Ajayi Azubuike Reflection 

 Challenge & Selection 

 I am the cofounder and CEO of a new social entrepreneurship called USCG hair care and   extensions . USCG is a hair company that not only sells hair extensions , but also uses products as   a platform to promote breast health awareness to the population of African American women . After   finding out that African American woman face a 40 % higher mortality rate due to breast cancer than any   other racial or ethnic group , even though they are not the highest diagnosed group , my cofounder and I   wanted to do something to help lower the rate . We learned that factors like late detection , improper   follow up care , and general access to health resources were a few reasons for the high mortality rate .   We decided to create USCG and use it to spread breast health information to other black   women . This is how USCG was born , we use hair products to serve as an unconventional   avenue of exposure to inform women about breast cancer and breast health information . For every   order that is purchased from USCG , a portion of the proceeds goes to creating better access to   breast health services for African American women . As a new startup , our challenge is spreading the   importance of our message and the value of our mission not only to our consumers , but also to   investors . The hair extension industry is a billion - dollar industry , but it is also a saturated industry with   many hair extension companies already in existence . Our challenge is communicating to investors that   our product is profitable and that our unique business concept will make USCG stand out from   our competitors . 

 The tool we employed to help us with this challenge was storytelling . Storytelling is a great tool that   allows a business to convey a message by allowing your audience to emotionally connect to your topic .   When presenting statistics , especially health statistics , it is easy for people to just see a number , rather   than what the number really represents and how many people are impacted . Our business is founded   on the statistic that African American women have a 40 % higher mortality rate from breast cancer than   any other racial or ethnic group . We chose storytelling because we knew that with our audience of   mostly male investors who may not identify with the racial and ethnic group we were targeting ,   storytelling would be the best way to humanize this statistic and cause our audience to feel deeper   empathy for the issue we were presenting . 

 Application 

 When pitching our business concept to investors we were often hounded with medical questions about   breast cancer , the connection of hair and breast cancer , or about the hair industry in general , rather   than questions about our main goal of decreasing the mortality rate for African American women   through awareness . We realized we were not connecting our audience to our main point and how our   product could solve it . 

 We went on the search for a story that would engage our audience of investors and paint our company   to be a cause that they should invest in . While executing pop up shops for our company at several   historically black colleges , we asked our customers for stories about how breast cancer has impacted   their families that we could share . We spoke to a girl , who I will refer to as Michelle for the purposes of 

 this assignment . Michelle is a biracial , mixed with black and white , 20 something year old in college .   Michelle knew that breast health was so important since breast cancer is a disease that has plagued her   family . Michelle ’s white grandmother on one side of her family and African American grandmother on   the other side of her family were both diagnosed with breast cancer when she was a little girl .   Unfortunately , only one of her grandmothers who was diagnosed survived , and that was her white   grandmother . Her African American grandmother lost her battle with breast cancer because of late   detection . 

 After hearing this story and getting permission form Michelle to share it , whenever we had the   opportunity to present our business concept we lead with this story instead of statistics . When   audiences heard about how Michelle , one woman with family members from two different races was so   greatly affected by the disparity in breast cancer mortality rates , audiences immediately payed attention   and were able to connect with the issue much quicker than when we lead conversations with statistics .   Follow up questions from our audience were geared more towards what could be done to fix this issue   so that less African American women would die from breast cancer , which set us up to continue pitching   our product that creates breast cancer awareness . 

 Insight & Approach 

 We realized that story telling was the best way to get our audience to pay attention to the most   important aspect of our business concept . We saw that story telling can be so powerful in connecting   audiences to the larger purpose . This was a grounding reminder to us about the core of our company ’s   mission .   It also showed us it is important to really consider design tools in all aspects of our company   even when it comes to how to pitch it to investors . 

 Although the storytelling tool was a very successful tool for the challenge we faced , another tool that we   could utilize in conjunction with story telling is visualization . This tool could further enhance our story by   making our it even more tangible for audiences to understand . We could use pictures of Michelle ’s   grandmothers to show our audience when telling the story . Another mode of visualization we could use   would be video , utilizing Michelle ’s voice to tell her own families story . Visualization is a wonderful way   to make our story more concrete for our audience and create a lasting visual impression on them . 


EMAIL: 
ID_NUM: 
NAME_STUDENT: Ajayi Azubuike
PHONE_NUM: 
STREET_ADDRESS: 
URL_PERSONAL: 
USERNAME: 

### Task: You are a PII (Personal Identity Information) Detection. Given a essays written by students, you have to identify ONLY the following:
NAME_STUDENT - The full or partial name of a student that is not necessarily the author of the essay. This excludes instructors, authors, and other person names.
EMAIL - A student’s email address.
USERNAME - A student's username on any platform.
ID_NUM - A number or sequence of characters that could be used to identify a student, such as a student ID or a social security number.
PHONE_NUM - A phone number associated with a student.
URL_PERSONAL - A URL that might be used to identify a student.
STREET_ADDRESS - A full or partial street address that is associated with the student, such as their home address.
### Input: Ajayi Azubuike Reflection 

 Challenge & Selection 

 I am the cofounder and CEO of a new social entrepreneurship called USCG hair care and   extensions . USCG is a hair company that not only sells hair extensions , but also uses products as   a platform to promote breast health awareness to the population of African American women . After   finding out that African American woman face a 40 % higher mortality rate due to breast cancer than any   other racial or ethnic group , even though they are not the highest diagnosed group , my cofounder and I   wanted to do something to help lower the rate . We learned that factors like late detection , improper   follow up care , and general access to health resources were a few reasons for the high mortality rate .   We decided to create USCG and use it to spread breast health information to other black   women . This is how USCG was born , we use hair products to serve as an unconventional   avenue of exposure to inform women about breast cancer and breast health information . For every   order that is purchased from USCG , a portion of the proceeds goes to creating better access to   breast health services for African American women . As a new startup , our challenge is spreading the   importance of our message and the value of our mission not only to our consumers , but also to   investors . The hair extension industry is a billion - dollar industry , but it is also a saturated industry with   many hair extension companies already in existence . Our challenge is communicating to investors that   our product is profitable and that our unique business concept will make USCG stand out from   our competitors . 

 The tool we employed to help us with this challenge was storytelling . Storytelling is a great tool that   allows a business to convey a message by allowing your audience to emotionally connect to your topic .   When presenting statistics , especially health statistics , it is easy for people to just see a number , rather   than what the number really represents and how many people are impacted . Our business is founded   on the statistic that African American women have a 40 % higher mortality rate from breast cancer than   any other racial or ethnic group . We chose storytelling because we knew that with our audience of   mostly male investors who may not identify with the racial and ethnic group we were targeting ,   storytelling would be the best way to humanize this statistic and cause our audience to feel deeper   empathy for the issue we were presenting . 

 Application 

 When pitching our business concept to investors we were often hounded with medical questions about   breast cancer , the connection of hair and breast cancer , or about the hair industry in general , rather   than questions about our main goal of decreasing the mortality rate for African American women   through awareness . We realized we were not connecting our audience to our main point and how our   product could solve it . 

 We went on the search for a story that would engage our audience of investors and paint our company   to be a cause that they should invest in . While executing pop up shops for our company at several   historically black colleges , we asked our customers for stories about how breast cancer has impacted   their families that we could share . We spoke to a girl , who I will refer to as Michelle for the purposes of 

 this assignment . Michelle is a biracial , mixed with black and white , 20 something year old in college .   Michelle knew that breast health was so important since breast cancer is a disease that has plagued her   family . Michelle ’s white grandmother on one side of her family and African American grandmother on   the other side of her family were both diagnosed with breast cancer when she was a little girl .   Unfortunately , only one of her grandmothers who was diagnosed survived , and that was her white   grandmother . Her African American grandmother lost her battle with breast cancer because of late   detection . 

 After hearing this story and getting permission form Michelle to share it , whenever we had the   opportunity to present our business concept we lead with this story instead of statistics . When   audiences heard about how Michelle , one woman with family members from two different races was so   greatly affected by the disparity in breast cancer mortality rates , audiences immediately payed attention   and were able to connect with the issue much quicker than when we lead conversations with statistics .   Follow up questions from our audience were geared more towards what could be done to fix this issue   so that less African American women would die from breast cancer , which set us up to continue pitching   our product that creates breast cancer awareness . 

 Insight & Approach 

 We realized that story telling was the best way to get our audience to pay attention to the most   important aspect of our business concept . We saw that story telling can be so powerful in connecting   audiences to the larger purpose . This was a grounding reminder to us about the core of our company ’s   mission .   It also showed us it is important to really consider design tools in all aspects of our company   even when it comes to how to pitch it to investors . 

 Although the storytelling tool was a very successful tool for the challenge we faced , another tool that we   could utilize in conjunction with story telling is visualization . This tool could further enhance our story by   making our it even more tangible for audiences to understand . We could use pictures of Michelle ’s   grandmothers to show our audience when telling the story . Another mode of visualization we could use   would be video , utilizing Michelle ’s voice to tell her own families story . Visualization is a wonderful way   to make our story more concrete for our audience and create a lasting visual impression on them .
### Output: 