Coffee With: Awara Mendy Adeagbo Of Collective Health

Awara Mendy Adeagbo
Location: Menlo Park, CA
Job: Client Success Manager, Collective Health
Education: B.A. in Government, Harvard University; MBA, Stanford Graduate School of Business
Twitter: @iamawara

What was your first job – and how did you get it?

I started my career as a management consultant at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG). Even though I’ve always been passionate about social impact, I thought that developing some solid business and strategy skills first would be useful.

Getting the job wasn’t easy. When I applied for a summer internship at BCG as a college junior, I didn’t get an offer. Although I was extremely disappointed, I asked all of my interviewers for feedback and dedicated the next several months to doing practice interviews with anyone I could find. When I applied again as a senior, I got a full-time offer.

Tell us about your job now.

I’ve always been really interested in health and wellness. After business school, I worked at a digital health startup before joining my current company, Collective Health. We’re a health insurance services platform whose mission is to change the way healthcare works in this country. As a Client Success Manager, I help my clients – different employers from around the country – offer better health insurance and benefits to their employees. I have a set of clients I work with to implement and manage our services.

My days tend to be a mix of meetings. I have regular weekly check-ins with each of my clients by phone or in person, to better understand their needs and help them resolve issues. I also hold meetings with internal teams – like product, engineering, marketing, and legal – to make sure my clients’ operations are going smoothly. It’s pretty rare to catch me sitting at my desk!

What do you wish someone had told you at the beginning of your career?

Don’t focus so much on what you should be doing. Think about what you enjoy doing. In the early years of my career, I spent a lot of time trying to check all the boxes instead of thinking critically about which boxes were actually enjoyable and fulfilling. It’s only now, in my 30s, that I’ve started to think more about my personal preferences in work and life.

Who do you look to for inspiration?

My mom and my grandmother have had the biggest influences on my professional life. They both grew up in Cape Verde – a small, developing West African country. My grandmother, who only had a third-grade education, spent her whole life taking care of those around her. Even when she could barely feed her own family, she was always making sure the neighbors’ kids had enough to eat. My mom, who raised me and my two sisters as a single mother, always made time to volunteer in our community and lend a hand to anyone around us who needed it. It’s their spirit of giving back that really instilled in me a sense of purpose and the importance of social impact.

What’s an especially memorable experience you’ve had through your job?

Last year, I had the opportunity to go to The White House for a meeting through the Let’s Move! Campaign, First Lady Michelle Obama’s anti childhood obesity initiative. I really enjoy work around the health and wellness of kids, and it was incredible to be invited to discuss the topic and my company’s work around it in such a prestigious setting.

What’s a book you recommend?

We Should All be Feminists by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I highly recommend it to men and women alike. Adichie does an amazing job of exploring what it really means to be a feminist in the 21st century. One of my favorite quotations from the book is from a section about how people use culture to make excuses for antiquated gender expectations: “Culture does not make people. People make culture. If it is true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we can and must make it our culture.”

Do you have a favorite mantra?

President Obama’s campaign slogan, “Yes we can,” which came from his 2008 New Hampshire primary victory speech. Whether we’re talking about acing a challenging interview, fixing a broken system, or helping others rise above their circumstances, it reminds me that anything is possible with hard work, determination, and hope.

Images courtesy of Awara Mendy Adeagbo