For some people, and I would say for me to an extent, immigrating meant just leaving Nigeria with no clear idea if we would ever go back. Not for Eyitayo Ogunmola, founder of Utiva, a technology talent development startup.
Eyitayo moved to the United States as an Atlas Corps fellow in 2015. While doing research on tech talent development, discovered there was a need to build a talent development edtech business that could export or outsource African engineers, developers, and similar, globally.
And so Utiva was born in 2018. But as he says on LinkedIn, "I thought this was first a joke. I made so many terrible startup mistakes. Please don't try this at home."
Utiva has gone on to upskill 110K people from 19 African countries and helped over 500 companies source African tech talent.
Eyitayo joined me to talk about the concept of reverse immigration and seeing immigrating as a chance to learn and then bring that knowledge back home. He also shared:
His go-to playbook for settling into a new country
Getting intimidated by the accent at his first conference
The power and beauty of sharing the African perspective
Adjusting to life in the United States after moving, and more.
Here’s my takeaway for you: You don’t immigrate with cash. You immigrate with a skill.
I agree that I am stripping away some nuance there as cash-flow is an advantage in many ways. But this probably applies more to young folks looking to immigrate.
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