Celebrating Ndi-Igbo

  Jared Erondu is a man of many talents. First and foremost, he is a designer, but he is also a startup advisor, a prolific writer and a talented photographer. He has managed to uniquely set himself apart in the design and tech industries, starting with his role as creative director during the early days of Teespring. He has worked with companies like MIT, Sparrow Mail, Omada Health, Treehouse and Y Combinator, just to name a few. Jared has served as a mentor to some of the most prestigious venture capital firms, including Andreessen Horowitz and Greylock Partners. He is wrapping up the building of a design community tool called Playbook. The one place for all the best design thinking, Playbook organizes meaningful questions from the design community, also giving designers a simple way to respond. He is currently the VP of design at Lattice.  Sources: Techie Projects

One to Watch MIT graduate student Chidube Ezeozue is a first class electrical engineering graduate of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He is currently pursuing dual master’s degrees in MIT’s Technology and Policy Program and in electrical engineering and computer science. Frustrated by his nation’s erratic electrical grid, Chidube created an app, with his brother, that crowdsources information about Nigerian power outages. With the app, called NepaSituation, people living in Nigeria can report outages. This data, when merged into an algorithm developed by Ezeozue, can help Nigerians predict when power outages may strike their neighborhoods, and how long those outages might last. After graduating from MIT in June, Ezeozue will remain in Cambridge, working as a software engineer for Google. Read More: MITNews - Power to the people BellaNaija - BN Trailblazers & Tastemakers (Full Interview) Sources: Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, Bella Naija