#MightyAfrican Career Related Advice, via Jobberman Feature

Sometime in Q1 2025, my work colleague Richard Mawuko Duttey told me about Jobberman doing features on people around work, etc. He is a big fan of Jobberman, he pretty much got to work for Kosmos Innovation Center thanks to this African built workforce platform. I joined him one fine day to Jobberman's office, hidden somewhere in the central parts of Accra where their comms team recorded a video. I am honored to have been featured by Jobberman in their Time With The Experts series.

I remember Jobberman's early years. I was following them from the Bay Area when it was founded in August 2009 by Olalekan Olude, Ayodeji Adewunmi and Opeyemi Awoyemi in their dormitory in Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife to help connect people looking for jobs with companies hiring. I was at Stanford at the time and Museke, the startup I co-founded was more than 2 years old. Many years on, Jobberman thrives and has more than 30 employees in Ghana alone. They have done well. 
In this interview, I shared three major shifts I foresees in my industry—particularly how entrepreneurs will need to develop viable products that adapt to an ever-evolving cultural landscape.  I also challenged common misconceptions, noting that managers aren’t necessarily leaders and don't have all the answers. I stated: "They need to be able to work with people to go the way—not just knowing, showing, and going the way." I also mentioned the core skills essential for success in his field: strong documentation, clear communication, and effective reporting.

Watch the full interview to gain deeper insights into my career journey.

AI has become part and parcel of our lives and it is growing. Mawuko is an AI guru. I am still improving my prompt engineering skills. Thanks to AI, I used TurboScribe to transcribe this video that Jobberman posted on Linkedin.

Here it goes, after correcting some mistakes by the robot. 

My name is Ato Ulzen-Appiah. I come from Elmina. I grew up in Kumasi. I live in Accra. I care a lot about Ghana and I love Africa. Professionally, I am the director of the GhanaThink Foundation and I am also the Entrepreneurship Development Specialist at the Kosmos Innovation Center.

I went to PRESEC and studied Science and knew I wanted to do engineering for my first degree. I ended up doing Civil Engineering at MIT but whilst I was doing my undergrad, I realized that I had a lot of interest in lots of different things that were not engineering per se, especially in technology and business. After I was done with my first degree, I went to Stanford to do a Master's Degree in Construction Engineering Management and whilst doing this Master's, it dawned on me that I don't really want to spend my life doing just civil engineering. I heard that Google was the top company to work for in the world so I started thinking about “how can I go and work at Google?” My first thought was I can go to Google and work with their building team or their facilities team. Later on, as I was using more and more Google products, I was thinking about product development or product management; that I could actually join Google and manage one of their products.

A year or so after, I realized that Google had started establishing more of a presence on the African continent. So I applied to join Google and I felt I was a very strong candidate for the role that I applied for. I applied for a business development role at Google to be with the Ghana office. I didn't get that role but the interesting thing is because of the kind of work that I had done in the past, they actually recommended me for another role. So I basically moved to Ghana with Google as a program manager focusing on outreach and developer relations. In that role, I was overseeing outreach to different communities in Sub-Saharan Africa, incubators, developer groups, universities, students; basically people who work with digital tools. A lot of the people in these communities were young people.

I've always been interested in young people. I am interested in youth empowerment, helping young people become great. Since this role in Google, I've always said that I work at the intersection of youth and tech, especially digital. So that's what I've mostly done within my career.

Eventually after Google, I ended up working for a tech company in Ghana called Rancard where I was a product and a project manager. So I've always been interested in the digital space and I've continued to parlay that into the work that I've done. I've done a lot of work mentoring and coaching startups that are especially tech and that helped me end up in the current role that I'm in at Kosmos Innovation Center.

At the Kosmos Innovation Center, I'm an entrepreneurship development specialist. I basically manage our entrepreneurship training program where we transform, invest and support young entrepreneurs who are building solutions in the aggregate value chain. When I was doing my undergrad, I joined a group of young Ghanaians….. 

It was an online group for young Ghanaians….. Time to go and watch the full video if you are yet to 😄