In her Downtown Pittsburgh apartment, Ozioma Aniagu radiates excitement as she prepares to graduate from Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business.
With her imminent achievement, Aniagu is already setting her sights on a new mission: making West African cuisine more accessible to a global audience.
Her box braids are styled in a bun secured by a wax print scarf, and she wears a timeless outfit: a black shirt paired with ’90s-style denim.
Her tortoiseshell frames complement her skin tone, and her gaze exudes confidence.
According to triblive.com, Aniagu graduated with her second master’s degree on Saturday and has completed her capstone in technical product management, with the goal of making African cuisine more accessible. She is developing consumer products that automate the cooking of African American and African food staples.
Staples of West African cuisine include Jollof rice — rice made with tomatoes, chilies, onions, ginger and other spices — fufu, a dough usually made from cassava, and Thieboudienne of Senegal, a stew with tomato sauce, rice, fish and vegetables.
A unique product
Aniagu said her machine would also assist frequent consumers of the food and reduce cooking time. She’s currently in the patent process, so she didn’t get into specifics about her product.
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“Many people would say, ‘Yeah, I’ve heard about it, but I’ve not eaten it.’ I want to bring the cuisine to the entire world, making it very simple and easy to prepare,” she said. “People might know about your culture or a particular food, but like Jollof rice, there are so many things incorporated in cooking it that nobody wants to even try.”
Her concentration is in strategy, marketing, entrepreneurship and artificial intelligence. Reflecting on the past two years in the program, she said she would make the same decision all over again.
“I am Tepper all the way,” Aniagu said, though Carnegie Mellon University was not initially on her radar. “When I started to dig deeper and learned more about Tepper, that is what I truly needed because of the small, authentic community.”
For the past two years, Aniagu has been fully immersed in her studies. Aniagu is Igbo, a native of the eastern region of Nigeria. She began working at a young age as an intelligence analyst at the Department of State Services in Nigeria, similar to the United States FBI. Then she went to Montreal to pursue her first master’s degree in software engineering.
She talks about how cuisines like Asian, European and Latin American are understandable and accessible without barriers. Quick versions are sold in grocery stores and dishes are served at restaurants. But that is not always the case for African cuisine — there is no streamlined process, she said, and to most people outside the diaspora, the cuisine may remain a mystery.
“If there’s anything that would remove that burden from human beings, to open their particular cuisine to other cultures and people who are interested in trying so many new things and people like my husband, who eats it three or four times a week to save time. If I can take away that pressure, that’s wonderful,” Aniagu said.
“Ozi brings a sense of mission, not only of making delicious West African food accessible to home cooks but even more so, of bringing pieces of shared culture into our homes,” said Meredith Meyer Grelli, assistant professor of entrepreneurship and entrepreneur in residence at Tepper.
“She is approaching entrepreneurship in the way of a great innovator, embracing an underserved segment of the market that she knows deeply well … that investors have historically overlooked. She knows that food is one of the most impactful ways we build identity, connections and understanding. Ozi is building a product and company that will help people build these most fundamental human connections.”
‘I need that independence’
Aniagu is one of seven siblings. Growing up, she saw her parents have multiple streams of income through side businesses. She admired the freedom and autonomy that came with that.
“I need that independence. Being an entrepreneur is not about calling the shots. I think it is more about learning and inspiring other people … other Black women that you can do it, you can be whoever you want to be as long as you apply yourself,” she said.
Aniagu said entrepreneurship is quite challenging. “There’s no easy way to say it, but things will always be hard. But if you take it one step at a time, it will work out.”
Self-motivation and time management are the most important things, she said. “Be your own best motivation,” she said.
She loves her to-do list, journaling, and reflecting at the end of the day, and since starting her program, she has developed a new affinity for coffee. When things get really tough, she leans on the support system of her husband, family, friends and even some of her cohort members.
“I have no doubt that she will continue to inspire and empower those around her long after graduation,” said Henry Thomas, a fellow cohort member. “She has inspired me from the moment we met in the first mini-semester … she embodies the importance of using one’s skills and platform to create new opportunities within her immediate community.”
When she thinks about all the risks she has taken, from leaving home to transitioning careers, it’s all about trusting the process and trusting yourself, she wouldn’t change a thing.
“Whoever you think you are, is who you are. That is how I look at this world, if you are inspired to do something, you have to be your biggest champion, at least 80%. If it is your dream, you must rise to the occasion,” she said.
