Glocal Citizens - Episodes Tagged with “Innovator”

Episode 316: Building Community Assets Grounded in Love with Bakajika Tshinanga

Florence Amerley Adu — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 05:00:00 -0400

Greetings Glocal Citizens!

This week on the podcast community builidng is a central theme. For twenty years, my guest, Bakajika Tshinanga, has operated at the exact intersection where culture generates economic value.

His journey started in 2004, when he founded a student-led program at the University of Georgia Atlanta. Georgia Daze still runs today and has improved enrollment yield conservatively valued at $150M+ in incremental revenue for the university. That experience shaped how he thinks about infrastructure: who builds it, who benefits, and who owns the upside.

He went on building hospitality programming delivering the cultural insight that prompted AT&T to sponsor Drake's inaugural headline tour and leading the campaign that introduced the Lyft ridesahre app to Atlanta. He’s produced work with cultural figures including Michael Jordan, and while an undergraduate he producing concerts featuring Outkast, Lauryn Hill, and Dave Chappelle. Also of note, he owns a publishing catalog featuring songs from Lil Wayne, The Neptunes, Sevyn Streeter, Pusha T, and Usher.

Coding since age 11, technology is lens he's always looking through. His latest endeavor, the lOlŌ's platform is the direct expression of technology deployed as infrastructure to close the gap between who creates cultural value and who captures it. He's lived the innovator's dilemma firsthand: operating at the riskiest part of the curve, where the work is undeniable but the capital isn't designed to find you. That experience is why lOlŌ exists—a collective ownership vehicle for cultural capital, community-capitalized, community-governed, designed to compound for generations.

Where to fine Bakajika?
On LinkedIn
On Instagram
On Threads

What’s Bakajika reading?
The Science of Scaling by Dr. Benjamin Hardy adn Blake Erickson

What’s Bakajika watching?
Dreaming Whilst Black on Showtime

How’s Bakijika listening to?
Who is Joy Leone?

Other topics of interest:
Kinshasa, DRC
About Georgia Daze
University of Michigan Supreme Court Affirmative Action Case
Atlanta Influences Everything
Lɔlɔ̃ means love

Special Guest: Bakajika Tshinanga.

Episode 112: The DNA at the Intersection of Culture, Science and Business with Dr. Gina Paige

Florence Amerley Adu — Tue, 15 Feb 2022 05:00:00 -0500

Greetings Glocal Citizens!
This week, my heart is indeed warmed (I hope you all had a love-filled Valentine's Day) as I prepare to travel back to Ghana, leaving winter behind for 2022. I'm excited to share this fun and insightful conversation, which in many ways helps me pick up where I left off as I met my guest this week just days before traveling to the US. Fellow Stanford alum, Gina Paige's magic lies at the intersection of culture, science, and business. Her passion for helping individuals connect to their cultural identity has secured her a solid place in history as the co-founder of African Ancestry, Inc., as a pioneer for a new way of tracing African lineages using genetics, and as the innovator behind a new marketplace for people of African descent looking to trace their roots more accurately and reliably. She travels the world helping people demystify their roots and inform on identities so that they may better understand who they are by knowing where they’re from. With a career that spans nearly thirty years, she has become the go-to expert on DNA-based ancestry tracing for people of African descent.

This month African Ancestry is featured on VH1's Love & Hip Hop: Lineage to Legacy 2-part special where fan favorites of Love & Hip Hop and Black Ink learn about their genetic origins.

Where to find Gina?
https://ginapaige.com
On LInkedIn
On Instagram
On Twitter
On Facebook
On YouTube

What's Gina listening to?
Chuck Brown
Lonnie Liston Smith
Pharaoh Sanders
Sun Ra
Roy Ayers
Old School Hip Hop Sample

Other topics of interest:
Gogo Music
Narrative Psychology
Dr. Rick Kittles
20th Century Hip Hop

Special Guest: Gina Paige.

Episode 99: From Activist Musician to Building Innovator with Yaw "Zoh Zoh" Boateng

Florence Amerley Adu — Tue, 16 Nov 2021 05:00:00 -0500

Greetings Glocal Citizens! I'm live on the streets of Accra this week on the podcast with my guest, Yaw "Zoh Zoh" Boateng. He is a Ghanaian activist musician and builder transforming items typically thought as waste into functional works of art. His stage name, Zoh Zoh translates to "one step at a time" in the Ewe language, one of his two mother tongues. He chose this moniker because life is a journey and his has taken him across the globe. In his journey he has lead an eight-piece band producing a unique, upbeat, and invigorating Afro-Reggae sound co-mingling Afro Beat, Afro Fusion Jazz, Old School Reggae and African Funk High life, all together for with a unique sounding rhythm driven by West African percussion. He has opened for act such as the late James Brown and Hugh Masekela.

Nowadays he is making a mark in Ghana as the owner of The Pallet Kitchen which is constructed of recycled pallets. His current project, "The Arrk," a tribute to the native history and sea vessels will open in December 2021 in time for the bustling holiday season.

Where to find Zoh Zoh?
On LinkedIn
On Facebook
On YouTube
On Twitter

Other topics of interest:
Napier, New Zealand
Who are the Kiwis?
Nomadic African and other Zoh Zoh Music
Zoh Zoh chats with Wode Maya

Special Guest: Yaw "ZohZoh" Boateng.