Pedigree’s New Power
Why AI will cause a reliance on status
Melanie (Akwule) Nnogo was a part-time MBA student at Haas in 2016 when police officers shot and killed Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, both Black men, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and the metropolitan area of St. Paul, Minnesota, respectively.
As mass protests erupted, Nnogo knew she wanted to do something. “I was working at General Electric at the time,” she says. “I had climbed the corporate ladder, but I’d reached a plateau and was feeling unfulfilled.”
She wanted to help Black-owned businesses grow. “I learned that a lot of the businesses I wanted to support were broken and needed consulting, coaching, and resources,” she says. So while earning her MBA, Nnogo founded MINWO Inc., which matches Black startup founders with organizations that aim to support and develop Black-owned businesses.
“Our goal is to essentially be the foundation or the operating system for economic or entrepreneur support organizations,” she says. MINWO offers a comprehensive platform for these organizations to distribute critical information and monitor program outcomes.
Recently, Nnogo moved most of her operations to Lagos, Nigeria, to explore the African market. “I tell my team that no matter what position you’re working in for a startup, you should feel like you’re getting your MBA. You might be writing code, but understanding the business—understanding the direction and our finances and how a conversation that you have with someone on the street might impact the business positively—is extremely important.”
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