Born in Virginia, but raised in North Carolina as the middle child of three, all I've ever known is life in the south. However, despite my location, my father's side of the family is from New York City and that's where my parents evidently met and grew up together. My mother came to the US as a teenage immigrant from Nigeria, and having been raised ethnically mixed has made my life very different. It felt like almost everything was polarizing: foods, traditions, family structures, traumas, and even cultural expectations.

Ask any African child raised in America and you'd know how high the expectations are to succeed in academics and your career path. So, it was no surprise to me when my mother made it clear that the career choices I could choose from were: medicine, law, or tech. Due to my sister at the time going into the medical field trying to break into nursing, I immediately was drawn away from it since I wanted to stand alone from my older sister, who I was constantly being compared to.

So yeah, that's why I went into tech.

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Now, my choice in tech wasn't entirely a straight forward one. I knew I wanted to be in the tech field, but I also had a passion for design, psychology, and helping people. At the time, wanting all of this in one job seemed impossible, and I thought I'd be lucky to even get one of those things I wanted... 

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That was until I found design.

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Since then, which at the time I was in the 7th grade, I've looked into everything UX  and after more experience in social media, I've dedicated my career to combining the two. It's exhilarating but also pretty scary coming to terms with the fact that there isn't any other career I can see myself doing, but that's also what motivates me to pursue this line of work and fulfill the dreams of 14-year old me.