Olutosin Alabi G’25 Wins 3rd Annual Afropreneurship Competition
The Libraries’ hosted the third annual Afropreneurship Panel, Networking and Pitch competition in Bird Library on Feb. 9 in celebration of Black History Month.
The competition was organized by two students in the , Motolani Oladitan ’24 and Brandon Henry ’24, with support from other Blackstone LaunchPad student employees and founders.
Olutosin “Tosin” Alabi G’25, an MBA student in the , won first place in the 90-second pitch competition with her proposed health tech startup, DiabeTech Nexus, a sensor-detecting diabetes wound bandage.
Whitman undergraduate student Mariah Brown ’26 won second place with Dormbank, a proposed reseller of college residence hall items like appliances and small electronics. Third place winner Justin Diaz ’24, also a student in the Whitman School, is founder of Eco Bamboo Living, a company that would create tiny homes made of bamboo for more sustainable living.
Judges for the pitch competition also spoke to students during a panel discussion on being an innovator, entrepreneur and creative of color. Panelists/judges included:
- Brianna Howard G’21, founder of Faithful Works, which offers virtual assistant and grant consulting services to nonprofits, small business owners and startup;
- Derrell Smith ’10, retired NFL player turned chef and founder of a meatball company named Amazeballs, who has cooked on stages around the world and stars in his own TV show on Tastemade;
- Damaris “Koi” Munyua G’22, founder of the marketing agency Koi and Company, which specializes in copywriting, graphic and website design;
- Ana Catalina Rodriguez Botello, a diversity and social impact professional with a master’s degree in public and social Policy from Universitat Pompeu Fabra and a LEAD Certificate from Stanford University, currently serving as global social impact senior manager at Marsh McLennan;
- Phahsa Ras, co-founder of UMi, the world’s first “Conscious Attention Economy,” capitalizing on the impact of such emergent technologies as generative AI on jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities; and
- Kofi Addai, associate director of bias education and response in .
