Black History Month Highlight: Ifedayo Omotunde, AB '21

Image courtesy of Omotunde’s LinkedIn

Ifedayo Omotunde, AB ’21

*This interview has been condensed for clarity.

I'm a senior at Harvard studying neuroscience, I'm on the MBB track of mind, brain, and behavior. And I'm getting a secondary in Slavic languages and literatures. 

“I grew up in a very liberal household, but I also went to school with conservatives like my neighbors we're all conservative. I grew up knowing both perspectives.”

I've been really privileged. I grew up in North Dakota. The Midwest, it's obviously very conservative where I grew up, I think  Trump won by like 70%. I think I was really blessed that my mother's a very big democrat. I grew up in a very liberal household, but I also went to school with conservatives like my neighbors we're all conservative. I grew up knowing both perspectives. So, yeah, I grew up watching Rachel Maddow, but when I would go to school, you kind of get to understand the struggle of people who are Republicans. You don't really realize why certain people act a certain way until you understand what they're going through. For republicans or for the people growing up around me it was like, they cared about their farms and they cared about the communities, and they cared about their values. And that was something that bled into their belief system, and family’s very big, so they've learned from their parents who learn from their grandparents and learn from their parents. And when you start understanding why certain people think a certain way. That's the only way to truly understand. Truly looked at a fact, or an opinion, and then see why does someone believe that. Why does someone else believe that. And what do I personally believe, and then try to synthesize your own opinion from it, as opposed to certain people who just see the R or see the D behind the candidates name and immediately vote for them.

“So growing up in the Midwest where all these things directly impacted people's lives I've gotten a greater appreciation that statistics and numbers can't tell you everything.”

I would say that growing up inside this region, that politics directly impacts people's lives and their livelihoods. That you start to realize that pretty much everything comes down to human beings. When you get a report, the government released a farm report, or about how the economy's doing a lot of people think of these unemployment, as like a number. It's a 15% unemployment rate for 10% unemployment rate, but they don't realize that they're actually people behind it. These numbers are their lives essentially all wrapped in one little package. And that everyone has their own situation so some people might be jobless because they aren't particularly looking for a job. Some people might be jealous just got laid off. Some might be in between jobs.

And you can't just paint this big picture of an entire group of people using one statistic. So growing up in the Midwest where all these things directly impacted people's lives I've gotten a greater appreciation that statistics and numbers can't tell you everything. It's a matter of knowing what people are going through, talking to them, and truly getting an overall picture of who they are.

I would say, Harvard does do a really good job of kind of pushing the idea of of critical thinking, of making your own decisions.

Also things like empathy and simple caring about each other, would go a long way in society. It's a common experience for people to have. I would say personally I've kind of figured that if someone isn't being nice for instance, someone doesn't have empathy, I probably don't want to hang around with them anyway. So you can have your own decision, who you want to associate with. But I think that it's a common experience. I don't think I've ever met anyone who's had a problem with kind of choosing their own path or their own people that they want to hang around with. I definitely have had experiences where like maybe I'll have to check myself make sure that I'm being more sensitive to someone, or understanding someone's idea, or their ideology better. And I think that's just something that people will always need to learn.

My background is neuroscience so obviously I will be better at projects that deal with biology more. There are lot’s of smart people at Harvard. And a lot of them can come up with really great ideas, but they can’t necessarily make a model to represent how much they're going to earn over 20 years. So, that is needed in the community. I know that with my skill set of knowing biology, as well as finance that I could work inside that role. And it's just something that I really liked because biotech, and these new therapies for different diseases are coming out. It's all super fascinating it's all really meaningful work. If you meet any scientist working on drug discovery or something like that. They all really enjoy their jobs and they all are really passionate about whatever they're working on. And I think that's something that really needs to be to be encouraged. And while I don't think I could do a research job where I'm just pipetting all day and just running tests all day for one drug. I do think people who do enjoy doing that have the support that they can do that freely as much as they want. And that's something that I'm super interested in.

I am in the process of joining a biotech startup, and then hopefully in the future I'll go to business school, and hopefully start a VC firm of my own in North Dakota, where I can help my community. The Midwest is such a great place.

It's the heartland of the nation. It provides you with all your food. North Dakota: corn, wheat, soybeans everything right. But as such an important part of our nation, when you think of innovation, or you think of new technologies, you don't typically think of the Midwest its the coasts. But let's say you are someone from MIT. You really know how to have to perform precision agriculture, using unmanned aerial vehicles to look at a field, and see what parts of the field are maybe under-watered, over-watered, the different soil types, and then track, find a way to have a tractor, very intelligently delivered the fertilizers in the correct way. It's hard for people on the coast to understand that those issues. It's something that happens every day in the Midwest so I know, local universities like UMD NDSU they have very big precision agriculture and the Midwest unmanned air vehicles, is a very large industry.

But when you think of these areas you don't typically think of that because a lot of these places do not have access to the capital to get a startup off the ground so like a lot of great talent from the universities who might have a great idea. They would either leave, or they won’t pursue that idea because how do you find startup capital to create a startup in North Dakota? How are you going to run the start up? You may not have access to a wealth of other startups to work off and things like that. So, the reason why I want to go ahead to the Midwest is because Boston already has everything it needs and Silicon Valley already has everything it needs but the Midwest doesn't have everything needed so I want to help out my community. 

Ifedayo Omotunde

AB 2021 | Neuroscience | Slavic languages and literature

Interviewed and Compiled by Maliha Mohiuddin