My name is Asse Emmanuelle Brou, I am PAYE’s Innovation and Programming Coordinator.
I was born and raised in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. I am an adventurous learner and equity advocate passionate about human rights and politics.
I am currently studying at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, United States where I am triple majoring in Mechanical and Aerospace engineering and Finance. I am a proud alumna of the prestigious Lycée Classique d’Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire) and the African Leadership Academy (South Africa), I am by all standards a high achiever who personifies excellence in all aspects of her life. When I am not bettering myself in Machine Learning, MatLab, and SolidWorks, I spend my time understanding how to improve astronauts’ safety in space through research. Outside the classroom, I am a dancer and an aspiring entrepreneur who is eager to make both social and political impacts in the Aerospace industry.
- What does entrepreneurship mean to you? Can you tell us more about your entrepreneurship journey?
Entrepreneurship for me is a way to use your opportunity and leverage your network to create something that will socially, financially, politically, psychological or spiritually empower the people around you, then you. My journey concretely started when I attended the African Leadership Academy, in Johannesburg in 2017. This was materialized by integrating different entrepreneurship cohorts such as the ThinkImpact, focusing on the UN goals, and partnering with them where I was developing further a project on prisoner’s rights and reinsertion in Ivory Coast human-centered interactions in business.
- What does community mean to you?
Community is the core of optimum development. In a more nuclear form, it starts with family, friends, tribes, and regions, and extends to country, continent, and the world. It is definitely that helpful external power that can contribute to either your success or your failure
- Why did you join PAYE? Where do you see PAYE in the next 10 years?
I have joined PAYE Alliance because I find the mission really noble. I believe in the compound effect and having a platform where to find all kinds of entrepreneurs of the African continent will make it easy to pave the way for international trade on the continent.
- What is your motto in life? Why?
Strangely enough, it is not a specific sentence but rather the three powerful things in which I believe: GOD, Me, and Relationships.
- Where do you see yourself in the next 10 years?
I will probably be a happy wife and mom at the optimum stage of my professional career. I will be preparing myself for retiring in the next 3 years to focus on the three big entrepreneurship projects that I would have been working on for about 3 to 5 years. And who knows maybe entering the political show?
