Investing In Other People To Make Change

I worked on Capitol Hill for five years after I finished my undergraduate degree, figuring out if I wanted to be in politics. My experience taught me that I would need to continue my education, but I had specific requirements. As a first-generation college student—I’m from Ghana originally—I was interested in education, but I wanted business analytics skills too. 

There didn’t seem to be any programs that offered both, and then I discovered the Education Entrepreneurship M.S.Ed. I was curious about how entrepreneurship worked and wanted to learn about how to decipher a revenue stream, product market fit, new solutions in higher education, and especially college affordability. The Ed Ent program wasn’t just theory, either. What drew me to Penn was knowing that from the start I was going to work on my own educational problem—and eventually walk away with a tangible product.

One piece of information can make a wealth of difference. I want to democratize access to information for college planning and to find the tools that help. To that end, I created Adisa Advising while at Penn. In high school, my parents were clueless when it came time to apply to colleges. During college, I worked four jobs just to afford my undergrad degree. There are so many smart and talented people who could excel in college, but they aren’t getting the information they need in order to pay for it. Adisa was created to fill that information gap for all types of parents—newly immigrated, international, or folks just looking for clarity. 

The best part of the program at Penn was my cohort. They’re some of my best friends now, and a powerful network. Many of us were mid-level career students—interested in creating charter schools, inventing educational technology products, and school teachers. The ROI of this program was definitely the people I met.