Adamaka Ajaelo Featured on the “Why I Left” Podcast

Published on July 7, 2026

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Redefining Success: From Tech Analytics to Systemic Change

When the tech sector talks about innovation, it often leaves communities under-resourced by systems out of the conversation. In a personal interview on Episode 115 of the Why I Left podcast, host Brian Aar sat down with Self-eSTEM’s Founder and Executive Director, Adamaka Ajaelo. The episode covers her decision to step back from senior people analytics and workforce planning roles at companies including Visa, Meta, and Workday to focus full-time on one of tech’s most urgent problems: the digital and AI access gap.

The Rigor Behind Purpose-Driven Moves

During the interview, Adamaka pushed back on a common myth about transitioning into nonprofit work, that it’s an emotional or impulsive leap. For her, it was the opposite: a deliberate cost-benefit analysis, weighing what she’d built in corporate against the cost of not closing the gap she’d spent her career measuring.

Key highlights from the conversation include:

  • The Infrastructure of Confidence: Real access isn’t a laptop. It’s knowing you belong in the room. Self-eSTEM builds that through role models who look like their Innovators and curriculum that treats confidence as core, not extra.
  • Producers, Not Just Consumers: Self-eSTEM teaches Innovators and career-driven professionals to build and govern AI, not just use it.
  • The Future of Work Fund: Self-eSTEM’s plan to bring its curriculum to three new regions over the next three years.

“True leadership isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about having the conviction to define the right problem and the courage to just start the work.”
 — Adamaka Ajaelo

Driving a National Mandate

Adamaka notes that over 92% of future jobs will require some level of digital literacy, a signal, she says, of how urgent this work has become. She spent her career optimizing profit. Now she’s optimizing who gets to build the future. Self-eSTEM is taking this model beyond the Bay Area, building the same entry points into STEM for Innovators and career-driven professionals wherever the system has left them out.

 

Listen or Watch the Full Interview:

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