Dream Big. Hustle Hard: Interview with Abadesi Osunsade.

Abadesi Osunsade was born in Washington DC and grew up in East Africa, before moving to the UK to complete secondary school. She is now the founder of Hustle Crew — a career advancement community for the underrepresented in tech, and NonTechTech — a mentorship community for non-technical techies, as well as author of careers advice book Dream Big. Hustle Hard. Abadesi also works on growth at Product Hunt / AngelList.

Previously, Abadesi was team leader in growth-oriented roles at Amazon, HotelTonight and Groupon — where she joined as one of the first Partner Managers and helped scale the department x 5 in her first eight months. Here’s her story:

Newnham: What is your background? What were you like growing up and how would your friends and family have described you?
Osunsade: My father is Nigerian and met my mother in her hometown in the Philippines in the 70s. Growing up I was precocious, bright and talkative. As soon as I knew what school was I desperately wanted to go. Every morning as a small child I became jealous as I watched my older brother and sister go to school while I stayed home with the nanny watching Sesame Street. To feed my growing curiosity and thirst for knowledge I would invent games and try to teach myself how to read the longest books I could find on our bookshelf to show my siblings that I was smart…