[Drumming]
MIT is a very fun place to be at.
[Drumming]
I am Yoruba.
That's the tribe in Nigeria that I'm from.
And our language is very rhythmic.
It's very tonal.
And here there's a group called Rambax
It's a Senegalese drum ensemble.
It's an education in the type of culture that you find
in very many places on the continent.
I took it as a class and just the rhythms and the beats
and the presence of everybody learning the same bax together...
Nobody drums in isolation.
Right?
You're always looking at the person beside you because you're trying to stay in rhythm.
And I saw this also in lab projects with other peers.
There's this sense that you check in with everybody around you as a community,
as a team, and make sure that you're all moving towards your goal together.
My name is Ayomikun Ayodeji.
My friends call me Ayo.
I grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, and right now I'm a senior at MIT
studying chemical engineering and business management.
[BACKGROUND MUSIC]
Lagos, Nigeria
it's a fun place to be.
But we've had an issue with unreliable electricity
for as long as I can remember.
Growing up, I would be trying to study and the power would just cut out.
And that was where the idea of energy became a very strong concept in my mind.
So I wanted to bridge gaps in terms of electricity access,
not just across the country, but across the continent.
[BACKGROUND MUSIC]
And so I looked at engineering as a way to get into that field.
And then chemical engineering in particular.
Chemical engineering as a field is pretty broad.
So we start with taking classes in fluid mechanics and thermodynamics.
And then they sort of build up on that with kinetics and transport.
And this sort of culminates into this large final lab class
known as 10.2x taking a problem statement from scratch
to finish taking all the data, analyzing it,
presenting at each stage, and then writing a detailed final report.
I'm doing chemical engineering
with a concentration in process data analytics.
And what this has allowed me to do is actually
use machine learning and artificial intelligence
to make inferences from a lot of data that has been generated.
So anything like, OK, How should we design this well
or this particular part of the factory so that we are generating
as much electricity generating and as much throughput as possible?
But then I also recognize that sometimes there is going to be a disconnect
between the engineer in the field
and the person in the office that's making the business decisions.
And that's what led me to want to seek a double major with management.
Sloan is known to be very MBA heavy.
And so being an undergrad there can sometimes feel intimidating,
but then they're really fun to talk to.
The MBA's have experiences and have knowledge that they don't mind sharing.
And the classes I take there are also very team oriented
on finance, organizational structure, venture capital,
competitive strategy, operations. Taking those sort of big business ideas
and being able to boil it down into the portions of business
that I see myself fitting in, particularly
when I'm in energy, has been fun.
It's wild sort of thinking about the last four years. There's been a lot of growth,
a lot of learning, a lot of challenges, failures, but also successes.
MIT for me was was a dream since I was a little kid.
But the closer I got to when I had to leave home,
the more I realized that I was going to be surrounded by people
I didn't know and by a culture that I wasn't familiar with.
So I received an email from a senior from the African Students Association,
and he's like, "Hey, Ayo, we're super excited that you're going to come to MIT
the whole community is ready to welcome you,
I'm going to be here to pick you up at the airport."
And so there was just this sense of being welcomed, being received.
The Africans Association gave me a home away from home.
And since then, I've welcomed more classes of
African International students, and not just within the African community.
I also worked as an international orientation mentor.
And I loved it.
I loved being the person at the airport, picking up incoming students,
taking them to campus, showing them around,
making sure that they settled in and just being a resource
The people I've met here,
they defined my MIT experience, and to be able to walk
on that podium to receive my degree alongside
everyone that I have struggled and succeeded with is a blessing.
[CHEERING AND LAUGHING]