Transcripts are edited for readability and clarity.

Nigel Prentice: Hello, my name is Nigel Prentice, and I am a Design Director at IBM. And I would like to welcome you to the It’s about time podcast. The podcast is coming from the Racial Equity in Design work at IBM.

Nigel Prentice: I always like to start with a little bit of wisdom that comes to us from those who have come before us, and today I’ve got a couple of thoughts for you. “In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute,” that comes from Thurgood Marshall.

Nigel Prentice: And secondly, “I have learned over the years that knowing what must be done does away with the fear,” that’s Rosa Parks. Keep those thoughts in mind as we talk to my guest today.

Nigel Prentice: Listen, I may have a few more years in the tech industry than him, a few more gray hairs than him, but I look to him for inspiration. Someone who I met as an intern here at IBM and quickly became chief of staff of our GM of Design, Phil Gilbert, and is now an actual startup founder.

Nigel Prentice: In fact, I’ve got none other than Mbiyimoh [pronounced BEE-moe] Ghogomu with me today. How you doing, man?

Mbiyimoh Man, I’m doing great. Thank you for the incredibly generous intro. Hopefully, I can live up to that.

Nigel Prentice: Listen, man, you’re one of the smartest, most clever, and impactful —what I would call content designers, content strategists, that I’ve ever had the pledge of working with. And right now, you’re doing that, I’m sure a little bit, but more broadly, you’re running a startup. So, tell us what it is you’re doing now.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Yeah, so, today, my sort of current role is co-founder and CEO of an insane aftermarket for, you know, let’s call ’em some of the more rare and exclusive sneakers out there.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, for all my sneakerheads, you know, about StockX and GOAT, it’s a place that you can go to buy sneakers in the secondary market. So basically, sneakers you can’t buy at retail or just aren’t available anywhere else. And what we’ve done is built a platform that’s focused exclusively on barter-based trading.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, you can think about it largely as like playing fantasy sports with your sneaker collection, except it’s real. If you agree to a trade with somebody else on our platform, we facilitate the whole transaction. Both parties ship to us. We make sure the shoes are real. We make sure the quality is as described. Then if everything checks out, we forward the shoes onto their new owners.

Nigel Prentice: That’s cool. That’s really, really dope. So, listen, like I always do, I wanna get a little bit into your background. Could you tell us a little bit about where you’re from and eventually how you ended up at IBM?

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Yeah, yeah. So, the story starts in West Africa in Cameroon. I was born in Cameroon, youngest of five. My dad, born and raised in Cameroon, came to the states for college. Met my mom, who is — I like to describe her as a crazy White lady from the Midwest who, you know, was willing to not only marry this African man but move back to Africa with him, where they lived for a dozen years before moving back to the U.S.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, I was born over there, but we moved to the U.S. When I was still a baby. I was like two and a half when we moved. Lived in Chicago for a couple years, where my maternal grandparents are, and then moved to Houston and basically grew up for the most part in Houston. So, third grade on was holding it down in the “H” and learning about all things chopped and screwed as well as heat and humidity.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: But yeah, I mean, growing up — the way that I typically summarize it is I was kind of like a —you know, a nerd athlete. Having an African father— and I think really any child of immigrants will know this story. There’s an incredibly high bar and expectation for academic achievement. That was always the foundation of anything.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, grades aren’t good; basically, nothing else can shake. Fortunately, I was good enough at school to convince my parents to allow me to partake in sports as well. And, you know, basically ended up being good enough at basketball to play at the next level. So, I played two years of college basketball at Dartmouth.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: That’s a whole longer story, but long story short, you know, the program had a lot of issues. There was a lot of coaching turnovers right when I got there. And after my sophomore year, you know, I really just had this moment of reflection where I — I try to constantly be, you know, intentionally introspective with myself.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: And the question I asked myself was, okay, you’re clearly not enjoying doing this. Why are you still doing it? And the only answer I could come up with was momentum, which I think is never a good reason to do anything. So, you know, I made the tough decision to say, okay, I’m going to stop doing this thing that’s been sort of foundational to — you know, who I am as a person since I was 11, 12 years old. And so, I actually left Dartmouth as well when I decided to leave the team, went back to Houston, and just worked for two years. You know, when you go down those paths of introspection, you tend to learn a lot about yourself.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, after I realized I didn’t want to play basketball anymore, the next realization was I have no idea what I want to get outta my college experience. That was also running on momentum. And basically, I was optimizing for what is going to be easy to do alongside being an athlete. So once the athlete piece was outta the picture, I was like, man, you know, I really need to take some time to decide what I want to get outta this experience.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: And that’s really what I did when I was in Houston. And, you know, I think that the biggest thing that happened during that time was I was trying to supplement the kind of intellectual stimulation that I was getting from school previously by just doing a bunch of kind of self-directed research, exploration, learning.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: And I had an epiphany early into that, where I was like, man, I’m learning about all these amazing things like robotics, AI, gene editing, and why aren’t more people interested in — in consuming this information. And the only answer I could come up with is because it’s not presented for the average person. It’s presented for people who already have, you know, baseline level of knowledge in those areas.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, that was really the thought that inspired the news blog that I created with my good childhood friend, Dylan, who I grew up with, called TheHigherLearning.com. We basically just started writing, you know, short, highly consumable — explain like I’m five, type of style articles about these crazy concepts.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, it’s like, you might know nothing about gene editing, but you can come read our article on gene editing and leave feeling smarter instead of feeling stupid.

Nigel Prentice: At this point, before starting that blog, did you already consider yourself a writer?

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Yeah, that’s a good question. I don’t think I explicitly thought of myself as a writer, but I always knew that I was very good at writing.

Nigel Prentice: Gotcha.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, I think it was more a skill I took for granted, and you know, when I describe that skillset and kind of, you know, maybe I’m skipping ahead, but like sort of what helped enable so much of the stuff I got to experience at IBM, what I say is like writing is the secondary skill.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: The primary skill — well, starts with a foundation of curiosity, but then the primary skill is being able to dive into complex things and then zoom out, and sort of say, okay, in the simplest possible terms or the simplest possible mental model here is what that thing is. So being able to go read a super technical article, but then go talk to, you know, my mom, who knows nothing about tech, or my little nephew, who’s only seven or eight years old, and explain that stuff in a way that makes sense to them, but is still, you know, accurate to the sort of technical foundation. That, to me, is the skill. So, I think, I thought of myself more as that than as a writer, but as I got deeper into that world, I mean, I think I realized — okay, in many ways, what I’m sort of doing is journalism.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, when I went to UT [The University of Texas at Austin], I pursued a degree in journalism in addition to my degree in sociology, which is where I started at Dartmouth.

Nigel Prentice: Gotcha. Gotcha. So going back just for a second, Dartmouth is one of our Ivy League institutions. What was it like? What years were you there? I’m just trying to get a sense of where the world was.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Yeah. I was there from 2009 until 2011.

Nigel Prentice: So, that was a very interesting time. We’ve got, you know, national elections. We’ve got, you know, President Obama. Talk a little bit about what that world was like. Who you were coming Cameroon, Houston, then Ivy League, being multi-ethnic. What was that like?

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Yeah, it was — it was different. I mean, I think the biggest thing that was sort of a culture shock is I grew up in Houston, like a large metropolitan area, and Dartmouth is kind of in the middle of nowhere in New Hampshire. So, I think that was — that was the first thing like, oh, I gotta drive an hour and a half to find a Black or Puerto Rican barber who can do a good fade. We’re gonna have to figure this out. Somebody on campus has to be okay with the clippers here. You know, I think one of the reasons I picked Dartmouth is because out of all of the Ivy Leagues, I felt like it was the one where people were sort of the least concerned with kind of curating their public persona.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Like if you did a poll of sort of name recognition of all the Ivy League, Dartmouth is probably towards the bottom. And so, I think, you know, you have a lot of people who are very big on wanting to be known as like, oh, I’m a Harvard grad or Yale grad. Dartmouth is still good. It’s not to say that there’s not some name recognition in that, but I think the folks there are a little bit more interested in, you know, just kind of exploring themselves and like getting to know themselves in the world a little bit better while they’re there.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, there was a lot of really interesting people. It was actually relatively diverse. There’s a huge Native American population at Dartmouth cuz it actually started as a school specifically for Native Americans. Like Dartmouth is actually older than the U.S., and it started as essentially a Native American school.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, it still has, I think, more Native American students than all of the other Ivy Leagues combined or something like that. So, it was certainly interesting. I think the other side of it, though, is, you know, there’s always a really interesting aspect of people who are, let’s call it intellectually progressive, but at the same time, just haven’t been exposed to a lot of the real world.

Nigel Prentice: Sure.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: There’s a lot of that at Dartmouth. Yeah, where it’s like you have, you know, as far as I can tell, the best intentions in mind, and you are trying to think about these things in equitable and progressive ways. However, you also have only known like two Black people in your entire life. And they were probably incredibly wealthy Black people who were also sending their kids to prep schools in the Northeast that cost, you know, a hundred grand a year when you’re in high school.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, I think that was the other thing that was interesting for me was sort of being like, okay, again, we share sort of a similar intellectual foundation, but we have such a different life experience, and that just can create some interesting situations.

Nigel Prentice: I bet, I bet. I think that’s an important point you made; it wasn’t the driving force of that story, but this concept of allyship. In Racial Equity and Design at IBM, we don’t use the word “ally;” we use the word second pillar.

Nigel Prentice: And so, the first pillar is those of us who have the lived experience of being a minority and especially being Black in the United States, and what are the implications of that background in our profession. And we have a lot of people that are down for the cause that don’t have the same life experiences we do. And that’s okay. They are, however, hiring managers, executives, senior executives, their finance team, our HR team, all the influences of the culture. What people call a corporate culture, hiring practices, firing practices, promotion practices, right? So, we’re trying to think critically about this idea of culture that affects Black folks in the design profession.

Nigel Prentice: And a lot of times, it has to do with those that you just described. Down for the cause, ready to work, but they don’t have innate or built-in understanding from experience of what you just said — trying to find somebody’s who nice with the clippers on campus or trying to find somebody who understands your jokes about Friday, the movie, or these things about Black culture that tend to — and by the way, being Black is not a monolith. So, it’s not even true that all Black folks share the same inside jokes or just jokes. It’s a complexity that’s interesting. You know, one of the things that we’ve tried to get at is that the complexity is to be embraced, and it’s in that embracing of the complexity of the racial dynamic that I think we can drive more empathy.

Nigel Prentice: That actually brings me to the next part of the story. So, you’re back in Houston; you started writing. Pick us up from there. Where did you go realizing that this talent you had, while it wasn’t the driving force for your career, it’s now something that’s getting some momentum?

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, The Higher Learning was legitimately started as a passion project. I think if I look back on my biggest regret, it’s that we didn’t monetize it fast enough. We didn’t monetize it until we had a post go insanely viral. And I was like, wow, we just had 5 million people come to our website over the past three days, and we didn’t make any money off of that. That’s a huge miss. So, I think it was, to a certain extent, also kind of my first foray into entrepreneurship and business. But it was driven much more from the sort of passion for wanting to like educate and put people on game, I think more than anything. and then the business aspect of it kind of came in secondary.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: But yeah, you know, it grew, and it became like pretty successful for, you know, me and one other person kind of doing all of the work. And so, when I went to UT, you know, I think I just basically was like, this is a skill that clearly, I am pretty good at, let me actually sort of hone that skill and hone it towards a specific profession that values it in journalism.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Again, I think the kind of core motivation for me was how do I help inform more people on the things that I think are important for them to know? And journalism seemed like a pretty natural route for that. So, when I graduated UT, I had degrees in sociology because the other thing about me is I’m just super fascinated by people in human behavior. And I think the additional layer of, and how does that change when people are in groups? Is like maybe the most fascinating thing about people in general. But yeah, I was like, okay, so I’ve got the sociology degree. That’s only gonna be useful if I want to be a professor. But I have this journalism degree, like, let me look for opportunities to be, you know, an entry-level journalist.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: I was applying to online publications, like local newspapers, bigger publications, like New York Times and the Washington Post, and it was at that time that, you know, one of my good friends, Colin Vaughn, also, an IBM designer hit me up and he was like, hey, so I’m at IBM. We’re trying to teach the whole company this design thinking thing. And I just got put on a team that’s tasked with basically telling stories about what does design thinking look like in action? He’s like, it’s called the stories team. He’s like, we just really only one problem. We don’t have any storytellers. Would you be interested in coming on as an intern and, you know, basically helping us create content about, you know, what design thinking is, how it works? And again, crucially, what it actually looks like in the real world when people apply it.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: And you know, I think my initial reaction was sort of like IBM, you say, that company’s still around? And then, you know, if, if I’m being honest, like the thing that really convinced me was when he was like, yeah, well, you know, here’s what we pay our interns as a starting salary. And it was probably double all of the entry-level salaries that I was getting offered as a journalist. So, it was a very practical decision. When I first took it, I was like, I’ll do this for six months or so. And maybe I’ll like it, maybe not, but either way, it’ll allow me — just put me in a slightly better financial position, so I don’t feel so pressed when I’m trying to figure out what the next gig is.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: And I mean, as you guys know, I came in, and I fall in love really, really quickly. I mean, I think just the working environment first and foremost, the only way I can kind of describe, or the, the closest comparison I have for what it was like stepping into the studio was like, when I went to Montessori school as a kid, where there is just so much intentionality around creating an environment that, you know, encourages curiosity and collaboration and sort of exploration.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: And then, you know, as I got to know the people, I was also like, wow, these are some of the smartest, most creative, and most kind people who I’ve ever met. And also, I think the biggest thing for me was everybody’s willing to share free game. Like if there’s something I’m interested in, I just hit ’em up, and I’m like, “yo, do you want to grab coffee or have a 30-minute meeting?”

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: And like, literally just tell me about everything you do, how it works, why you do it. And yeah, people were very happy to do that, especially when I was also kind of offering up my services of, “hey, is there something interesting, but maybe kind of hard to understand that you’re doing, let me help you articulate it.”

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: But first and foremost, I have to understand your mental model of that thing. And then I’ll help you sort of craft, you know, a strategy for how you might communicate that more clearly, you know, in ways that might resonate with people more often. So, you know, I always just use that skill as a way to get my foot in the door and like soak up other people’s knowledge. So that’s basically my approach.

Nigel Prentice: You know, it’s funny, you tell that story, cuz I remember you sitting up a meeting or a couple meetings with me early on, not long after you converted to full time, I think. I remember being super impressed with everything about you and really loving the conversation. I don’t think you had additional motives.

Nigel Prentice: It just felt like a very heartfelt conversation. I think that’s an amazing technique just in life but also in a design career. So many of us get focused on the design craft, the practice, and its outcomes, which is different than saying I understand the three business units who share this floor, and I know someone in all those business units, and I’ve learned something from them.

Nigel Prentice: It’s amazing that you had been doing that this whole time. You know, months later, fast forward a bit; I remember seeing pictures of you with our then CEO, Ginni Rometty. Talk about that a little bit. How does someone go from new hire —early career, and then rubbing elbows with their CEO?

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, there was two times that I got that opportunity. The first was South by Southwest in 2017. So that to add some context, I was an intern for my first six or seven months, and it was two or three months in that I was asked to own all of the content strategy for South by. And I was like, should I tell them I’m an intern? Nah, let me just not say anything.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: You know, I think that’s the other part of me is like, I’m crazy enough to take on things that I think a lot of other people might sort of say, “Hey, I don’t think I’m quite ready for this.” I’m just like, ah, you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don’t take. You know, I think I was also very fortunate to get an opportunity to work with incredibly talented people on those projects.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, you know, my work in content and strategy and storytelling wouldn’t have been nearly as impactful as it was if I hadn’t have been working with people like Ryan Caruthers, who’s just an incredible sort of brand and experience, like creative ball of energy, is mainly really the best way I can describe it.

And then Adam Tate, who is just such an exacting thinker when it comes to spaces and in ingress and egress and all of the little details of installations and experiences that we take for granted only because they’re done so well. Also, he was a really key part of sort of accelerating my education into things like Watson cuz he had come from the Watson world, and part of my responsibility as the curator of the content was kind of to be a bullshit filter.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: And so, I was like, I’m being tasked with making sure that Watson stuff we put in here actually has real AI in it. And like, I’m just learning about how all of this works. So, you know, it was great to have him. And then Lindsay Barrett, who I think was just an incredible person. You know, when you talk about kind of corporate structures, one of the things we used to talk about a lot, in terms of like the ideal environment for designers, was having a strong leader who basically holds up the umbrella and protects you from shit storms and also moves obstacles outta your way.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: You know, Lindsay, I think we probably took it way too much for granted how much BS we didn’t have to deal with or even think about because she was constantly lead blocking for us and basically like, look, you guys do the things you do incredibly, and don’t worry about all this other stuff. Like, I got that.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, the first thing I have to do is, you know, give a ton of credit to those folks for allowing what I brought to the table to shine. But yeah, I think collectively, you know, we created objectively a badass experience at South by, And I think it was also kind of a level of thought and intentionality that, you know, Ginni hadn’t seen a lot of previously.

Nigel Prentice: And so, let’s be clear. You took over an entire building on sixth street in Austin in one of the one or two busiest weeks of the year. Renovated it physically, painted the exterior and interior, designed a host of physical walkthrough experiences.

Nigel Prentice: And I remember a lot of AR stuff, VR stuff; I think blockchain was emerging at the time. Obviously, Watson, as you said, which for those don’t know, that’s our brand around cognitive applications and artificial intelligence. IBM is a hybrid cloud and an AI company, and we’re driving those platforms. But at the time, you were forming some of the first market-ready, conversational content around these topics, which are quite technical. Even our senior designers have tough times working with the sort of intellectual property of these things.

Nigel Prentice: And so, this thing was a spectacle. I still have photos that I go back to every now and then of standing across the street at an angle, getting the light just right to catch the signage.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: IBM is making.

Nigel Prentice: Yes, is that yours?

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Well, I’ll say that was a collective effort, but that was — that was definitely something that I was advocating for cuz — to sort of take that to the next level when you went into the space — so a lot of what I tried to do again is like simplify mental models.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: I was like, we gotta put a lot of different, interesting things in here, but we have to simplify them into a few categories so people can kind of grok the totality. And so, each path there — I think it was four, five paths in the space was “IBM is making” the world something. So, there was a path that was really focused on the Watson health work, and it was IBM is making the world healthier, you know, IBM is making the world more engaging, you know, a lot focused on a lot of the data vis and AR/VR stuff.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: And so, IBM is making, was a broader statement around, hey, you might think of IBM as sort of the, you know, server like mainframe company of old, but no, IBM is actually really actively making a lot of things that are cool bleeding edge, cutting edge that you might not know about. But then we also use that theme to basically help guide people through the space based on what they were interested in.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: And then I think the other thing that sort of stood out and something I always try to do in my — especially like content work is thinking about the various audiences and creating experiences that are kind of relevant and interesting to everyone. So, you know, number one, we had to design for the person who’s a random South by attendee who has had three or four free drinks already at one, you know, 1:00 PM in the afternoon and is just wandering into whatever’s open.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, it’s like, okay, you might not know anything about tech, and you might, you know, be half slizzard already. This just needs to be cool, like, and be something that you go home, and you’re like, yo, I don’t even know what that was, but it was cool. At the same time, the same experience also needs to speak to someone who’s, you know, a highly technical expert, who’s there to sort of needle the technology.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, one of the things that we did was the experience started with some cool kind of activation at the highest level. But one of the things that we did was basically, for every experience, we had explicitly called out what are the IBM Cloud and AI tools that were brought together to create this experience.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, it was one part that was really cool, but then it was sort of like, yeah. And if you lift up the hood, you can do things like this as well. Here’s sort of the combination of parts that we used, but also there’s a much broader ecosystem of these various Lego pieces, if you will, that you can pull together to create all sorts of different things.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So I think, you know, to circle back to Ginni, I think that was one of the things that impressed her the most was; obviously, you can make stuff that’s cool for the sake of cool, but then when you can break down how it was created and also use that as sort of a pitch point, if you will, to get people to adopt your technologies. I think it was the totality of experience that really resonated with her and which prompted her to basically “volun-tell” us that we were gonna work on this other project, which was the Watson Primer.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: And the Watson Primer was essentially how do we create a modular experience that can be kind of broken down and put back together that we can take kind of on, you know, major conference road shows. So, the first place that showed up was at CES, but it also showed up at Dreamforce, which is the big Salesforce conference. It also showed up at IBM Think. And essentially, you know, if you guys are familiar with the Watson logo, if you take one of the kind of thinking rays that comes out the top of it, imagine taking that and laying it on its side and turning it into an open space. So, the space itself was sort of modeled after, you know, the branding. So, shout out to Adam Tate for that, like that’s the sort of stuff that I talk about. He’s amazing.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: But then, on the inside, we were like, okay, we need to do a couple of things. One, we need to explain how this works and what it can do. And so, there was a section of this experience that we called the tech table, which was all of these Watson superpowers. And then also it had little experiences for like, hey, we’re gonna show you in very, you know, high level, broad strokes, what it’s like to train a natural language classifier. So not only will you learn what the capability is, but you’ll also start to learn how do you actually put this stuff to work in useful ways.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: And then there was another wall, which was basically here is a bunch of case studies on folks who were actively using Watson to deliver business outcomes. So, the other part of it was, hey, how can we help companies and employees essentially see their own challenges and opportunities sort of represented and embodied in other people’s case studies of what they were doing?

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, one, for example, was, you know, there was a company that was using Watson Empowered Visual Recognition in drones to inspect cell towers for rust and damage, and other things like that. Basically, the whole idea was get out ahead of catastrophic failures by identifying, you know, potential issues early on.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: And there was a number of people who came in and were like, well, I don’t need to inspect cell towers, but the core of this I totally get, and we could apply this to inspect our X or our Y or our Z. So, that was the second time, that I got to rub elbows with Ginni a little bit. And at Dreamforce, she actually did a tour of the whole kind of conference floor along with Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, I didn’t know this was happening, by the way, until like 10 or 15 minutes before it happened, when, I think it was one of Ginni assistants’ kind of ran over and was like, “hey, Ginni and Marc are coming in 15 minutes. Someone needs to walk them through the space and like show them everything.”

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, they were like, all right, well, you speak well, and you know, all the content, like that’s you. And I was like, all right, well, let’s do it. I think the other thing for me, I just, I — I don’t know. I don’t really put people on pedestals. So, I’m like, alright, I get it, y’all are too very high-powered CEOs. Y’all are just people at the end of the day; y’all put your pants on this morning too. So, like I’m gonna just be myself and have confidence that I, you know, I know the content.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: And then it’s funny, so after about 20 seconds of like my intro, Marc was like, all right, let’s move this, like move along to the next thing. And I was like, no, you haven’t seen everything. So, I basically forced them to stay in there for an extra minute or two. But I think, you know, prompting them to do that and kind of showing them a little bit deeper of what was behind everything, like yeah, prompted some interesting conversations. And then I remember Marc literally asked me, he’s like, “hey, so how do you think, IBM Watson and Salesforce’s Einstein, which was their AI, like what are ways you think we could work better together?”

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: I did not know that question was coming, and thank God I had a really good example of an existing collaboration we were doing where I was like, you know what? I think we’re actually doing a really good job already. And like, here’s this thing we’ve done together. So, that was a great experience. And, you know, I’ve got an awesome picture somewhere where I’m like, you know, I’m talking with my hands, and I’m like deep in with Marc Benioff, and he’s kind of frowning and looking at me and Ginni’s just sitting there looking at both of us just like beaming. Like, yes, this is exactly what I hoped would happen. So, I guess I did something right.

Nigel Prentice: Yeah, and the way Phil told that story, apparently Ginni told Marc, referring to you, this one is one of mine or something like that. Claiming the pride around the good job you were doing. You, specifically, not just the booth and the whole show, but your representation of it.

Nigel Prentice: Shout out to that whole team, by the way. And what it points out to me is how someone who has an undergraduate in sociology — you said journalism as a degree, right? Becomes a designer at IBM and now is influencing and driving the brand statements to the market to differentiate our latest hottest tech and go-to-market offerings. That’s an amazing statement because designers don’t normally get to do that, right? You know, and here we are, we’re design thinkers. We do a lot of the things with sticky notes and then all of a sudden, you’re driving strategy. How did that feel? That must have been amazing.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Yeah, that’s a great question. I mean, I think there is an advantage to a certain extent in having a maybe less defined role and a rare role. When I thought about my contributions to anything at IBM, you know, I certainly knew, okay, the foundation of this is I need to deliver on content, but I don’t think I ever approached any project from the standpoint of like, okay, I’m just going to be focused on the content side of this.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Like maybe it’s hubris, and maybe it’s just cuz I’m annoying and curious. But like, I think I — I was the person who would ask a bunch of questions just about everything. And if I felt like there was something that didn’t make sense, even if it was sort of technically outside of my remit around content, like I would always speak up on that. And I think, you know, it gave me the ability to — I think part of it was like, all right, I wanna prove value, and I am not the person who’s going to be putting together the brand work that will define this. I’m not the person who’s going to be designing the specific form factor. What I bring to the table is really about how does this entire thing speak? Yes, there’s words at the root of that.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: But before that even becomes a thing, we need to make sure we really understand what we’re trying to put out into the world. Like not only from an information standpoint but like what feeling are we trying to leave people with? And so, I think I was just, again, part of like — also just like being an athlete and not caring if I ruffled a few feathers like I would ask the — you know, almost pedantic questions that it’s like, you assume everybody thinks the same about this. And typically, those are the most important questions to ask. Cuz you oftentimes realize, oh, everybody had assumptions about this thing, and they’re all different. And it’s like, one of the most important aspects of this project is aligning around this.

Nigel Prentice: I can’t say how important that that is, and for you to activate that at that time, man, it’s — the word that comes to mind to me is courage. You know what I mean? It doesn’t take five promotions and a Design Principle, an IBM Fellow appointment for someone to make a difference.

Nigel Prentice: Here you are at that time — what a lot of folks would consider an early career professional, with your courage, with your outspokenness, and with your talent, those are the primary ingredients of what drove that.

Nigel Prentice: And by the way, you know, I saw it in real time back then. So, I saw it happening. I saw it unfolding. I didn’t know the back stories, but I do remember all of the big moments that we all celebrated as a program at the time. And you guys were doing amazing stuff, and you’re still doing amazing stuff.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Yeah, I think what you said was a key point. And I think part of that courage, I mean, I don’t know, again, being an athlete and having that background just makes work situations typically, like, I don’t know, for whatever reason, not nearly as scary. But I think a big part of it as well, specifically from being a person of color, is you one, you build up thick skin, but two, you have so much experience with needing to be significantly more prepared than everybody else in the room.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: And I think that was a big part of, you know, my courage in any given situation was, you know, I knew that I had done the work and put in the research. So, I may be asking what seems like a dumb question, but also, I understand a lot of this stuff already. So, you know, I was never afraid to probe and ask questions because I always felt like, hey, you know, you guys may know more about this than me. You may be smarter on this topic than me, but I’ve done the work to prepare myself for this situation.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: And so, I’m coming in with a point of view and coming in with specific questions to ask. So, I think it’s that it’s like, yeah, put in the work and, you know, try to be more prepared than everybody else. But then have confidence in the work that you’ve put in and bring that to the table.

Nigel Prentice: Put in the work and have confidence. And I love that you went there, and I was actually gonna go there as well. This idea of being Black in the workspace, you know, in this corporate America world. And it really doesn’t matter where a person works, whether it’s what we call white-collar, blue-collar. I mean, Black folks are only 13% of the U.S. population, and you start looking at certain industries, professions, geographies, the number can go way down, right? Talk about that a little bit; what was the role of race? You know, here you are multi-continental, Africa and North America. Multiethnic and therefore multicultural, and I’m using the broadest sense of the term culture.

Nigel Prentice: Talk about the role of race in your world. How’d you think about it?

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Yeah, I mean, that’s a good question. That’s a good question. I mean, so I — I guess I’ll start by saying even before I came into IBM, like race, both within myself and within the United States more broadly, was definitely something I had spent a decent amount of time thinking about reflecting on and, and writing about actually you know, some of my most, maybe not quite the most viral, but let’s call them the most like, confrontational or polarizing things that I wrote about during my time on The Higher Learning were race related.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, one of them was an exploration of kind of my experiences on being mixed through sort of a historical lens of the United States. Which basically came down to okay; as someone who is mixed culturally, this country has told me if any part of me is Black, you’re Black. Like that was in the laws for a really long time.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: You know, I think growing up, I always felt a little bit more comfortable around people of color than I did White people. So, I think there’s just a — one, there’s a, there’s a broader sort of definition of who’s gonna fall in this bucket. And so, there’s just a broader acceptance versus, you know, it’s kind of like you’re White or your other. The definition of whiteness is definitely expanded over the years.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: And, you know, it’s crazy that, you know, people who are Irish are sort of seen as like quintessentially White today, and it’s like, yeah, guess what? 150 years ago, White people hated y’all. Y’all were Black, too. But yeah, so, you know, I wrote this blog post, and kind of what I was getting at was like, hey, like stop trying to force me to kind of define this beyond what it is.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Like there’s bits of me that come from both of these worlds and like I’m amorphous, and like, that’s actually the answer. I shouldn’t have to try to pick sides here. I also wrote a commentary on — like I wrote a commentary on Beyoncé’s song, Formation. If you guys remember was sort of like a big thing. Kind of, you know, talked about and seen as a pretty loud political statement on Blackness, which I think it very much was.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: And, you know, I probably didn’t give Beyoncé as much credit as she deserved, but I — I took a kind of a critical approach where I was like, let’s break down the lyrics of this song and like how much true Black empowerment is in here. Like, she speaks a little bit to like, you know, the beauty of Black features with like nappy hair and wide noses.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: And then, like some of the other stuff, I felt like was almost a little like, if a White person would’ve said this, you would’ve called it racist. Talking about, I got hot sauce in my bag. All right, that’s cool. But also, I don’t know. What’s our bar for what’s a truly powerful Black empowerment song?

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Let’s ask ourselves if this is, you know if this is all you have to do to get that credit — Nigel Prentice: So, it didn’t stand up to James Brown, “I’m Black, and I’m proud.”

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Oh, I mean, definitely not in my eyes, but, you know, I think the beautiful part of any discourse, though, is there’s a ton of different points of view.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, at the time, you know, I was at UT, and one of my good friends, in the journalism school with me was a Black woman who took major issue with my article. We had a really great, you know, like friendly, but heated debate, where she’s like, you are underselling a lot of aspects of this that are more subtle.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: And so, I actually asked her, I was like, hey, are you, would you be down to write a counterpoint to my article? Like just, you take it point by point and tear it down and, you know, present your point of view from the other side. And I think that was like one of the dopest experiences I had. And, you know, again, this is also how a lot of like content companies make their money, even though this wasn’t the point. But to have both powerful points of represented, it’s like, cool. You know, we got debate on both sides. We have either article that people can agree with.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: But I think when I got into the corporate world, I didn’t think about it a ton, but I do think, especially when I was getting ready to start at IBM, I was probably a little bit more intentional about how I curated my kind of public, professional persona based on what I thought was going to be expected of me when I came into IBM.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: One, just very quick, practical example was my hair had started to get pretty long towards the end of college, and I was like, whatever, I’m gonna rock it out. You know, “long hair don’t care,” as Lloyd says, and I cut my hair. Like I cut it pretty short ahead of starting at IBM because I think I suddenly felt like this is something that is going to exacerbate potential negative stereotypes that people might have about me.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, you know, I think, I “professionalized”, you know, myself up a little bit more than I would today. But I think the other side of that is I don’t like — I don’t give myself any grief for that. One thing I say to a lot of people of color, especially like young folks going into the professional world, is like code-switching is a superpower, and it’s a necessary for survival.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, you should never feel bad or be hard on yourself for presenting yourself in a way that you think is going to be a little bit more quote, unquote palatable. If it’s towards some objective like I was trying to get a job that I knew would improve my life significantly. I would be foolish to be like, nah, I’m gonna bring, you know, whatever most casual, most like comfortable version of myself to the table.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: If I think it’s going to hurt my opportunity to do this thing, that’s gonna improve my life significantly and also empower me to address these issues more. So, what I kind of say is like, do whatever you need to do to get your foot in the door, but then once you’re in the room and have proved yourself, then as quickly and aggressively as possible, sort of reclaim your full, true self.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: And I think that’s kind of what I tried to do at IBM. Especially once I got here and realized, oh, people are really encouraged to bring more of their full selves to the table. So, I was like, bet I’m gonna wear J’s, you know, I’m gonna wear t-shirts. I’m gonna be in a room with a bunch of executives who have suits on, gonna be dressed completely differently.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: And I’m gonna be, you know, one of the sharpest and most well-prepared people in the room. I think one of the things I try to take pride in is resetting stereotypes. Stereotypes exist cuz people see the same thing in the same package all the time. So, my thing is I need you to see a negative stereotype in me and then have a conversation with me and then be like, well damn, I guess this is what competence looks like.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: You know? And so, the next time you see somebody in J’s and joggers, it’s sort of like, I’m not gonna assume this person doesn’t know what they’re talking about. In fact, I might assume this person is smarter and more prepared than everybody else in the room who’s wearing a suit.

Nigel Prentice: I’m gonna challenge you on that because I don’t know what the answer is to challenge a stereotype. That sounds scary to most folks. How might you coach if you had to coach a non-Black person or just anyone who wants to have a conversation about what that person sees in someone else and might think it is detrimental to their career? What would you tell ’em? I think most people are uncomfortable with this race conversation, in other words.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Mm-hmm, yeah. So how would I coach someone to try to —

Nigel Prentice: The person who’s White who wants to be critical of someone. The thing you just said — come challenge me, Mbiyimoh, on the stereotype you see in me. So that the next time you think you see that stereotype, you won’t assume. Coach that person cuz I don’t think that person exists. I think that person is gonna keep it to themselves, maintain the stereotype in their head and forget about the fact that they saw you and how smart you were.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Yeah, no, it’s a great question. I mean the first half of my answer, the first thing that popped into my head, shout out to the IBM — IBM design thinking framework, is root cause analysis.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, I think what I would try to do for somebody who actually cares to try to counteract these feelings in themselves is basically like a five why’s experience, right? Where it’s like, hey, I don’t think this sort of hair or dress is professional, right? Okay, why? Once you get about two layers deep on that one, there’s really not much there outside of well; historically, the people who have been in positions of power in professional, you know, spheres or chairs have not looked like this.

Nigel Prentice: So, let me jump in; sorry to do that. The reason why is because I think where you’re going is the answer to the challenge. What I’m asking is, how do you give the White person confidence to even bring up the challenge?

Nigel Prentice: I think we’re too polite in our workspaces, mostly to do that. And I think people just go away and maintain their stereotype, which is detrimental, right?

Nigel Prentice: We all — a human condition really don’t enjoy conflict, especially around race at work. I’m asking it because this is a lot of what we try to do in Racial Equity in Design is defuse these moments, and I need some help with it. How do we give hiring managers, team leads, even colleagues that confidence, courage, or context to have an open race-based conversation?

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Yeah, I mean, short answer and maybe not ideal answer, but no, I don’t think there is any secrets, like — I’ll just speak off the dome and of what’s in my head. I think the first thing that I’m thinking is, as a person of color, it’s up to you whether or not you want to take on that emotional work. And I think that’s one of the things that sometimes is — I think not said enough, right? There’s almost this — there’s almost this expectation that, oh, okay, if somebody, you know, has a desire, like even let’s assume that, that this hiring manager or this White person, or whatever does want to be challenged and educated on, you know, any potential biases they have. That does not mean that, as a person of color, it’s your responsibility to teach them.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: And I think, you know, we need to be very mindful of our own kind of head space and emotional energy because that stuff is incredibly emotionally taxing. You know, I talk a lot about — I think you and I had this conversation, you know, after all of the George Floyd stuff happen, there was this natural energy towards, okay, we need to do something about this.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: And it’s very reasonable to be like, hey, we need to let people of color lead the charge. On the other hand, I don’t think a lot of companies really realize that what they were doing was asking their, you know, Black employees who are already just dealing with the fallout of having to go through this incredibly emotional and emotionally, politically charged time to now take on not only more practical work, but like very emotionally heavy work around well, how do we solve all of these problems?

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: And I think, you know, it’s starting to — one thing that we’ve seen at Tradeblock, and that’s quite frankly helped our recruiting is a lot of people who were like, yeah, I was thrown in that boat. And not only was I completely exhausted and taxed and not compensated for that work, but after a few years, I also felt, you know, my company didn’t really care.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, that’s one part of it is as a person of color, you need to make sure that that’s something that you are willing to take on. It’s a burden. But I mean, I think the other side of it is if you are willing to take it on, you just gotta be; I think pretty hard on yourself in terms of allowing yourself to listen to understand and not to respond and react.

Nigel Prentice: Let’s pause on that. Yeah, that’s huge. Listen for understanding as opposed to listening in order to react. Thinking about your next point. As an example, thinking about what you’re going to reply with while the other person is still talking, right? That’s tremendous. So hard to do this. This leads with empathy, right? This gets us to this point of empathy.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Absolutely, and I mean, I think that the thing that you have to be super willing to do, if you’re trying to help somebody grow in that way and understand their own biases more, is you have to be willing to let them speak as freely as possible, knowing that some of the things they say might actually trigger you a little bit.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: But the worst thing you can do is have a kind of, you know, like very pointed or negative or hostile reaction to something they say, cuz then what you’re going to do is you are going to essentially teach them that, oh, if I’m honest about these things that I know I’m ignorant on, I’m opening myself up to attack and naturally what we’re all going to do in a situation like that is be like, cool. I’m never saying anything about this stuff ever again. Cuz the last time I did this, you know, it opened me up to a bunch of critique, and you know, made somebody who I care about look at me differently, et cetera.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, I mean, I think you gotta have a tough conversation with yourself and ask yourself, hey, can I hear somebody who I care about or a colleague say some shit that I think is wild, right? And be like, I think this comes from a place of genuine ignorance and like desire to grow, so let me swallow my own emotional reaction and just try to unpack it with them.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: I mean, it makes me think about Dartmouth. One of the first things that happened to me at Dartmouth in my first week, I was brushing my hair. You know you have a fade, you wanna get the waves going, and I had a kid come up to me who lived in my dorms. But we had never really talked, and the very first thing this dude says to me is like, “hey man, are you brushing your hair with a horse brush?”

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: As you know, as a Black dude that grows up in Houston, your natural reactions like what the — you know what I mean? But then I was like, hang on, let me pause for a second. Take a breath.

Nigel Prentice: First of all, as a Black man, I know exactly what brush you’re talking about. The one that’s made outta wood.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: You know what I’m sayin’.

Nigel Prentice: With the brown bristles.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Absolutely.

Nigel Prentice: You catch it at the wrong angle. It’s gonna scratch your skin, right?

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Yep, yep. Exactly, exactly. And so, it’s like, all right, this is a cultural staple. But back to my point earlier about like, oh, you’re progressive, and you probably would like vote the same way as me on most things. But like, you’ve never seen a Black person brushing their hair. So rather than being like dawg, what the hell is wrong with you? Like, how dare you ask me if I’m using a horse brush?

Nigel Prentice: How dare you call me a horse?

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Exactly. Exactly. Instead, I’m gonna just be like, yeah. You know, for people who have hair like mine, this is the best brush we use. I’m like, here’s why we use it. Like, have you ever seen a Black person who has waves? That’s kind of how they get ’em; they have waves and like durags, and the guy was like, “that’s why people wear durags? Oh, my goodness.” You know what I mean? So, like, I don’t know. I don’t know what that did for that guy’s kind of whatever, you know, built-in intrinsic biases. But I think it was a moment where he was like, oh, okay. I was educated on something, and there was no kind of negative reaction or aversion that — yeah, like made me feel bad for not knowing, but again, that’s tough.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: It’s tough. You gotta be willing to take that on. Cuz I still felt some kind of way after that interaction. I’ve just accepted, okay, I’m gonna be the bigger person in these situations because I think it’s more important to try to educate and attack these biases than it is for me to be a little annoyed for, you know, a couple minutes or whatever an hour afterwards. Like, wow, that was a dumb question.

Nigel Prentice: There are some folks that that wear their Blackness on their sleeve all the time and will take a moment like that, that you just had, and it’ll mess up their day, their week, their month, you know, they’re gonna be upset. I don’t say that pejoratively; I don’t say that negatively that they wear the Blackness. It’s that it’s hard for many human beings to deal with what might be considered disrespect.

Nigel Prentice: There are other Black folks who I’ve observed that are much more comfortable navigating those instances. Whether it’s in an education setting, the university setting, a corporate setting, entrepreneurial setting, social settings, you know, going to weddings, going to cookouts or barbecues. Being Black at work presents an interesting moment. You used the word code-switching, the concept code-switching earlier; you talked about “professionalize” it up. And some people are able to do that, sort of comfortably, and some people really are challenged by that.

Nigel Prentice: Where did that comfort come from in you? Does it go back to your family dynamic being of mixed race, or do you think being curious and intellectual and having sort of this deep — I mean, it’s the first quote I read at the top and recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings.

Nigel Prentice: “We pair ourselves the highest tribute.” I picked that for you cause that’s how I think of you and that you recognize the humanity of everyone around you, and you uplift them. It has nothing to do with race or ethnicity or age or job status or any of that stuff, right? So, does it come from that lesson you learned somewhere, or do you think it’s very straightforward?

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Yeah. Whew, great question. Great question. So, I would say one, it certainly starts with my upbringing. My family — not only that we were a diverse family, but just the temperament and demeanor of my parents.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: They are just very kind, reasonable, practical people. Growing up, I saw very little of my parents being highly emotionally charged in any situation. I think naturally, me and all my siblings are pretty even-keeled people.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, I think there’s sort of three things that popped into my head as you talked about that. One is I’m very much a stoic. Like, I didn’t know about stoicism until I got to college and, you know, was in a philosophy class and got introduced to it. But I think even before then, I I’ve always been a stoic where I’m just kind of like, you know, everything that happens in the world is going to happen sooner or later.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: And so, you can be upset about the fact that it happened, or you can just accept that reality is going to do what reality does. And then you can do, you know, your best, like — you can put your best foot forward in terms of how am I gonna respond to this thing that happened to me. I don’t have a lot of patience for my own emotional responses to things cuz I’m like, this is useless that I’m mad or sad or whatever. I try to give myself a little bit of grace cuz I think it’s important to feel. But at the same time, I just very quickly transition to like, okay, what am I gonna do with this?

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Like, what’s the path forward? What’s the solution? Or like, is this just something that happened? Then cool, I’m gonna move on. So that’s one. I think two, having a sociological background and being somebody who has just fascinated with human beings and human behavior, I have a natural inclination to try and understand people.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, when people say wild shit, I’m less like, I can’t believe you said that to me. And I’m more like, huh? I wonder what you must have had to go through in your life —whether it’s where you’re from, your parents, your upbringing, your peers, to arrive at a place now where you would say, or do something like this, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So again, I think it’s — you know, partially a high level of empathy, but also partially like — in a lot of those conversations, I’m approaching it almost more from like kind of an ethnography standpoint where it’s like, I’m not upset about what you would say. Oh man, this sounds so like extreme, but almost like you’re a subject that I’m studying here.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: I’m trying to get to the bottom of where this is coming from, way more than I am, like trying to protect myself or take anything that you’re saying personally. Cause I know, it’s not about me. So, I think that’s a part of it as well. And then what you said, like, I have a strong just belief that’s kind of core to how I view the world, that like every human being has, you know, like infinite potential even though who have walked down paths that, you know, have left them in a dark place. In general, I’m like, look, there’s gotta be people who are willing to take shots.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: There’s a quote I always use, which is like, “you have to be willing to extend love and trust before it’s safe to.” Otherwise, the world goes to shit cuz everybody becomes very defensive and protective, right? Somebody’s gotta be willing to say, I don’t know that this is gonna work out well for me, but if I don’t create a space that allows you to feel comfortable and to bring love and trust to the table, that’s never gonna happen.

Nigel Prentice: So that’s just my approach. But I’m also a grudger. So, I’ll give you that, you know, and if I feel like you take advantage of it, then cool. Like I know who you are now, and I’m protect my own time and head space as I need to. Gotcha, but you used the term earlier that I want you to reflect on a little bit. Something always comes up around hair.

Nigel Prentice: It’s a little bit of a lightning rod. And every few months, we see a TikTok or Instagram or news story about somebody, some young person typically, who has to cut their hair in order to graduate, walk the stage, compete in an event. And so, you came into the studio today with longer hair than I think I’ve ever seen you. And it looks amazing. I’m not good at this, but it’s either locks, or it’s twists, right?

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Mm-hmm, yep.

Nigel Prentice: You said, “I cut my hair before starting at IBM.” Would you do that again? If it were a job offer in 2023, would you cut your hair from where it is now again? And do you, did you really mean what you said that that was “professionalizing” things up?

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, to answer the first question, absolutely not. I would not. I’ll cut my hair if I wanna cut my hair. I think part of that is I have, in my mind, built up enough, like a significant enough body of work, that — more quotes that I use, “you gotta make your competence undeniable.” And I think at this point, my competence is undeniable. So, if you have a problem with my hair, that’s your problem. You’re gonna miss out on everything else I bring to the table.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: When I was just graduating college and trying to get my first job in a professional world. I did not have that body of work to speak to. So obviously, you know, I could interview well, and I could show whatever work I had done in college, but it was different. Like, I don’t think that the competence was undeniable at that point. So, your second question, about did I really think that? I didn’t personally think that having short hair was more professional by any means. I just felt like that it would be one less variable that might get in the way of people seeing what I brought to the table. And that’s why I did it.

Nigel Prentice: That’s cool. And listen, man, I appreciate your candor, and I’m glad you’ve extended me the grace to ask about a personal question like that.

Nigel Prentice: There are not enough of these conversations that happen either in private or public, to be honest, right? We wanna be very welcoming and polite and being among polite company is always pleasant. That’s fine. But it’s not always meaningful to be polite. And I know that you’re always meaningful. So, I thought you’d appreciate the conversation, and I do appreciate you wanting to go there and talk about it with me.

Nigel Prentice: Since we’re on a roll, let’s keep that roll going. It might have been nine or 12 months before I felt comfortable even saying your name, and I’m going back several years, right? Mbiyimoh Ghogomu is your name. If you could just reflect on something as simple as a name is actually as complex as our identity, what are your thoughts?

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Yeah. Man, my relationship with my name is a long character arc, if you will. As a kid, it felt like a burden because not only was it, you know, unique. Uniqueness is actually very hard to appreciate in yourself as a kid. You just really want to fit in, right? So, it was something that made me different.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: And it was also —so you said my name Mbiyimoh Ghogomu, but to provide some context for listeners, Mbiyimoh is spelled M-B-I-Y-I-M O-H. So, I think the biggest challenge for me was every time somebody new saw it and had to take on the challenge of trying to say it, or like sitting there awkwardly and silently in pain until I would say, hey, that’s me. And here’s how you say it. I think it was that that was tough. It was like, you know, there was always this little bit of anxiety. Oh, we have a sub today; here we go. Or like, oh, someone’s gonna be saying my name on the announcements. Cuz in, you know, elementary school, I was like ARP Accelerated Reading Program all-star. So I was like every month, like at the top of the list, I was like, who’s reading it this time?

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: But I think as I got older — and I think as I learned more about, you know, my African heritage from my father, I just started to take a lot more pride in it. And I think the meaning of my name is also something that I think ties very closely to just who I am as an individual.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So Mbiyimoh means “One World.” The prefix in B means “one,” and “yimoh” means “world.” And I think that the older I got and the more confidence I got and who I was, you know, willingness to be like, oh, I’m a good athlete, but also, I’m a nerd. And like, that’s dope. And what are you gonna say to me? I don’t care. You make fun of me for being smart. Like, I’m gonna make fun of you for being dumb. You know, once you build that kind of confidence in yourself and who you are, I think it was a lot easier for me to really lean into and love my name and love the fact that it was so different. Yeah, so I’d say that’s where I’m at today. And, you know, I don’t really think about it anymore if I, you know, send an email with my name on there, whatever the case may be.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: I know that the person may ask, you know, how to pronounce it when I first talk to them, or they will, you know, slaughter it while trying to pronounce it, and I’ll correct them, and you know, that’ll be it. We’ll go along our way.

Nigel Prentice: And I, and listen, again, much appreciation for the conversation about it. It’s something that I have wrestled with a lot. Personally, I don’t talk about myself a ton on the podcast, but one thing that I have wrestled with in my life is being of mixed race myself. My mother’s Filipino and Native American. My dad is Black, my father’s name —biological father, Joseph Prentice, my biological mother, Christina.

Nigel Prentice: And then here I am, Nigel. No other family members with the name Nigel. Most people can’t actually pronounce it either. And so, I had those same moments of trepidation. I was much less comfortable growing up than you were in your own skin, at least the way I sense it from you. I think that that’s the story arc where it landed; as you said, the comfort is there for you now, would you agree?

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, again, I think a lot of it came with building up my own sense of my own confidence.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: It’s like the more confident you are in what you bring to the table and what you bring to the world, the less concerned you are with how those aspects of yourself are going to be perceived. Cuz I’m kind of like my name being weird is an issue for you. Like that sounds like a personal problem. And you know, the more that I establish myself, the less ability you have to negatively impact me because of how you feel about anything, the way I dress the, you know, exactly to your question of what I cut my hair today? No. You want me to join your company? You’re gonna get all of me, or you’re going to lose out on that.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: I think the other thing with my name is I remember, I wanna say this is like, you know, late elementary school, maybe early junior high. My dad’s name is William, but that’s not his original name. His original name was Puamuh, which is my oldest brother’s name. My dad had his name legally changed to William when he moved to Texas because nobody was going to hire an African lawyer named Puamuh. And so that was a practical decision that he made, which I would never give him shit for to the exact same point I was making earlier.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: You did what you needed to do to put yourself in a position to win. But at the same time, I think learning that story, I was like, I’m going to lean very heavily into my traditional name, especially because we’re now in a world where I don’t have to, you know, take on an Americanized name just to operate and navigate and be employed.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: There was sort of a feeling of, you know, my dad made the ultimate sacrifice with his own — you know, your name is so kind of crucial to who you are.

Nigel Prentice: Right, right, right.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: And to make that sacrifice really and all the sacrifices he made were about how do I set up the next generation to live a better life than me? You know, I kind of took that as a point of pride of like now I need people to fill me and to understand, like, my name is my name, and it’s got a deep, rich history behind it. My dad, in many ways, sacrificed his name, so we could all go into the world fully ourselves, having to deal with that BS.

Nigel Prentice: The last three minutes of this conversation is the conversation I wish I had when I was 18. You know, you might not have even been born yet, but I wish I had it all along. So, getting back to the time, let’s pick up as you left IBM. I was sad to see you go but also knowing that you’re going on to something really cool. So, talk about Tradeblock a little bit; it’s a trading platform for sneakerheads.

Nigel Prentice: What differentiates Tradeblock in the marketplace and talk about where the company is now.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Yeah, yeah, I think fundamentally there’s two things that differentiate us. One is the service itself, like how the transactions get done. There is no other, you know, major platform out there today where you can acquire goods for goods in a barter-based kind of, you know, environment.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, the major marketplaces that exist are purely buy and sell. We made a choice to be intentionally different by explicitly focusing on trades only. Part of that is for trades to even be possible, you have to give people the ability to basically create and curate a public persona. If you look at the traditional marketplaces, they go outta their way to not tell you who you’re transacting with.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: They don’t want you to think about the source of the shoe. They want you to just trust them as a middleman and be like, hey, the shoe’s $350 bucks, we’ll make sure everything is good. You don’t have to know where that’s coming from. In a trade world, you kind of have to be able to interact and engage with the individual collectors.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, we actually described Tradeblock as a social marketplace where yes, there’s a transactional layer in the deal, but also you are exploring other collectors’ collections. You know, you have the ability to direct message one another. It’s been dope. I mean, this was never the explicit purpose, but we’ve had a ton of people be like, yo, I’ve made legitimate friends on here with people who are on the other side of the country.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: You know, one of my favorite stories is there was two guys who were early users — oh, 10 pushups for me, early members. Words matter. You think about your people differently when you call them “members” and not “users.”

Nigel Prentice: Thank you for that. I’m on a personal campaign to never use the word “resource” as a substitute for the word “person.” We do it in a corporate America all time — I’ve got three resources on that project. And it’s where the word human resources comes from in terms of the company business unit. But I think it’s demeaning, and I get caught maybe two, three times a year saying the word “resource.” But shout out to you for correcting your own vocabulary, which impacts others because here you are as a founder, and you don’t call your customers “users.”

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Yeah, I mean, language shapes our reality in, you know, subtle ways that I think oftentimes we don’t appreciate at all. And so, you really have to be intentional about it, you know, to that point, our HR function is not called Human Resources. It’s called People Ops, and it’s to be a reminder, not only to us as a leadership team but also as a signal to the rest of the company. Hey, this is about the people, right? Like we are here to create the best possible experience for you. This is not about thinking of you as a resource that we are using.

Nigel Prentice: Love it, love it.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Two of our members who happen to have children around the same time. I think one — his kid was like maybe six or seven months older, and so they just, you know, built a whole relationship around like, not only being sneakerheads but being fathers. And so, when the other dudes, you know, baby actually came the one member, you know, like sent him a whole like gift package with like, you know, Jordan onesies and little mini-Jordan, baby shoes and stuff like that.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, you know, it’s, it’s that opportunity to build like real, meaningful relationships, in parallel to kind of the transactional, hey, I just want X and I have, Y that I think is really what makes our platform different. And from an experience standpoint, it’s just a lot more like a game like traditional marketplaces are basically like, you know, Amazon, it’s like, all right, there’s an item, and there’s a price, and that’s basically it. Tradeblock, like I said, is a lot more like fantasy sports. It’s active; there’s negotiations back and forth. There’s a lot more exploration and consideration. You know, I think it’s a lot more interesting to compare two shoes you like to one another than to compare a shoe you like to its price, like, okay, this shoe is $400 and either I am willing to pay that or not.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: However, you know, we can put a hundred different shoes worth around $400 in front of you into each one of those is a much more interesting and meaningful consideration of do I like that shoe better than my current shoe? Mm, maybe not. Do I like this shoe better than my current shoe? Mm, maybe so. You know, it just allows people, I think, to consider a lot more of the intrinsic value. Like sometimes I do this little exercise where I tell somebody like, what is this shoe worth? And they’ll go look up the value or whatever. And they’re like, all right, they’re in $375. I’m like, cool. And then I ask, you know, what would this shoe be worth to you if your dad had bought you a pair of these as a kid, and you’d never been able to get your hands on them ever since? It’s like, oh, well, I would pay a premium.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: It’s like, exactly. What would it be worth you if you somehow got your hands on three or four pairs? Oh, well, that’d be probably a lot more willing to get rid of any one of them. So, I think that’s what trading taps into is all of the other kind of aspects and elements that go into, what do I think about this shoe outside of like, what does the average person willing to pay for it, you know, right now.

Nigel Prentice: So, recognizing these other attributes of a market transaction. Is it paying off? How is — how’s business going? Yeah, yeah. Business is going well. I think we were very confident in the vision early on.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: I think we did a very effective job with how we approached our MVP, our minimum viable product. So, you know, when I connected with my co-founders in the early days, and this was still a concept, I was very much like we need to validate that people are down to do this and down to pay for it before we build and code anything.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: the MVP for Tradeblock was — we had started an Instagram page. You know, we were doing sneaker giveaways basically to get people to follow the page. And one day, we said, okay, rather than, you know, tag five people in the comments to get in on this giveaway, the entry rules were send us three shoes that you own that you’d be willing to trade.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: And then my co-founder Darren, who’s a dawg — and you gotta have people who are just willing to put in the work and pound the pavement and run ground game. He manually followed up with all — I think it was like 285 people who had entered this giveaway. Slid into their DMs and were like, “Hey, yo, Nigel, thanks for entering the giveaway. You mind sending us a couple shoes you’re looking for in case we find a match?” And so that’s how we populated our initial database was just an Excel spreadsheet of all the data we got, you know, from that Instagram giveaway.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: And then, low and behold, there was, you know, matches from day one. So literally, it was hitting you up and was like, hey, we found a trade match. Is this guy in Maine? You know, are you down to let us facilitate this trade? And so, I think we were able to see very early on that, okay, not only is there a ton of demand for this, but the other thing that happened after our first kind of big blockbuster trade that got posted was people started coming to us and just offering up a ton of inventory and collection data proactively.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: I think that was my first moment where I was like, oh, snap, we’ve built something powerful. And I remember saying to Darren and Tony, my co-founders, I was like, fellas, even if we can’t figure out how to get people to trade at volume if the prospect of trading convinces them to tell us about 10, 15, 30, 50 shoes that they own, that data in and of itself is incredibly valuable and there’s a lot we can do with it.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, you know, we went into starting to build the first version of our app already having, you know, one, two dozen trades that we had facilitated manually on Instagram. It’s like, man, if people are gonna do this with a stranger, DMing them on Instagram, then if we build an actual app that facilitates it, we’re pretty confident, you know, it’s gonna do the work.

Nigel Prentice: And the commerce happens on your site?

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Yep!

Nigel Prentice: So, you are a retail destination for the member, and you don’t have any inventory?

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Precisely, yeah.

Nigel Prentice: That’s amazing. I’m assuming the business model is that there’s a transaction fee or membership fee.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Yeah, today it’s a flat transaction fee. So, you know, it’s free to use the app and free to negotiate. It’s just at the point where you’re like, okay, cool, here’s a trade I want to do. And both sides agree that we charge both sides a service fee of $25. And then there’s a kind of an incremental fee if you wanna trade more than one shoe.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, for example, you know, we could facilitate a trade where I’m giving you three pairs for one of your pairs. So, my service fee goes up a little bit for that. And then there’s a $15 flat fee for shipping on both sides as well.

Nigel Prentice: Gotcha. So, your business model it’s all about getting more members into the platform. Is that right?

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Yeah, getting more members and then, you know, I think right now our number one focus is how do we reduce the friction to getting trades done and particularly your first trade. So, from a business standpoint, how do we deliver on the reason that you came here as fast as possible?

Nigel Prentice: And so now you’re getting into human behavior. How does your experience as a design leader at IBM do two things: help you be a better founder of a startup and drive the experiences of the platform you’re creating?

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Yeah, I mean, to the first question, I would give an insane amount of credit to my experiences at IBM in terms of preparing me for what I’m doing today. Like there’s no — Tradeblock would’ve fell flat on his face early on if I didn’t have the experiences that I had. So, I think one, just everything I learned about user-centered design and the whole approach of like first and, and foremost, understand who this is for and what they’re looking for, what their biggest pain points are, et cetera. That was certainly a huge part of it.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Leading business strategy experience first. Where it’s like, look when we first do this, our margins are going to be awful, but if we try too hard to make money, first and foremost, we’re going to lose sight of the reason anybody cares about this. So, let’s get that right first. Obviously, you need to know the numbers at a high level and know there’s a future state that you can get to where the numbers will make sense, but you don’t put the numbers over the people, especially early on. And then I think the last piece of it, or the kind of third big thing that comes to mind, is sort of like ruthless prioritization.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: And I think that’s partially built into, you know, the design thinking framework. We use prioritization grids all the time, all the freaking time. And one of my big things to everybody in the company, you know, especially leadership, is two to three big objectives. Anything beyond that, we’re gonna suck at everything.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, if you tell me you’re trying to do five things, I’m gonna force you to kill two of them. And so, you know, it’s kind of like Hills. We don’t do them quite so specifically as IBM does, but what are the two or three things you’re trying to work on right now, and how are we gonna measure success?

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: I think I’d also have to give Phil a big shout-out on that front because, you know, when I was working as Phil’s Chief of Staff, I think you learn an insane amount from that guy just through osmosis. I mean, he’s a walking gem, but I think one of the things that I took away most from Phil was his level of, you know — I describe it as discretion, like knowing what to care about and when to engage and really being like, all right, here’s a bunch of stuff you just put in front of me. These two things are what matter, and I’m gonna press on those two things and basically ignore all the rest. So, yeah, I think it’s a combination of those things that’s prepared me for what I’m doing today.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Man, that’s a great question. I mean, my first reaction or response is I — I’m not much of a planner, is the reality. I think the moves that I make in life are really driven by two things. You know, one is financial stability. That’s always gonna be a big thing. You know, growing up, we weren’t poor. But it — I remember not being able to do things that I felt like I should be able to do.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: And I also remember, you know, as I got older, learning to not ask for certain things because I didn’t want to make my parents feel a certain way about things that they couldn’t provide. And so, I think that, yeah, had a major impact on me. And like, while I don’t care about luxury and stunning and all that, I definitely put a lot of value in sort of like financial liberation.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: You know, I want to be in a place where I can do whatever I want to do, and I don’t have to think about what impact is that gonna have on me or on my family and, you know, our ability to navigate in the world and have all of our needs met. So, you know, earning is certainly a big part of everything.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: More so, I just — I kind of follow the wins of curiosity. I mean, I think that’s one of the reasons that I really enjoy the role of CEO is because on any given day, week, month, what I have to focus on can be totally different. And as the company kind of grows through different phases where you start as like, all right, this is like a five-person, little, you know, mini clan. And now it’s like a small village. And then the next level is sort of like, it’s a small town. And then eventually you’ve got a city. You know, the challenges of continuing to deliver excellence and continuing to maintain sort of, you know, incredible organization within all of that are very different. So, you know, when I think about what the future is for me, you know, again, it’s, I’m going to sort of follow the winds of what my curiosity pushes me towards.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: But I think the thing that I am I’m enjoying and relishing in a lot more than I thought I would is the cultural side of what we’ve built. You know, this company was founded by three, you know, Black men. Our leadership team is 80% people of color. Our company overall is almost 90% BIPOC, and to a certain extent, there’s times that I take that for granted.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: But the more we grow, you know, I think the more I want to lean into not only continuing to curate an environment that, you know, not only attracts incredible talent but attract attracts people who felt like they weren’t able to bring their full self to the table in previous roles. But also now, like, you know, yelling that story.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: We hired recently a woman named Folashade, a Nigerian woman, as our VP of Engineering. And, you know, I remember telling Kenny, our CTO, I was like, look, we need to make sure our engineering team is not only diverse from a — you know, racial standpoint. We need to make sure we have a lot of women. And that’s because it’s an area that traditionally doesn’t see women. And so, you know, I posted on LinkedIn about her starting, and obviously, it’s like, hey, this person is incredible. She’s got, you know, Nike, Lyft — crazy background. But what was most exciting for me and what I had the most joy from was here’s a young Black woman who now, you know, little Black girls and even Black women who are in other careers and thinking about shifting can now see themselves represented, right. And represented by somebody who brings her full self to the table.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, I think as the company grows, obviously, you know, priority number one is always make sure you’re delivering business outcomes. Otherwise, none of this matters, but I think really trying to be intentional about shining more of a light on all of the awesome people who we’ve brought in, who now can kind of be their full selves.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So back to the earlier conversation about breaking stereotypes, I think the way to do it is just to have such a volume of people who maybe fit some sort of stereotypical mold but who are just great at what they do. You know, if you look at the vision statement of our company, it basically says, you know, trading collectibles is cool, but the real reason this company exists is to inspire, develop, and support the next generation of underrepresented and undervalued, you know, creators, innovators, and entrepreneurs.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: And the shorter version of that is find people who are incredibly talented, but who are kind of outside of, you know, the majority group, help sharpen and hone their professional skills while they’re here, but also build up their confidence to then go back out in the world in whatever they’re gonna do. Whether it’s all right, I wanna go work for a fan company. I wanna start my own company. I wanna start a nonprofit and be like, “I am great, and I know I’m great.” And I’m gonna go be my great self so that yeah, more people who look like me and who are questioning, man, can I be competent? Can I play in these circles because of the stereotypes or lack of rep representation I’ve seen? It’s like, oh, nah, they’re all wearing J’s and t-shirts, you know, and like those guys have a super like, successful startup, like, okay. Like, I guess that is an acceptable form of bringing yourself to the table in this world.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: So, I think, yeah, just continuing to push on that and being more intentional about that is probably the near future. And then, you know, anything out past two or three years, who knows?

Nigel Prentice: And, and listen, I love how, when I ask you about what’s the next summit, your answer to that was it’s about the people that I’m working with and working for. You being a servant leader, is clear, and the way you answered it in that way.

Nigel Prentice: And I also love how you always bring almost everything back to excellence. As we wrap up, listen, man, this has been a far-ranging conversation. I really hope that you’ve enjoyed it as much as I have. I’m gonna end on one of the words that you said, you know, “don’t put the money over the people.” That’s a jewel right there. Mbiyimoh, thank you for being my guest today.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Man, thank you guys for having me. This was an incredible conversation. And yeah, thank you guys just for being a part of my life. I have incredibly fond memories of my time here, so it’s just been awesome to come back here to spend time with you guys and to relive all this stuff.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: You know, if I talk about it too much, I’ll probably get a little emotional. But again, thank you for having me, and thank you for everything you’re doing, not only with the podcast but with the diversity inclusion work that you guys have really driven and driven with intentionality over the past couple years. It’s an honor to be a part of it.

Nigel Prentice: I appreciate that, man. And by the way, this is not just goodbye. This is just; I’ll see you next time.

Mbiyimoh Ghogomu: Absolutely.

Nigel Prentice: Thank you for listening to It’s about time. I’d like to thank Alisha Moore [Padolsky], our producer, and David Avila, our audio engineer. And thanks to the entire Racial Equity in Design workstream here at IBM for making this possible. Everyone, be safe and be well.