MGD Fellowship Interview: Allie Joy
Meta Gamma Delta DAO invests in and empowers women-led Web3 projects. One of their activities is offering weekly speaker sessions by women leading their specialty in the crypto industry. Baddies in Tech is a career development platform and community to ensure black and brown women are seen and represented in the tech industry.
MGD recently caught up with Allie Joy Tsahey, founder and CEO of Baddies in Tech, and got her insights about her experience as a woman of color in tech and her journey into Web3.
Who is SHE?
Allie Joy is a Ghanaian-American entrepreneur, founder, and CEO of Baddies in Tech. This community-based platform seeks to empower the careers of black and brown women in tech through education and networking. She is also a career strategist, and expert in the DEI Talent Acquisition space (See her LinkedIn).
In the Beginning
Allie started her tech career in 2018 when she graduated from Syracuse University in New York, with a biology degree and a neuroscience concentration. Her initial goal was to become a doctor, but she realized her true calling was working in health tech.
Upon graduation, Allie’s first job found her working at a health tech company in which she was using AI in the emergency room. She started working there as an implementation consultant and traveled around the country helping doctors set up the technology.
I’m a big proponent of looking around you and seeing what you can do with the skills that you have now and the experience that you have now. And take a step toward that that would bring you closer to you know what you want to do.
Her Founder Journey
When Allie was working at her tech job, she realized in healthcare and tech workspaces had little representation of black and brown women. Most times she was “the only black woman” at her work. At 22, she decided to found Badies in Tech in an effort to connect with other black and brown women in the tech industry.
After 9 months Allie quit her job and got into a tech entrepreneurship program in Ghana called MEST, Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology. Not something she recommends but it was a risk she took at the time. She joined the program which included people from Nigeria, South Africa, the Republic of Congo, and Kenya working on projects that encouraged the advancement of the African tech industry.
The program was a significant personal growth experience as well as her crash course in tech development. She learned everything about design, pain point evaluation, product design, market research, and the different roles important to building successful products. At the time she built three different products and in 2021 she returned to the U.S. with the idea of boosting her growing community of Baddies in Tech.
Baddies is a career development ecosystem that creates spaces that empower women of color in tech around the world to start and advance fulfilling careers in the tech industry while also helping tech companies hire and retain the talent of black and brown women.
We’re building Baddies in Tech as a career development ecosystem that’s helping women of color break into and belong in technology. We want our community members to participate, co-create, and co-run the community with us. Because we have this vision of 10% of black women by 2030. We want it right now. The percentage of women of color in technical roles is 4%, globally, so we want to double that by 2030. It’s a really big goal, which is why we want to build a network of people who are working toward this.
Transitioning into Web3
Allie started investing in crypto in 2017, but her real intro into blockchain was in March 2022 when an NFT project reached out to her. It was a clothing brand that was looking for a partnership for their project. Allie decided to partner with them, and this was her gate to the rabbit hole, and started studying Web3 in depth.
From March to May, I started learning about web3 and things like that. I moved to New York City in June. Over the summer, I attended so many tech conferences, from lweb2, and then also web3 conferences. (MGD member) Lotus Leaf introduced me to so many people in the web space, she introduced me to MGD itself, and so many other people. And I’ve just been on my own learning journey.
Many thanks to Allie for sharing her journey in tech as a founder and sharing insights from her professional journey. Remember that you can check MGD if you want to start your own journey through Web3 and be part of an awesome DAO. Learn more at our Discord or visit https://metagammadelta.com/
