Ifeoma Ozoma is a builder.
She built The Tech Worker Handbook and consulting firm Earthseedto guide and support whistleblowers at technology companies to speak out about wrongdoings or abuse.
She's been instrumental in pushing policies to protect tech workers against prohibitive nondisclosure agreements and was included as a TIME100 Next honoree this year.
Recently, though, she's used those building skills in a more literal way.
"I had to build a stanchion for dairy goats," she said. "I learned how to use a circular saw and a jigsaw for the first time. I'm just, like, figuring things out."
Ozoma lives on a homestead in Santa Fe. It may seem like a radical change for someone who went to Yale University and worked for massive technology companies like Google, Facebook and Pinterest in Washington, D.C., and the Bay Area. But for Ozoma, life in New Mexico makes sense.
She grew up in Anchorage, Alaska, and visited New Mexico while working at Facebook. That visit, and a connection with one of her elementary school teachers who, she said, spends half the year in Santa Fe, made her want to leave the Bay Area for the Land of Enchantment.
"Coming here, I felt like this is so similar to Anchorage, just the pace of life and people's general attitudes," Ozoma said. "That had been what I'd been looking for. I've never been a city person."
Yet, cities are where her advocacy work started. It stems from her experience working for a tech company in the Bay Area. There, she realized that she was being paid less than half of a white male colleague doing the same work. So, she sought change.
"I did all of the things you're told to do," Ozoma said. "Go to HR, go to your manager, go to your manager's manager."
She ended up hiring a lawyer. When she did that, she said that she was "swiftly pushed out of the company."
In order to keep her health insurance, the company made her sign a nondisclosure agreement. She signed the agreement, but a few months later Ozoma decided to break the NDA and speak out about what happened. Once she did, a plethora of similar stories emerged.
"I just heard from so many people," Ozoma said. "I knew my story wasn't unique, but the number of people I heard from was crushing to me."
Building The Tech Worker Handbook and Earthseed came from this experience.
"I wanted to figure out how I could apply my experience working with colleagues, my experience working with lawyers and my experience working with public policy issues and with legislators to the needs that I was seeing and hearing from other people who had been in my position," Ozoma said.
Albuquerque Business First recently chatted with Ozoma about workers' rights advocacy, her journey to New Mexico and how living in the Land of Enchantment has inspired her work.
The interview was edited for brevity and clarity.
Albuquerque Business First: Do you find that moving to New Mexico has helped you do your work better, or do it differently?
Ifeoma Ozoma: Oh my God, in like every way. I just love living here so much. I think that a lot of my work is rooted and grounded in making it possible, whatever that means, for people to live lives that they find joyful and meaningful. Every single day waking up here I'm happy. Even if there's some disaster or something going on, like a roof leak or a chicken that's sick or whatever else is going on at home or even with my work, there's just a sense of grounding.
There's also a sense of community that I feel here, even moving here full time in the midst of a pandemic, that I never felt in the Bay Area and I didn't really feel in D.C. My work is so meaningful and important to me, and it's what's made it possible for me to be here, but I've never had a conversation here with someone where the first thing that comes up, even the first 10 things, is like, 'What do you do? Where do you work?' That's just not a conversation that I've found here. People are more interested, and I'm more interested, in what people do for fun and what people enjoy about their lives.
What do you like to do for fun? What do you enjoy about your life? A lot of gardening. A lot of animal husbandry. I have a bunch of chickens. I have rabbits. I'm getting three dairy goats soon from a farmer in Edgewood.
You're relatively young. You've already accomplished so much and now you're settling into this very intentional lifestyle. Where do you want to go from here? I live every day, honestly, day-to-day. My mom passed away when I was a sophomore in college. I just don't know how long I'm going to have. None of us really know. So, it's really important to me to just take every day, day-by-day. … I find something really freeing about living for today, hopefully living for tomorrow, but not setting myself up for disappointment by making decisions that I don't really have the power to make about the future.
