Eleven years ago, Olumuyiwa Igbalajobi left his home country of Nigeria with $100, and a scholarship offer to pursue his master’s degree in Korea.
He left home, without telling his parents, to pursue the education opportunity. Once he completed his master’s, he was offered five fully-funded PhDs – three in China, one in Korea and one in Germany.
Igbalajobi completed his PhD and then moved to Canada in 2020. That’s when things changed.
“I realized that I’ve been in the lab for 16 years as a microbiologist, but there are other things I’m passionate about,” he said.
“I started posting scholarships.”
That decision led to the creation of an online hub called Scholarships Café, which he said provides everyone with equal access to scholarship opportunities.
Igbalajobi said that he hopes to address three problems with the online scholarship portal, which also provides information on applications for academic jobs. First, he wants to improve access for those who typically have little to no access to post-secondary qualifications. Second, Scholarships Café closes the knowledge gap by providing information on the opportunities. The third is providing the support needed to submit a compelling application that increases the chance they will be awarded a scholarship.
The lack of knowledge of what’s available is a major stumbling block for young people looking to fund their post-secondary pursuits.
“Over 200 million worth of scholarships are left unclaimed in the US and Canada yearly,” he said.
“Some of the students feel like all these scholarships are for people that want to cure cancer. No, they just want to see if you have interpersonal leadership skills. Even if you have financial constraints, RBC Scotiabank gives scholarships based on financial constraint – people don’t even know.”
The Scholarships Café portal uses artificial intelligence to help match prospective applicants with financial tools, filtered by location, field and qualifications.
Validating the business model
Igbalajobi said that they first started in the Alberta Catalyzer Traction program, as they started to define their purpose and their market. That helped them conceptualize their message and putting their story out there in a way that resonated with others.
Moving into the Alberta Catalyzer Velocity program, Igbalajobi said they went about validating the business model they’d set up through the prior program.
“Coming to Velocity has really redefined the way I think about the business as well,” he said.
They’ve since supported more than 40,000 students get more than a billion dollars’ worth of scholarships. They have a following of more than 500,000 on social media.
“All of those things we’re trying to scale,” Igbalajobi said.
Now they want to turn to the impact they can have in creating access for thousands more. That includes opening doors for international students, people of colour and the Indigenous community.
“Where we go from here, for me is all about impact – social impact,” he said.
He said he wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for the scholarship he got 11 years ago to pursue his studies in Korea.
“Even with a background in microbiology, getting into personnel seems to be not related,” Igbalajobi said.
“But again, I mean, as a PhD, all this critical thinking also works in supporting students and gets them to understand the idea and talent and that ‘you can do this.’”
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