It’s a Chimed Life: Meet Ahmed Mamadoul
Growing up, Ahmed Mamadoul never considered design to be a viable career. “Even though I was always designing in some way or another — scrapping things on paper at my dad’s architecture studio or giving feedback and making suggestions (mostly, uninvited) on his building designs — I just didn’t know that any of that was design at the time.”
Ahmed is from Niger, in West Africa, where he was raised in a tight-knit community along with his 3 siblings. His mom, a nutritionist for the UN, and dad, a former architect, had a huge influence on his work ethic. At 18, Ahmed moved to the U.S. alone to attend college — a complete culture change and departure from his home country and family. It was like starting from scratch. He had to learn to speak English — he was raised speaking French — before beginning college.
“What seemed like a pretty aggressive 360 turned out to be a huge blessing for me,” he says. “Having a fresh start like that, I got to become who I wanted to be instead of what my environment predetermined me to be. I felt lucky to get that new start and embark on the journey of discovering myself and the right path for me.”
The mentor who changed the course of Ahmed’s career
While studying English, Ahmed decided to take a graphic design course out of curiosity. There, he met a professor who became one of his career mentors. “I learned a ton about design in that class, but I also built my confidence — I had never even considered design a career option, and that course gave me the space to consider it,” he says. He also looked up to the professor, seeing an example of what a design career might look like.
“That’s where my design journey really began,” Ahmed says. “I switched to design as a major and never looked back.”
Once immersed in design, Ahmed discovered what he loves about it: problem-solving. “Even as a kid, I loved solving puzzles and building things that people would react to. “The minute I realized what it was, I understood why I was so drawn to it.”
A unique lens: The viability of a design career and bringing lessons home
Though Ahmed’s family had their fair share of skepticism about him pursuing a successful design career, his mother still showed him a lot of support. “I’m from a developing country with a lot of poverty; our mindset is different there,” he says. “When I saw successful designers and understood how they solve interesting and important problems, I knew I’d found the career I belonged in.”
Ahmed’s upbringing and cultural background have contributed a lot of inspiration and perspective to his work in many ways. He’s constantly thinking about his work in the context of where he’s from and whether there are any valuable insights he can bring back to his home country and to improve people’s lives. “I have a grand vision of someday bringing all of my learnings home to Niger to help build businesses that empower people within those communities. In my day-to-day life, I always consider how the products I’m designing might work there,” he says.
What’s more, Ahmed believes he’s in a unique position to bridge the gap between his work here in the U.S. and how things work back home in West Africa. “That’s why I was initially drawn to working in finance while at Yahoo,” he says. “Financial health is a critical problem in Africa, and working in fintech sparked my curiosity. There are a lot of big problems I’d like to understand how to approach and solve — both for the businesses I serve here in the U.S. and those in my community back home.”
Connecting with Chime’s mission
When Ahmed heard about Chime, he was struck by our mission to serve the everyday people in America — a model that’s not as common across the fintech space. “In Africa, we see many U.S. business models being copied without paying attention to the nuances in the audience between here and there,” he says. “Chime’s mission exposed several parallels with Africa that I connected with — it made sense how something like Chime’s mission could be applied back home, where even those considered upper middle class live paycheck to paycheck.”
The more he learned about Chime, the more Ahmed felt it was the right place to continue his learning journey and make an impact, contributing to a meaningful product with his unique experience and background. “When I first moved to America, Chime was an app I and many people like me needed — that alone is a huge connection I feel to the product and its impact,” he says.
As a Product Designer at Chime, Ahmed is part of the Move Money team, which helps members move money in and out of Chime. “I’m learning a ton about the rules of handling money as a business, our members’ needs, and how to make moving money a seamless experience for them,” he says. “It’s a great challenge to take such a complex space and simplify it into a service that navigates regulations, engineering requirements, and other limitations to provide a service that solves our member’s needs.”
And that’s where Ahmed always focuses his attention: on our members. “I’m so proud of our member obsession and how embedded it is in Chime’s culture,” he says. “We continue to build products that put our members first, that solve a problem for them, and it’s hugely inspiring that we’ve maintained that laser focus as we’ve grown.”
Being proactive and moving into the future
Looking to the future, Ahmed is committed to continuing to learn and grow and tying his experience in Silicon Valley back to his home country of Niger. “One thing I’ve learned in my career is the value of being proactive,” he says. “I believe it’s better to think about decisions ahead of time, be introspective and proactive, and design your life in an intentional way,” he says.
And for a few words of advice to those looking to grow in their careers: “Seek out mentorship and get input from others. We can easily get caught up in our own assumptions and undervalue the opinions of others when really, our fellow humans are the best resources we have to move forward.”
