It’s a Chimed Life: Celebrating Black History Month with Ayanga Okpokowuruk
In celebration of Black History Month, we sat down with several members of AfroChime to learn about their career experiences and what Black history means to them. AfroChime is the Chime Resource Group (CRG) that nurtures the Black community at Chime and educates all Chimers about the Black experience.
Today, we’d like to introduce Ayanga Okpokowuruk, a Senior Software Engineer on the Decision Platform team. In our conversation, we learned about his decision to study computer science, his unexpected NFL career, his role at Chime, and what Black history means to him.
Late library nights and early mornings on the field
Going to college, Ayanga knew he wanted to get into engineering. “My dad is an engineer and was always building stuff, whether it was just LEGOs or random home improvement projects, so I became naturally curious about it,” he says. When he was recruited to play football coming out of high school, he prioritized academics in his choice of school while still playing football.
He landed on Duke University, and when he arrived, quickly realized how hard it was to juggle football and engineering. “I literally had no time for anything else,” he remembers. At the time, Duke’s Computer Science program was outside of its engineering school, in the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, and it seemed to offer a more manageable course load. So he made the switch — but quickly learned it was just as hard. “I definitely spent a lot of late nights in the library that bled into early morning practices!” he says.
Despite his heavy workload, Ayanga’s football skills continued to shine through college. He was noticed by some scouts, and, after the draft in his graduating year, he was signed as a free agent with the New York Giants. “I decided to see how far I could go, which started my NFL career,” he says.
Leaving the NFL to pursue his professional career
After a couple of years playing for the Giants, Ayanga decided to interview with a company in Chicago. At the same time, he received an offer to join a football team in Arizona — he had to decide whether to keep playing football or start his professional career. “I decided to take the leap of faith and jump into a role as a software developer,” he says.
For Ayanga, programming is fun because it involves endless problem-solving and decoding puzzles. “I almost think of software development as a form of art, and myself as an artist,” he says. “If I have an idea, I can bring it to life by writing code and designing programs, and then I can watch people use it and see its impact.”
“I almost think of software development as a form of art, and myself as an artist. If I have an idea, I can bring it to life by writing code and designing programs, and then I can watch people use it and see its impact.”
In his role at Chime, Ayanga is part of the Decision Platform team, which acts as Chime’s internal brain, helping engineers and non-engineers write policies that make real-time decisions behind the scenes about Chime’s members’ use of our products. “Our platform has many uses such as helping block fraudsters from taking over members’ accounts or detecting whether a member is actually making a transaction. We can see, daily, that we’re protecting members from attacks and keeping their money safe,” he says.
“Our work is so important because there are a lot of people who trust us — our members — and there are a lot of people who are trying to take advantage of that trust — fraudulent actors,” he explains. “Our goal is to create the platforms, products, and services that people feel safe using — to give our members a reason to trust Chime.”
Reflecting on Black History Month
To Ayanga, there are three things about Black History Month that resonate with him: relatability, resilience, and creativity. “Relatability, because it’s important to learn about and see that people who accomplished great feats in the past were just like you,” he explains. For him, there’s empowerment in making history more relatable. If history can show you that someone did something before you, you can do it, too.
“It’s about resilience because Black history helps us understand the odds that were overcome in insurmountable situations,” he says. “It’s inspiring to think about the amount of resilience it took those before us to achieve what they did.”
Lastly, this month — and every month of the year — is about creativity. For Ayanga, who believes that everything we (humans) come up with is a derivation of something that we’ve already seen or learned, Black history is full of inspiration. “People will put their own spin on things, but it’s all inspired by something that came before them,” he says. “It’s clear that so much creative genius has emerged from the Black community and inspired much of the art and music we see today.”
In celebration of Black History Month, Chimers are grounding themselves in the theme of “For Us, By Us,” focusing on how important Black entrepreneurship and community building are at work, at home, and out in the world. When it comes to the idea of “For Us, By Us,” the saying inspires confidence in Ayanga. “For Us, By Us clearly states that whatever we’re creating isn’t being made for anyone else,” he says. “It’s unapologetically saying that you’re creating something for yourself because you think it’s valuable, beautiful, or needed in this world. When something is made for us, by us, it doesn’t matter if anyone but the creators appreciate it.”
This approach — of creating for us, by us — creates a level of authenticity that’s hard to fake. “Staying true to yourself when you’re creating something — whether it’s software, music, art, performance, or fashion — will make your end product more attractive because there’s power in creating something that reflects you and nobody else.”
“Staying true to yourself when you’re creating something — whether it’s software, music, art, performance, or fashion — will make your end product more attractive because there’s power in creating something that reflects you and nobody else.”
