During past Orientation weeks at Carnegie Mellon University, incoming students have the chance to meet and connect through activities like Playfair, House Wars and the Craig Street Crawl. As Awa Ndiaye got to know her new classmates during her first week at CMU, she recruited seven that were African or African-American and created Zodaj, a startup geared toward improving standards of living in Africa.
Two years later, three of the founding members of Zodaj — Ndiaye, Dominique Aruede, and Akwellé (Q) Quaye — are among the newly named Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship 2022 Innovation Scholars. The program, started in 2012 with funding from a grant from the McCune Foundation, cultivates an entrepreneurial mindset among undergraduate students over two years
Ndiaye, a double major in business administration and Chinese studies, came to CMU with an entrepreneurial drive. Originally from Senegal, both her parents worked for the United Nations, and her education was always formed around global studies.
As CEO of Zodaj, Ndiaye has worked on projects in education-technology, like a game-based app that teaches career readiness, English and math. Zodaj also works with agricultural-technology, helping farmers make sustainable decisions that increase yield. Zodaj also has a non-profit branch.
While Zodaj uses Senegal as the pilot country for all of its programs, Ndiaye has big plans for the startup.
"I hope to become a multinational company," Ndiaye said. "I really want to impact the developing world in general. While our focus is in Africa, I do think a lot of the solutions we create can be scaled beyond the African continent to impact people's lives."
Q Quaye, the Head of Operations for the Zodaj Foundation and a junior majoring in statistics, points out that while the first two years of working on the startup were rewarding, it was challenging to independently figure out how best to build Zodaj.
"I feel like being Innovation Scholars will really help us," Quaye said. "This is a chance to broaden our network and find new people to learn and grow from. These new opportunities will be really beneficial as a company."