing exposure, not just in a traditional classroom setting, but getting outside of the classroom. Seeing Stem and engaging in Stem activities outside of the classroom is also something that really helped me reinforce, um, my Stem identity. And I and I attribute that to my father really providing that grounding, um, and rooted experience early in my childhood.

Lee Kantor: Because he was it was in your household. It was you were doing this like, this wasn’t negotiable. It was just part of how you lived your life. Right? It was just it was part of the fabric of your family.

Adamaka Ajaelo: Yes. You you you are correct. Um, I remember doing math and physics problems in the living room. We had a chalkboard in my house. Um, and then there were certain days I couldn’t go outside and play. It was just a day, you know, to study. My father had the saying, there’s a time to play and there’s a time to study. The time now, unfortunately, is the time to study, or fortunately, it’s the time to study.

Lee Kantor: And then when you grow up in that kind of environment, it isn’t really, um, a discussion whether you’re going to do this or not. Like this is it’s kind of non-negotiable, right? Like you, you’re going to do this and you’re going to follow this path. And, and and it’s going to be hard and difficult and there’s going to be challenges. But this is just how we do things in this family.

Adamaka Ajaelo: Uh, yes. Um, my my father. That is correct. My father said, um, um, I also have a creative, creative side, and I share it with my father that I wanted to be an artist. And then he said, you know, um, do you know when artists make money? Um, when they die? Um, there he was saying basically mathematically and statistically that, you know, going into this career field wouldn’t be necessarily lucrative. Um, and so that’s initially what made me wanted to become sort of a civil engineer, where I can create designs, um, and, you know, using tools such as AutoCAD or create designs from a drafting table, whether I’m designing buildings or are designing some type of apparatus that was leaning into my creativity and my creative side. Um, so yes, Stem was an everyday part of my life. Yes, it was a non-negotiable in my household. But there were also some, some guardrails, um, in what, you know, sort of career paths, um, that, um, will return the best, um, will provide the best impact for, uh, the life that I, uh, style that I’m looking to live or just, you know, wanting to thrive in, in, in my future career.

Lee Kantor: Right. And then now you’re trying to create an ecosystem for young people, young, uh, girls and women in Stem that will afford them those choices. Right?

Adamaka Ajaelo: Yes. Correct. So with self-esteem, um, we are we have two tracks in our program. So we have our early Stem immersion program, which is for young girls age 7 to 17. And with that we’re providing exposure and actually training, um throughout the year, um, on topics such as robotics, AI and coding. Um, and so it’s a journey where the girls are able to come back year over year. Um, when we we kick it off with our intensive one week summer camp, and then we have fall activities, typically in robotics and math. And then in the springtime they’re focusing on digital and AI literacy. So enhancing and developing those skills, um, what sets us apart is that we’re we have this tiered approach, um, an tiered curriculum that builds upon each other, that takes them from curiosity to mastery in a certain, um, subject. Um, in addition to that, our program is multi year, so the girls are able to return year over year from age 7 to 17 until they aged out. And now we also are, um, enhancing our infrastructure for what we call our innovator sustainment program, in which it is a program for alumni thinking about the age group 18 to 24.

Adamaka Ajaelo: And with that program, it’s really focusing on, um, how do you advocate and navigate your own educational and career path? So we’re providing training on intellectual property. If you’re creating something, how do you have ownership of that? How do you advocate for yourself? Um, with, you know, if you’re in college, a higher education advocate for yourself? Um, when you think about even financial aid or just financial literacy, but also too, about networking, one of the key things that we learned and observed is that this next generation and it could be due to the information age, but there’s a gap in in the human connection and networking with people. And so we’re also showing them how do you network, how do you actually build up a community of support to ensure that you’re thriving in your your career path? So those are the two key, um, uh, programs, um, that we have, um, within self esteem. But all of this is really rooted in ensuring that they have the skill sets, the knowledge and the network and the mentoring to thrive in the future of work and whatever career path they choose.

Lee Kantor: And I’m assuming by the fact that you named it self-esteem, you feel that if you’re able to develop these skills in math and science, technology, um, that that’s going to improve your self-esteem.

Adamaka Ajaelo: Correct. Um, there is a study that shows that, um, when we think about girls, um, and we think about their ability to, uh, perform. And again, perform is, uh, subjective. But in this case, thinking about it from an academic standpoint in test scores, um, early on girls have confidence. But as they transition from more of the elementary school and to go to middle school and then middle school to high school, we see that confidence drop. And so what that tells me is that the the narrative that it’s a skills and capability issue is not true. Rather it’s a lack of confidence and it’s a lack of, uh, exposure and encouragement. There was a study that shows that girls um, or actually I would say boys are 2 to 4 times more likely to be encouraged to take more advanced math courses, um, within um, uh, middle school and high school in comparison to their female counterparts. And so with that knowledge and information, we’re really, really trying to cultivate an environment where girls feel safe, they feel seen and they feel heard. Because for me, I had that in my childhood and that really locked in my Stem identity. And this Stem identity is this internal and self-belief that no matter what it’s happening in the external world or no matter the, the messaging or, um, the signals that I’m receiving, I believe that I belong in Stem, and I also believe that I can thrive and create within, um, within the industry.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. I think that, um, when kids are young, it’s so important to really instill, um, that confidence because there was a study. I know we’re talking about Stem today, but this is about the arts. But, um, somebody told me there was a study that said that if you ask a kid, like in kindergarten, if they’re an artist, they’ll say, yeah, I’m an artist. And they draw and they do stuff. But by like second grade, only the people who know how to draw well consider themselves artists. And everybody else kind of is like, nah, like they’ve already kind of given up. And I just think it’s so important that these kind of really, um, young ages to not be a dream killer in any area and, and to be the ones that, you know, telling everybody they can do it and give them a path to do it.

Adamaka Ajaelo: Yes. I really like that, um, example that you provided, uh, with the art. Um, and it applies to any, uh, subject or area. But what I really like with that example is that it’s also, too, is how you see yourself as you’re seeing that early on. Um, and a lot of times people think like, oh, no, people, um, are having this self-awareness. Um, maybe in high school. And I said no, as young as the age of seven. Um, eight and nine. Nine year olds, they’re starting to form these ideologies in, I say, these beliefs, sometimes these beliefs are expansive, and then sometimes these beliefs are, uh, contractive that they have constraints. But the example that you just provided is like, yes. Um, what if you actually invested time? You can still be an artist, you know, um, maybe your art is something different. Maybe it’s abstract art, but they’re starting to say like, hey, I’m not good at this. And then the data shows that this typically occurs in young girls, primarily in what we talk about in the math fields as well as the computer science fields. There’s all other fields, too, underneath the umbrella of Stem, but those are the two fields in which your analogy or your example applies, um, very, uh, concretely with young girls in those two two fields. So completely agree. Providing that encouragement and that exposure and, um, and providing those pathways that will open up more girls saying, hey, I feel that I belong in Stem. And then they start to select different career paths within the Stem, um, industry.

Lee Kantor: And it’s kind of a shame because there’s such consumers of technology. You’d think they’d also want to be involved in the creation of the technology that they consume so much.

Adamaka Ajaelo: Exactly. We actually have that, uh, saying is that, um, when you think about the products that are in the world and I always say that it shouldn’t be, and it’s nothing wrong for Elon Musk to dream for the world. But if we have the same people dreaming for the world, and we don’t have that diversity of thought, meaning that we have people who are active participants and consumers of the products, um, even the digital products, project products or technical products of the world, we need everybody’s input in shaping that, because once you have one group, then innovation doesn’t happen. I’ve worked for so many companies in which they started off as a, you know, a startup, and they had all this growth and they started to plateau. And I said, why? It’s because they started to have group thinking. But innovation by definition, is almost something what we call net new. It doesn’t exist in the marketplace. So if we’re thinking about these different products and we’re thinking about, hey, I’m a company, I stand on innovation, I want to drive innovation. If you don’t have net new thinkers and net new thoughts and net new ideas, then are you truly driving innovation? There’s a misalignment in the gap. And so that’s how I also lean in aligning to your your message that you just mentioned here. Uh, Lee is telling the young girls is that we need to hear your thoughts and ideas. We need your innovation. You have to be active participants in the innovation economy and not just consumers of the products being created.

Lee Kantor: So, um, what do you need more of? How can we help you?

Adamaka Ajaelo: Um, definitely. Um, uh, one of the things that we just had, um, was this past October 4th Saturday, we had our innovator showcase. Um, and this was more than just a fundraiser, but it was a platform for students, um, in our what we call our innovators in our program to showcase the impact of our, um, our, our story. Um, and so one of the things that we are really focusing on, um, with our organization is everybody’s talking about, um, AI and the future of work is that we are really trying to address this, uh, digital and AI literacy gap. So, one, many schools are not built to teach AI skills, leaving many students unprepared for the future of work. And so with our curriculum, we designed a multi-tier curriculum that incorporates all this insights that I’ve gathered from my experience of working at these leading and global tech companies. Um, taking the insights that I’ve gained in workforce planning, data analysis and machine learning for these major Silicon Valley companies. And so what we need help is, um, really people to support us for giving Tuesdays for initiatives. What we’re trying to do is take our curriculum and expose it to all of these students, um, in the school environments and in these after school programs, um, and youth development centers. So we we definitely need support of this Giving Tuesday for people to keep us in mind. Um, the, um, with your help, we’ll be able to equip more students with the AI skills they need to support themselves. But we’re also taking it a step further. We also understand through this AI revolution, um, that small to medium sized business as well as social enterprise need also support of integrating and adopting AI into their businesses.

Adamaka Ajaelo: And so with the training that we’re providing to participants in a program. We actually want to do a multiplier effect where they can actually provide that training to small and medium sized businesses. We understand that these businesses may not have a large budget, but if we think about a cash flow of investing in integrating AI into your company, your business, this is a way where you can do it as a tax deductible item because we are a nonprofit entity, but you’re also helping the young girls, and then you’re also getting something in an investment for your own business. So it’s a multiplier effect of investing in their future but also investing in yours. And so as we think about the year end giving season, giving season and giving Tuesday being on December 2nd, um, and then year end giving of December 31st, making that investment into self esteem as we’re focusing on one, building our AI training internally, but also to how do we actually take our learnings and training to businesses, showing them how they can incorporate tools that are using AI. Can you do AI agents, which is basically automating process and workflows. And so we’re looking to build that curriculum in-house, but then train our innovators to be those AI consultants for small and medium sized businesses. But that is something how people can help us. And this aligns to our three year strategic plan to really grow and and, and and really see ourselves as a sustainable organization. Uh, I’m sorry, not sustainable organization, but as a leader, um, in the Stem and AI fields.

Lee Kantor: Now for this AI initiative, is this something that if a small business has an AI need or is it or could you isn’t using it as much as they’d like? They can go to you and you would help them create an AI strategy, and it would be implemented by some of the girls in your program.

Adamaka Ajaelo: Exactly. Lee, that is, uh, spot on. So exactly. Um, one of the, um, major trends. And we’re even seeing companies, large enterprise companies. So I’ll give an example with Salesforce. So Salesforce one started at the enterprise level. So it was for large companies at the enterprise level was to use a tool. They gradually started to say, okay, let’s have AI for nonprofits. Now we’re seeing other um, uh, software saying, okay, how do we actually take our tools and go down to the individual business level, small to medium sized businesses? Maybe it’s a sole proprietorship. Um, and they need to adopt and use AI. So exactly what you described, this is where we want to step in and say, hey, we can help you with your AI strategy. We can help you, um, uh, adopt and integrate AI tools within your business. And then also too, if there is a custom need, uh, whether it’s a custom chatbot or an AI agent workflow, this is something that we can also provide, uh, some type of solutioning. So think of us as your AI consultant for your business. Um, and our goal is to really not only Mean do internally with their organization, but ensure that other organizations are using these tools as well.

Lee Kantor: And um, if somebody wants to learn more, what is the best way to connect?

Adamaka Ajaelo: Yes. So if anyone is interested in learning more about our organization and ways to connect and support, they can visit our website at WW. Dot and that is s e e e.org. And then they can also email us at info at Self-esteem. Org. And someone on our team will definitely reach out. Um, we’re I just wanted to say that we’re really excited for this AI, um, um, initiative because we know that if businesses are not utilizing and integrating AI into their processes or into their, their workplace, um, there is a huge risk. And I say it’s a risk to, um, not necessarily their business going away, but it’s a risk to new opportunities. It’s a risk to operational efficiency. Um, and then it can also be a risk to long term sustainability, um, and potential, um, opportunity cost of, you know, not capturing, uh, new clienteles in new in new markets. So I’m really excited about this, uh, AI initiative that we, that we have.

Lee Kantor: Well, congratulations on all the momentum. And thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Adamaka Ajaelo: Thank you.

Lee Kantor: All right.

Adamaka Ajaelo: Thank you.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Bay Area Business Radio.