Deconstructing cultural barriers to girls’ education
In this alumni episode of the Imagine A World podcast, host Eli Cahan (2019 cohort) interviews Ayo Dada (2019 cohort), who imagines a world where education is accessible to everyone regardless of any aspect of their identity. Ayo shares his journey from Nigeria to Stanford—an unexpected path set in motion by a single email—and reflects on how discovering Carol Dweck’s research on growth mindset shaped his academic trajectory.
He discusses his early steps after studying psychology at the University of Lagos, his PhD research on psychologically wise interventions, and his current postdoctoral work focused on expanding opportunities for girls in underserved regions. Ayo also reflects on how the Knight-Hennessy Scholars community broadened his perspective, the skills he gained through the program, and the global experiences that continue to inform his commitment to education as a collaborative, empowering process.
Resources
Guest
Ayo Dada, from Lagos, Nigeria, is pursuing a PhD in psychology at Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences. At the University of Lagos, he received a bachelor’s degree in psychology, graduating as valedictorian and breaking a 54 year old academic record at the institution. Ayo aspires to find solutions to the problems of ethnic and gender prejudice and academic underachievement that are plaguing his homeland of Nigeria. He interned in security services at the Central Bank of Nigeria, and in business operations at Procter and Gamble. He was named one of Ten Outstanding Young Persons of Nigeria, and received special recognition for academic achievement by the National Assembly of Nigeria.
Imagine A World team
Imagine A World's theme music was composed and recorded by Taylor Goss (2021 cohort). The podcast was originally conceived and led by Briana Mullen (2020 cohort), Taylor Goss, and Willie Thompson (2022 cohort), along with Daniel Gajardo (2020 cohort) and Jordan Conger (2020 cohort).
Knight-Hennessy scholars represent a vast array of cultures, perspectives, and experiences. While we as an organization are committed to elevating their voices, the views expressed are those of the scholars, and not necessarily those of KHS.
Full transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated by machine and lightly edited by humans. They may contain errors.
Ayo Dada:
And I just thought I wanted to do something with this to improve outcomes for kids. So I sent her an email and I never knew she would respond so enthusiastically. And that response changed so many things for me. There was Carol Dweck, world-renowned psychologist responding so warmly to an email from me at the time, I just thought I had this, yeah, barely formed ideas and she thought they were worth exploring.
And I felt a deep sense of connection and in some sense, recognition from someone I deeply admired. And that just set me on a path to explore opportunities. And it was just such a full circle moment for me coming here and ending up working with her. And that was just like, "Yeah, I couldn't make that up. I couldn't write that."
Willie Thompson:
Welcome to the Alumni Edition of the Imagine A World Podcast from Knight-Hennessy Scholars. We are here to give you a glimpse of Knight-Hennessy Scholars who graduated and are making a difference in the world through their personal and professional endeavors. In each episode, we talk with KH alumni about the world they imagine and what they're doing to bring it to life. Today we'll hear from Ayo Dada, a member of the 2019 cohort. In this episode, Ayo shares his research on wise interventions, skills he's honed as a KH scholar, his love for yogurt-covered raisins, and so much more.
Eli Cahan:
All right, hello everybody. We are back with the Imagine A World Podcast Alumni Edition, aka the fun edition of the Imagine A World. I am here with one of my good friends and frankly, role models, Dr. Ayo Dada. Ayo, thanks for coming on the pod.
Ayo Dada:
Thanks, Eli. Like Eli mentioned, my name is Ayo Dada. I'm a 2019 cohort from Knight-Hennessy. Of course, completed, also obtained a degree here at Stanford in psychology, a PhD in psychology, and I imagine a world where education is accessible to everyone regardless of any aspect of their identity.
Eli Cahan:
I love that. Yeah, 2019 cohort, aka the 2019 cohort. Yeah, that's it. That's the cohort to be in. Ayo, can you tell me a little bit about your journey to Stanford, everything that led you to winding up here?
Ayo Dada:
It was quite a circuitous route for me because in 2015, as I recall, sometime in March 2015, I sent an email and I never knew that email would have huge ramifications for me. It was an email I put together after reading a Carol Dweck's book on mindsets and-
Eli Cahan:
Carol Dweck? Stanford psychologist?
Ayo Dada:
Yeah, Stanford Psychology, Carol Dweck. And I read this book and I thought, "These ideas are amazing, and they really can help students anywhere in the world, especially in Nigeria at the time." Because I was a senior at the University of Lagos, also studied in psychology at the time, and I just thought, "I wanted to do something with this to improve outcomes for kids." So I sent her an email and I never knew she would respond so enthusiastically. And that response changed so many things for me.
There was Carol Dweck, world-renowned psychologist, responding so warmly to an email from me at the time, I just thought I had this barely formed ideas and she thought they were worth exploring. And I felt a deep sense of connection and in some sense, recognition from someone I deeply admired, and that just set me on a path to explore opportunities. And it was just such a full circle moment for me coming here and ending up working with her. And that was just like, "Yeah, I couldn't make that up. I couldn't write that."
Eli Cahan:
Yeah, I think Dr. Carol Dweck's ideas are so in the mainstream that people may not even recognize that they emerged from her lab. For people who don't know who she is and the work she did, can you do a little table setting?
Ayo Dada:
Sure. So Dr. Carol Dweck at Stanford really popularized the growth mindset, which is based on the concept of an incremental theory of intelligence. So we go through the world and sometimes we describe ourselves as math people. So someone struggles with math and they say, "Oh, I'm not a math person." And sometimes these views that certain abilities are fixed and that where not these types of people limits what is possible for us. But Carol Dweck proposed the idea that learning can grow like a muscle.
Abilities can grow like a muscle. And if you have a growth mindset that encourages effort, that tries new strategies, and that seeks help from more knowledgeable others. It is possible to discover new heights of potential, and there is really no tell in how far you can reach. So the idea that because I'm not a math person, I cannot learn to do well in math at school is something that can be challenged and with consistent effort, you can grow. You may not see the games from one day to the next, but just like a muscle, you go to the gym, you don't just suddenly become buff overnight, it grows incrementally. And that is really the incremental theory of intelligence.
Eli Cahan:
The first comment that I made when I saw you is how buff you look. So clearly you're actualizing the theory. So you send this email off to Dr. Dweck, she responds with enthusiasm. What happens next?
Ayo Dada:
I just wonder of that path. Of course, I graduated at the time. This was, I graduated University of Lagos Psychology, and yeah, it was sort of expected of me to take a path to explore opportunities within my environment at the time. So most people who graduate from psychology, if they don't do grad school in Nigeria, they explore opportunities in HR like industrial and organizational psychology. They just do so many things, but I thought I had to try to find what really offered me an opportunity to use what I had learned.
So I doubled briefly in business. So I worked in consumer goods, I also worked in banking for a few years, but there was this call that kept the desire to give back, to use psychology to make a difference, never really waned. And yeah, when I heard about opportunities to pursue grad school, especially you know Knight-Hennessy and Stanford, I just thought, "Okay, now is the time." And I applied and I committed myself to the whole process, and it was just grateful that it all worked out really.
Eli Cahan:
Before we get into the particulars of your time at Stanford, I want to know what you're doing now and then maybe that'll help us set the stage for everything you did while you were here.
Ayo Dada:
One of my PhD advisers, so I was jointly advised by Greg Walton and Carol Dweck. So I will be working with him as a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford. And most of the work we want to do, or most of the work we plan to do is an extension of what I did in my PhD, which builds on these ideas from growth mindset, psychologically wise interventions to expand opportunity for girls in sort of underserved regions of the world. There are parts of the world where you just see almost six years differentials between the achievement of boys and men versus girls and women, and we want to use these ideas to close these gaps in access to opportunity and achievement in general. So that's what we're-
Eli Cahan:
Tell me a little bit more in the brass tacks, the specific details of what you did during your PhD time and how that's setting the stage for this work.
Ayo Dada:
Sure. So what I did for my PhD entailed building out a wise, so it's called a psychologically wise intervention because it's wise to people's contacts, people's realities, and it is sensitive to their situations, but also acknowledges their agency. A key principle is the idea of people's interpretations of events. And you can think about it this way.
You may say the glass is half full or the glass is half empty, but there is some water in the glass. And when we see people's situations, no matter what they're going through at the time, we're interested in the meanings that they can draw from those situations that make it more likely for them to thrive. So a key thing we believe is there is agency in everyone, and we are not coming to save people. We're not coming with some ideas that are foreign to them. Rather, we have to work with people to achieve the goals they want for themselves.
We're not giving them the goals, we're not crafting solutions that have nothing to do with them, and so it's quite intensive. It involves a lot of collaboration. We cannot view the people who need opportunities as just recipients of Salvation or some form of saving. We're not messiahs or anything like that. Rather, we try to understand what they have with them, what they have working for them, that is how these interventions are built.
For example, when we saw the problem, especially in parts of northern Nigeria where we saw that these educational gaps were quite steep, we had to ask ourselves, "Why does these problems occur and what exists within the culture for us to build a solution around?" And we realized that cultural ideas around legacy were quite strong for people. So people really, especially parents, parents really want their kids to leave a legacy or to extend their legacy, the parent, the child.
It's almost hard to distinguish where the parents stops and the child begins in the ways in which the parents see themselves. If we presented education of their children, especially their girls, to them as something that extended that legacy and connected it to culturally valued roles for girls and women in the culture. It's almost like we want to swim in the direction of the current and achieve the goals for the child well-being. So we're not coming in and saying, abolish the role of the girl in your culture.
No, we're saying education will enhance that role and help your girl or daughter or mother or wife be even better at what you believe is important to them. And so working with the culture to enhance educational prospects and potentials for people is something we have found to be powerfully impactful and people resonate with it strongly. So this is kind of a summary of what we built out, and it was a lot of work. There were times when I was on the road and I would even receive a message from Stanford saying, "Hey, you are traveling internationally and where you are right now is dangerous."
They're armed militias, and I would actually see the armed militias. And those moments, we would just run out of gas and just be hoping to find a gas station. And so there were moments where we just were like, oh, we're lucky. We made it out alive, and it was quite tense. But it also made us realize that providing opportunities or increasing people's access to opportunities is it's worth that risk sometimes because in the next generation, maybe there'll be fewer militias in the region because people went to school.
Eli Cahan:
Yeah. I think one thing that maybe people take for granted is certainly the opportunity of education, but I think also by and large, at least in this country, historically, education has not been seen as threatening. Of course, there's a much bigger conversation about that now and whether education is brainwashing children in one direction or the other that it is capable of ethnic cleansing or a modernization of ethnic or cultural mores, but it sounds like the work you are doing is really thinking hard about the ways in which education at its face could be threatening and trying to deconstruct those barriers.
Ayo Dada:
Yes, many times the threat is more perceived than real, but even a perceived threat has real implications for the ways in which people behave and because that's all it takes, people have to just perceive it as such. And what we realized was that when people saw that education could coexist quite well with the goals that they had for their kids, then the perceived threat, the opposition, the reactants, everything educational for their children seemed to reduce, and there was even cultural support from institutions like from the government, and even from community leaders for the ideas we're trying to introduce.
In order to find ways to bridge the divide between the perceived threat from education and the value education offers, people have to perceive that those who work with them are not doing it to them or for them, but they're doing it with them. So it's a posture of collaboration that has to be felt on both sides, and that is very effortful, and it takes some time to build that, but to come in and to tell people, "This is the way to go and this is how you should be." Will naturally elicit such opposition.
Eli Cahan:
What does any of that have to do with growth mindsets?
Ayo Dada:
Growth mindsets is built on this idea that people can be more, it's an incremental theory, and you are not born with the abilities you have or you identities don't constrain you to be only one thing. When people realize that my child can be more, it may not happen suddenly, it may not happen next year, but someday, somehow there can be more.
There is possibilities for this person to fulfill all of these multiple roles and do them well. And one role, success in one role does not detract in a person's capability in others. Then it creates a more expanded view of what is possible. And that in a sense shows that there is possibilities for growth, both in the perception of a parent and in the possibilities for the child.
Eli Cahan:
To use a bad metaphor, you can be someone who maybe naturally doesn't smell good, but if you get feedback on that and you listen to it, then maybe you can inculcate habits that allow you to smell good. But even then, you have to take at face value that smelling good is not threatening to your society or to your cultural identity. And so you sort of need both parts, both to see that this is an opportunity for growth and also that growing into that role would not derelict your social duties or otherwise leave you to be an enigma.
Ayo Dada:
That is a really nice metaphor to connect it to just something like smelling good is yeah, and that is very true because we have to respect a person's desire and also motivation to improve things about themselves, but on their own terms, and with a help. We cannot make people become things that are sustainable. And in fact, this leads me to say a little bit about how we think of things like nudges.
So the term nudge very popular from studies and behavioral economics and everything. And the idea of a nudge is things you can do to change some aspects of the environment that makes a certain behavior more likely. So it's like think of things like priming or all of that. It sort of falls in that same category of nudges, and I'm not very convinced that the idea of a nudge itself acknowledges people's internal agency because you're essentially saying that you can tweak some aspect of a person's environment and their behavior will lead down a predictable path, but what if the person had goals that you are not privy to?
In the work we do, we acknowledge people's goals, we acknowledge their agency, we acknowledge that you may see them in this context, but they have more expertise about the details of the context than we do as outsiders to their experience. And we need to learn and recruit that agency, that expertise they have and acknowledge their agency because it's only when we acknowledge their agency that we can just elicit the expertise they can give to make the solutions even better for their lives.
Eli Cahan:
Yeah, I think sustainability is an interesting way of thinking about it. It's like in my world, in the world of public health, you can convince somebody or trick them into buying a seltzer instead of a soda one day. But if they feel duped or otherwise, if drinking seltzer feels out of keeping with their identity or you haven't produced a sense of agency that they can in fact achieve the public health outcomes you want them to do, then it's a moot point. And maybe they'll even double down on soda next time. You're traveling the world, running out of gas and getting stranded with militias nearby. At the same time that you're doing this PhD body of work, you are going through the Knight-Hennessy curriculum. How did Knight-Hennessy complement your PhD work?
Ayo Dada:
I'm very grateful to Knight-Hennessy. In fact, some of my best experiences at Stanford happened with the members of my Knight-Hennessy community. Knight-Hennessy was one of the first places I stepped, especially the building. Denning House was one of the first places I visited when I arrived on campus in 2019. So there I was, just arrived, put my things away, and then I called up a scholar and said, "Hey, let's go over to Denning House." And I walked into Denning House, and I just felt like in some way, the space just gave me a sense of welcome.
And I just thought, "Yeah, I could be comfortable here." And the community as well, the people, the conversations, sometimes you need people who are not caught up in the jargon of your discipline to hear your ideas and just give you some broad feedback. And it just makes the things you discuss, the things you want to do a bit more robust and more easier to communicate to audiences that are not necessarily in your field. And that has been really valuable for me. Also, the programs as well.
I remember meeting, was it Erin Gruwell? Erin Gruwell, yeah. It was Erin Gruwell who built the group Freedom Riders. And I think there was a movie done about this where Hilary Swank played the role of Erin Gruwell and just meeting Erin Gruwell in person when she came to Denning House, the home of Knight-Hennessy was just very powerful for me. And one of the things I remember telling Erin was that my mom is a teacher. My mom is retired now, but she was a teacher, and my mom and I saw the movie Freedom Riders in Lagos, Nigeria like 10 years before I met Erin in person. And we both just wept through the movie because my mom is an educator.
I care about education myself and seeing the story of how kids from real difficult backgrounds internally cared about learning, they just wanted to be better students. And no one saw that until just one teacher could see it and care deeply to engage in deep personal sacrifices to give them a chance. And that for me, just I think those were some of the moments that just told me, or that just awoke in that desire in me to do something that lasted in terms of education, do something that would keep on giving to future generations in terms of education.
Eli Cahan:
So it sounds like one of the things that you learned in Knight-Hennessy was the ability to communicate and maybe communicate with colleagues of different disciplines. Can you say a little bit more about that?
Ayo Dada:
Okay. This reminds me of a trip we had. Yeah, I think Eli, you're also on the trip. It was really a very interesting time. So I started grad school at Stanford just when COVID was about to take over the world, having opportunities to go on trips and just talk about the work I do, the work we were doing was great. I've had people in the business school, Eli, you straddle many worlds yourself.
So just being able to share the ideas around the work one does. I remember Seth--Business School, but also has a background in education. And then we've had other people, I think Gloria is also, I think Gloria and I did a presentation at some point just trying to help people applying to grad school, and we worked together to do that. And yeah, there've just been so many different names and people and faces who we've tried to, that also reminds me, yeah, there was also Suhani at some point. Suhani is also-
Eli Cahan:
This is Seth Kolker and Gloria Chikaonda and Suhani Jalota.
Ayo Dada:
Yes. Yeah, so Suhani is someone I really respect. She has done all this great work. She's the founder of Myna Mahila Foundation, also focused on helping girls. And then we got talking about our mutual interests in expanding opportunities, especially for girls in regions of the world where opportunities for them are somewhat constrained from culture to even resources. So those are some of the really, there are quite a number of others, and yeah, if they come to mind, I'll just mention them.
Eli Cahan:
Yeah. If you had to pick one skill that you learned in Knight-Hennessy, or if you had to pick one adjective to characterize your time in Knight-Hennessy, what would that be?
Ayo Dada:
One thing I would say about Knight-Hennessy and what Knight-Hennessy helped me do or helped me achieve was to step into every room ready to discuss my ideas and ready to share the things I deeply care about because growing up in a context where once you did the job, there wasn't much that people expected. For example, doing well academically, didn't really require me to talk about the things I knew. I just had to be able to write them down growing up and then coming to Knight-Hennessy and realizing that in order to lead and to be convincing and persuasive as a leader, you need to be able to tell a story of your ideas because stories are more memorable, and stories are things people own.
So when you tell a story and people imagine what you said, the imagination that they themselves create is stickier than just a bunch of facts because they had to work with their own material in their own minds to build something. From what you said, it wasn't you giving it to them. You both worked together to create that image that sticks, that stays with them, and that is powerful. So it has encouraged me to, I go into meetings when I work with across Stanford, wherever I go, I just know that I have to embrace every opportunity to share something, to say something, to engage, to communicate things with people, and to be memorable for the ideas that I deeply value and to leave that impression with them in ways that last.
Eli Cahan:
I love that. In the spirit of storytelling, we're going to move into sort of our last segment here, which is I'm going to hit you with some popcorn questions. You alluded to one of the trips that you took. What was your favorite Knight-Hennessy trip that you took and why?
Ayo Dada:
So Knight-Hennessy has the global trips, and I was on the global trip to Norway, and I chose Norway because I knew for a fact that first, I didn't know anyone in Norway and choosing a destination in the world. I think Norway would be one of the few places that I had no context in which to choose or to decide that I would visit Norway. So I said, "Let's do it." In the spirit of growth and exploring and just doing things you wouldn't normally do, I said, "Norway, it is."
And going to Norway just made me realize that there is so much beauty in this world, and there's also so much possibility for cross-cultural and international learning. So I think one of the things that impressed me the most about that trip to Norway was Norway makes so much money from fossil fuel trade, but they're also invested in clean energy and trying to straddle both worlds.
And it was quite unique to realize that there were situations in which you pursued a path, but you also found ways to compromise with others that you necessarily agree with you. Yes, that might seem like, okay, just expediency. But I think there's a need for more compromises to be achieved in the world. There's the need for people to sit together and regardless of the persuasions they have in different directions, to find common ground and achieve the goals that help everyone thrive.
And I think Norway for me, just made me see that more clearly, but also the opportunities to interact with Knight-Hennessy scholars and to just see the immense beauty of the Theords, and it just made me see how great and large the world can be and how much value we can get from each other. Even when you interact with people that you knew for sure could never have visited the places you were born in, it expanded me in ways that I value till today.
Eli Cahan:
Yeah, you got to dry salted fish for the first time.
Ayo Dada:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Fish is one of my favorite sources of protein.
Eli Cahan:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know that fish. I was just in Norway. Anyway, strong flavors for sure in all the dimensions. Next question. As you think about all the speakers who you encountered through the King Global Leadership Series, is there one that stuck out to you, maybe besides Ambra?
Ayo Dada:
Yeah, shout out to John.
Eli Cahan:
Yeah.
Ayo Dada:
Yeah, so.
Eli Cahan:
John Hennessey.
Ayo Dada:
John Hennessey, yes. Yeah, I really liked, so there were aspects of the global leadership program where John Hennessey would run seminars and just offer us real life scenarios of things that had happened and his experience as a leader and how he had to navigate them. So these were pretty much cases that we had to think through together, and I love that because of how interactive that experience was, and I've always had a deep appreciation for all of the hats that John Hennessey has worn and still wears.
And then having him just show us what it takes to run huge organizations to decide on things with so many competing interests, to negotiate with people who you have a BATNA, which is a term in negotiation, your best alternative to negotiated agreement. And then you try to find a range just to achieve something, to get something from a conversation with them. And it just doesn't work because sometimes these things don't work, and there are so many variables that a leader has to confront and recognizing that it's not going to be just a stroll, and it's never easy.
The things that matter in life will not be easy, and just accepting that is something that was, I think it was quite a reality check for some of us, because we all came in here with this idealized notions of here's what we imagine in the world, and it's great to have that. But then there's also the question of the process and what the process entails and how it won't just happen as quickly as we want it to, but we have to stick to the plan even through that difficulty.
Eli Cahan:
Yeah, I love that. What is your favorite Denning House snack?
Ayo Dada:
I created a snack in my first three months at Denning House. So we had, I think yogurt covered raisins, and I got a slice of bread. I put the yogurt covered raisins on the bread, put another slice of bread, and then I put it in the microwave, and then just had it sit there for one minute. So it created this yogurt raisin sandwich that was just, yeah, it was quite, well, I enjoyed it, but it's generated quite a few comments from people in the room.
Eli Cahan:
Yeah, it sounds atrocious. Yeah, it sounds terrible. All right. As you know, there's a tradition, and by the way, we now, the yogurt raisins no longer exist. I wonder if that's because of people were so revolted by this snack. As you know, there's a tradition in Knight-Hennessey when you graduate to leave a book in the Denning House Library. What book did you leave and why?
Ayo Dada:
Yeah, so one of the books I brought to Denning House is a book written by my advisor, Greg Walton, and it's titled Ordinary Magic. So Ordinary Magic is a book that, and I'm sure that it's available on Amazon, and it's a pretty good book because it just puts together all the work from growth mindsets to these culturally sensitive interventions and programs, and it tells a story about everything. And so yeah, it's Ordinary Magic.
I read through it and I could just, it was very powerful in the way it portrayed these experiences, and it was just talking about research that had been done, but just in a story, in the form of a story. So yeah, I think I will even actually bring another copy because yeah, it's something I really want to encourage people to read.
Eli Cahan:
And you get 10% commission off the book, right? That's why you want everyone to read it.
Ayo Dada:
Well, I hope. I hope, but that would be a negotiation.
Eli Cahan:
Yeah. Just kidding. No conflicts of interest disclosed, just goodwill and belief in the science. Last question. If you had to pick one scholar from your cohort or otherwise in the community to get stranded with on a desert island, who would it be and why?
Ayo Dada:
Let's see. I think it would be Benj Wollant, because yeah, I heard of Ben's abilities in the wild, and I was like, I've seen him skill some very scary heights at Yosemite. And when I saw that, I was like, "Whoa, this guy will save us if we ever get into trouble."
Eli Cahan:
Maybe. Haven't you seen a picture of an island, though? There's only one tree on the island for him to scale.
Ayo Dada:
Yeah. Well, it's more about his awareness of just surviving in low resource landscapes, and I have a lot of respect for that because when I saw that, I was like, "No, there's no way I'm doing this." And he's quite recognized for that. Well, this is just to say Knight-Hennessy has people who do all kinds of really-
Eli Cahan:
Awesome talents.
Ayo Dada:
... Awesome things. Yes.
Eli Cahan:
Yeah. Well, it's a good thing. You like salted fish. I'm sure two of you would be eating a lot of it. Final question, what advice do you have for people who are considering applying to Knight-Hennessy?
Ayo Dada:
I think my advice is a little bit controversial, but I'll just say it anyway. Don't read the scholar profiles, and even if you read them, just know that when you meet the people in person, they're not as scary as their profiles. And I say this because I've met people who would read scholar profiles and feel, "Oh my God, this person is just unbelievably amazing."
Yes, they are amazing. But then when you read the profile and you feel this is so great, this cannot be me. It means that you might be inadvertently trivializing some amazing things you've done because they come easy to you, and then you read something else that someone else has done, and you just don't know the process. This may be something they may have been doing maybe since they were kids, and so it's a lot easier for them, but because it's something that you may not be able to do yet, you think, "Oh my gosh, this person is beyond, it would be so wild if they even accepted my request to connect on LinkedIn."
Something like that. It's just a way to, I'm just saying this to sort of, when I say demystify the profiles a little bit, and to realize that when I speak to people who want to apply to Knight-Hennessy and I ask them some questions, I always realize that they've done amazing things, but they didn't think those things were amazing because they've done them every day of their lives. So yeah, that's one thing I would say. Don't take the profiles too seriously.
Eli Cahan:
Yeah. I love that, said like a true educator. Believe in yourself. They're saying in Knight-Hennessy that this is not the end of a journey. It's not an achievement that you stick on your resume, but it's the beginning of something bigger. So point well taken. Ayo Dada, thank you so much for joining us on the Imagine A World Podcast, Alumni Edition.
Ayo Dada:
Thank you, Eli. It's been a pleasure.
Eli Cahan:
Thanks so much to our listeners for tuning in. We will see you next time. Take care. Bye.
Willie Thompson:
Thank you for joining us for this episode of Imagine A World, the alumni version where we hear from inspiring graduates of the Knight-Hennessy community, who are making significant contributions in their respective fields, challenging the status quo, and pushing the boundaries of what is possible as they imagine a world they want to see.
This podcast is sponsored by Knight-Hennessy Scholars at Stanford University, a multidisciplinary, multicultural graduate fellowship program providing scholars with financial support to pursue graduate studies at Stanford while helping equip them to be visionary, courageous, and collaborative leaders who address complex challenges facing the world. Please follow us on social media at Knight-Hennessy and visit our website at kh.stanford.edu to learn more about the program and our community.
