Fellow Aftergrad: Erikan Obotetukudo
Hypequeen from the Heavens, Aspiring Doctor turned Finance Baddie, Investing in the Next 100 Years, and much more
Welcome to Fellow Aftergrads, a collection of personal profiles in which we ask a series of questions to students, recent grads, working professionals, retirees, and other humans to highlight their uniqueness in life, personality, and career.
The transition from high school to college can be incredibly uncomfortable. And still, the transition from college to the real world is abrupt, discombobulating, and not talked about nearly enough — which is why we invited Erikan Obotetukudo to share a few moments, milestones, and memories from her aftergrad journey.
Erikan Obotetukudo is the Founder and CIO of Audacity, a cultural asset management firm investing in multi-trillion dollar value chains worldwide. By age 30, she sold $1M dollars worth of digital art in 1 minute, built a career portfolio of startups valued at over $7B, and became the youngest and first Black person to join the board of the Henry Kravis Leadership Institute. She’s also the Co-Founder and President of Crypto for Black Economic Empowerment (CBEE). CBEE is an ecosystem and community of black/African crypto founders, investors, and artists across 20 countries building the new internet. Her superpower is that she’s a polymath and understands communities that express themselves through English, Spanish, Portuguese, art, music, sports, religion, and other facets of culture. Erikan’s mission is to invest in the next 100 years.
It’s our pleasure to introduce fellow aftergrad Erikan Obotetukudo.
👼🏾 YOUNG DREAM
I wanted to be a doctor when I was growing up, specifically an obstetrician so I could deliver babies.
🏡 CHILDHOOD HOME
I grew up in Rancho Cucamonga, California. That’s where I called home. It’s also the city that was featured in the movie Next Friday where one of the characters moved to, so it’s pretty popular for that reason. I also called Nigeria, a country in West Africa, home.
🤸🏾 FAVORITE HOBBIES AS A KID
Gymnastics. Making up songs in fake Spanish. Playing the clarinet. Spending time with family.
🏆 HIGH SCHOOL SUPERLATIVE
Me and Aaliyah are the same person in my head. She’s just like effortlessly too cool for school. But I was always like super whatever about the things people would say about me. And it’s so funny now because it’s so true today, but I was voted most likely to succeed. And I didn’t even think that was a big deal at the time, but I remember everybody was so hot and bothered about who won, and everybody would tell me that I was gonna be something, and I was just like… okay.
📺 FAVORITE THINGS TO CONSUME AS A YOUNG PERSON
Aaliyah! Aaliyah! Aaliyah! MTV. 106 & Park. BET. Every early 2000s hip hop music video. Hey Arnold. Seinfeld. I Love Lucy. The Jeffersons. I was just always into stuff that was funny, but I was never much of a reader. I was actually really intimidated by reading, and thought I was dumb for a very a long time because of this. But I did occasionally flip through Teen Vogue and dream of becoming a fashion girly for a quick second. But I mostly consumed television and music. Jazz music. Classical music. Hip hop and R&B.
🎓 ALMA MATER
I graduated from Claremont McKenna College in 2013 with a degree in Human Biology. And I really should’ve minored in Spanish. Not sure what I was thinking.
🧑🏾💼 FIRST JOB AFTER COLLEGE
I had an internship in San Francisco where I was doing HIV and AIDS research. My main responsibility was to help create advertising commercials for the drug PrEP.
❤️🩹 HEALING & UNLEARNING
I was afraid to get older. I didn’t know that. I’ve always been life of the party, good vibes, good energy, a jokester. But I’m becoming more introverted. I’m becoming more still, more gentle. I don’t want to speak that much. And I’ve always struggled with identity — be it as a woman, a black person, an African, an immigrant, or being smart or not. And for a little while, my profession in the United States really wanted to see me as a black woman, and I have reverence for that, and I respect that. But there’s a whole way of expressing myself that’s rooted in my Africaness, which therein lies a conversation about what’s black, what’s African, are they not the same? But at the end of the day, in this next era of me, I really want people to think that Erikan equals African.
🌍 FAVORITE CITY
The top list is Dakar, Senegal; Paris, France; Barcelona, Spain; Accra, Ghana. And if it’s a city in the United States, then Los Angeles.
🤩 PROUD MOMENT
I’ve been practicing being proud of myself daily. I’m proud of myself for allowing myself to grieve over the last two years. I lost a lot of people. And for two years, I didn’t feel it. I didn’t feel all the things I needed to feel. And this year, I’ve really let myself let out some big, burly cries.
🤯 BIG MISTAKE
Not letting that NFL baller scoop me up. That’s mistake number one. You know when you see Ciara and Russell, and you think to yourself that could’ve been you? Mistake number two was not being open to love as soon as I could’ve been. It took me a really long time to accept worthiness of love and to be able to receive love. To feel that I could be loved in the ways that I really desired. To feel that I could express it in the ways that I need and not feel rejected. To really experience deep intimacy with myself and others.
🪜 CAREER ADVICE
The first thought is the thought. Your intuition is always going to be your soulmate. And it’ll feel very like huh, what, how in the earliest stages of whatever you might be doing or pursuing or creating because you don’t know what’s up from down or left from right.
👁 FIGURES OF WISDOM AND INSPIRATION
My Mount Rushmore for wisdom and inspiration consists of Mister Rogers, Josephine Baker, Harriet Tubman, Beyonce, Henrietta Lax, and my mom and dad.
📚 GOOD READS
My number one book is Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good by Adrienne Maree Brown who’s just like an intergalatic genius. And it’s essentially about the politics of feeling good and how you can use pleasure and erousal and sexuality and sensuality to actually inspire radical change.
📝 BUCKET LIST
I want to do a dance auditon for the Royal Family Dance Crew.
♾ LEGACY
When I think about legacy, I’ve entertained the idea of giving my brain to science when I pass. And this sounds a little not so cool, but I effectively want to institutionalize my brain so that the legacy that I’m passing down to future generations or the asset that creates things from the intellegence that’s inside the meet of my brain can’t be exploited by any pharmeceutical company unless they come through our company. So essentially, the company owns and protects my brain into perpetuity. I’m also starting to think about names on buildings in the traditional sense. So I’m curious to see about effectively having my family’s name on a few buildings in the United States, particularly given that my name is very African.
Connect with Erikan on LinkedIn or follow her on Instagram.
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