It’s 10 p.m., and three Pomona College students are just getting their night started.

Huddled in a closet-sized room alongside Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy Phil Choi, they’re searching a computer screen for their next celestial target. The click of a button triggers the mechanical sound of metal and gears groaning through the walls.

Just outside, a massive telescope carefully pivots into position across the night sky.

These stargazing Sagehens are not on campus. They’re perched atop a 7,000-foot peak in the San Gabriel Mountains at Pomona College’s Table Mountain Observatory (TMO), scanning the sky for Near Earth Asteroids.

“These are potential impactors,” Choi says of the asteroids. “We’ve been working for years trying to discover these things, determine their orbits and decide whether they’re potentially hazardous.”

“If they are,” he adds, “we follow them up.”

Designed and constructed in the 1980s, the observatory’s research capabilities were limited during its first few decades. But in the past five years, TMO has exploded onto the astronomy scene as a productive science machine.

“We’re active every clear night,” Choi says, “so we’re involved in a very serious way in two or three big collaborations where we’re churning out data on a night-to-night basis.”

TMO provides an advanced learning opportunity that many young astrophysicists don’t receive until grad school. It’s also been a boon for recruiting high-caliber students to the College.

“I did not think coming in that I would have the level of hands-on experience, the level of interaction with senior researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory [and] the level of interaction with collaborators around the world,” Sage Santomenna ’26 says.

Tala Istanbouli ̓28 and
Professor Phil Choi tinker with
the hardware underneath
the one-meter telescope.

Santomenna turned down multiple R1 university offers in favor of attending Pomona College for its astrophysics program. Their work at TMO was the foundation of a prestigious Goldwater Scholarship awarded for the 2025-26 academic year.

Santomenna exemplifies the important roles students have played in bolstering the telescope through its history, Choi says.

“I’d say there’s been a factor of 10 increase in the efficiency of our telescope based on a lot of the software tools that Sage has been able to build for us,” Choi says.

On more than one occasion, Choi has been asked why he doesn’t roboticize and automate the observatory to pump out nonstop research for collaborators.

His answer is always the same: It’s important that TMO remains accessible to Pomona students.

Since taking over as the facility’s point-person 18 years ago, Choi has worked with students to secure multiple National Science Foundation and NASA grants to build up the million-dollar instrumentation and high-tech software that are the bedrock of the now modernized telescope.

As TMO continues to evolve in leaps and bounds, the astrophysics world has taken notice.

The combination of advanced instrumentation and year-round, immediate access enables TMO to occupy a unique niche in high-spatial and temporal-resolution imaging of fast-moving objects. For the Near Earth Asteroid study, the TMO facility achieves astrometric performance better than all but a handful of competing systems in the world.

“It’s a humble one-meter telescope,” Choi says, “so compared to a lot of other instruments doing this research, it’s small. But the thing that makes it special is the hardware on the back end is doing something that very few facilities do.”

“People are sometimes skeptical of our technique, but our results speak for themselves.”

When Pomona College was founded nearly 140 years ago, our founders imagined something new: a college in a garden, rooted in the traditions of the liberal arts but alive to the possibilities of a changing world. That willingness to imagine what might be possible has carried Pomona forward ever since, from President James Blaisdell’s audacious vision for a community of distinctive colleges to our continuing commitment to finding extraordinary human talent wherever it may be.

Original thinking is our inheritance. At Pomona, students learn to think differently and broadly, to take intellectual risks and approach the world with curiosity, humility and care. Our originals are not rugged individualists striking out alone. They understand that ideas flourish in community—and that our greatest possibilities emerge when we learn from and work alongside people whose experiences and perspectives differ from our own.

The world needs those qualities now more than ever. It needs people who are unafraid to question assumptions, who can turn knowledge into understanding and who believe deeply in our capacity to work together. It needs Sagehens.

Originals: The Campaign for Pomona College is our commitment to ensuring that Pomona continues to prepare them. Together, we will expand access for extraordinary students, invest in transformative teaching and emerging fields of knowledge, deepen both global learning and collaboration, strengthen the ties that connect us across lifetimes and nurture the health and well-being that allow every member of our community to flourish.

Generations before us made this Pomona possible. Now it is our turn to imagine and make possible the Pomona that generations to come will need.

Gabrielle Starr, President

Making the Invisible Visible

“I’d never taken an economics class before,” says Rachel Nguyen ’26. “The only economics experience I had was helping my mom with the books at the nail salon.”

At Pomona, Rachel discovered economics as a tool for understanding communities like her own. Her pioneering econometric research on Vietnamese nail salons and technicians documented a workforce often overlooked in official datasets, laying groundwork that could inform labor policy and protections for immigrant workers. “It begins with the data,” she says.

Pomona also opened doors beyond the classroom. A fellowship in California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office gave Rachel firsthand experience in public service, while Pomona-funded study abroad took her to Vietnam, where she became the first in her family to return and reconnect with relatives.

Rachel’s first stop after Pomona? Graduate study in economics at the University of Chicago, where she will confront new datasets and new questions with the same instinct to look beyond the obvious.

Reaching Beyond Our Gates

For generations, Pomona students have learned that some of the most consequential education happens when they cross boundaries—between disciplines, cultures, communities and ways of seeing the world. The new Center for Global Engagement will create a home for that kind of discovery.

Now under construction, the $125 million Center is Pomona’s most ambitious capital project to date. Designed as a living-learning “liberal arts laboratory,” it brings together residential life, dining, classrooms and collaborative spaces, housing 200 students and welcoming the entire community for global and interdisciplinary learning.

Its promise is being realized through extraordinary philanthropy with $50 million in support from the Pomona community helping move the center’s construction and programs forward. Among the transformational commitments are a $10 million gift from Board Chair Janet Inskeep Benton ’79 and a $10 million commitment from Trustee Emeritus Ranney E. Draper ’60 and his late wife, Priscilla. Their generosity builds on decades of leadership and investment in the College, reflecting a shared belief in preparing Sagehens to engage meaningfully with a changing world.

That spirit of exploration extends to many others who support the Center and related programs. The philanthropy of Karen Q. Wong P’29 and Kelvin Huang P’29 honors Karen’s father and his lifelong belief in education. Their fund will support study away in China, giving future students opportunities to learn through language, culture and firsthand experience.

Together, these gifts and many others demonstrate what the Center makes possible: not simply a new building, but an enduring ecosystem for curiosity, connection and learning across borders.

Nurturing Our Whole Community

A truly transformative educational experience engages the whole person—and the whole community.

Original thinking requires more than intellect. It requires confidence. Resilience. Belonging. It requires the freedom to take risks, pursue ambitious questions, recover from failure and begin again. No one does that alone. Pomona’s commitment to student, faculty and staff success extends beyond the classroom to encompass wellness, mentorship, belonging, athletics, residential life, leadership development and the many experiences that help people discover who they are and what they are capable of becoming.

This campaign will strengthen the conditions that allow all to flourish. It will expand access to wellness resources, deepen mentorship and community-building opportunities, enhance student life and athletics and create an environment where every student can participate fully in the life of the College. Great communities do more than support achievement. They make achievement possible.

Philanthropy will strengthen the foundations of a thriving Pomona community. Campaign investments will support the Center for Athletics, Recreation and Wellness as a hub for movement, connection and well-being; expand access to health insurance so students can get the care they need; and advance health and wellness initiatives for students, faculty and staff, including efforts to build a thriving workplace culture. Together, these investments recognize a simple truth: people do their best thinking, learning and creating when they have the support to thrive.

470,000—and Counting

Since opening its doors, the Center for Athletics, Recreation and Wellness (CARW) has welcomed more than 470,000 visits, a powerful measure of how philanthropy can transform daily life at Pomona. More than a place to exercise, the CARW has become a crossroads for the College: a place where students, faculty and staff gather, recharge, compete and connect. Its extraordinary use demonstrates what the campaign is already achieving—investing in spaces that strengthen well-being, belonging and community for everyone at Pomona.

Connecting Across Lifetimes

A Pomona education does not end at Commencement. It grows and deepens over time.

One of Pomona’s greatest strengths is the willingness of Sagehens to invest in those who follow. Through Originals, Pomona will double alumni engagement while creating more opportunities for graduates to mentor students, create internships, share expertise, return as teachers and open doors to careers and experiences.

These relationships help students test ideas in the world, discover new paths and imagine futures they may never have considered. They also give alumni meaningful ways to stay connected and give back.

Campaign investments will expand the Return to Pomona Scholar program, extramural research opportunities and career development, creating more ways for students to learn from alumni and gain experience beyond the classroom.

When Sagehens invest in Sagehens, everyone benefits.

A Network that Opens Doors

“One trait you’ll see among Pomona students is that whatever they do, they do it in an original way,” says Sebastian Fish Mathurin ’26. He sees that same spirit in alumni: “the passion, the drive, but also the curiosity and the ability to remain a student throughout life.”

Sebastian experienced that connection firsthand through Trustee Aditya Sood ’97, president of Lord Miller and executive producer of films including Deadpool and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Their mentorship led to a summer internship at Lord Miller—and Pomona funding helped make it possible.

A stipend from the Career Development Office and Pomona College Internship Program enabled Sebastian to remain in California and take advantage of an opportunity he otherwise might not have been able to pursue. The experience showed Sebastian what can happen when generations of Sagehens invest in one another: alumni open doors, Pomona helps students walk through them and new possibilities take shape.

When Sagehens invest in Sagehens, everyone benefits.

Ensuring Pomona Endures

Pomona’s defining strengths are the result of generations of vision, generosity and leadership.

The strongest institutions do more than endure. They evolve. They adapt. They lead. This campaign will ensure that Pomona remains among the world’s most influential liberal arts colleges while expanding its capacity to shape the future.

That future will be built, as Pomona always has been, gift by gift and generation by generation. As Vice President for Advancement Maria Watson says, “At Pomona, generosity has always been an act of optimism: a belief in students we may never meet, discoveries we cannot yet imagine and a College that will keep evolving long after we are gone.”

The Pomona Annual Fund, the Pomona Plan and legacy gifts are key parts of the Originals campaign: resources that will sustain the people, programs and possibilities at the heart of the College while creating a strong foundation for generations of Sagehens still to come.

The Originality of the Pomona Plan

Pomona was an original in planned giving, too. Developed in the 1940s by Allen F. Hawley, Class of 1916, the Pomona Plan pioneered a model in which donors could receive lifetime income and tax benefits while ultimately supporting the College—a concept that became a model for institutions nationwide. Today, it remains one of higher education’s most respected life-income programs. As Senior Director of the Pomona Plan Art Landerholm ’92 puts it, “It’s a distinctly Pomona idea: a financial, tax and philanthropic ‘win-win’ for the College and generations of participants.”

Meet the Campaign Chairs

Sam ’04 and Emily ’04 Glick have been part of each other’s Pomona story since meeting during their first year on campus and flirting in James Irvine Professor of Economics Eleanor P. Brown’s class as seniors. Now they are returning to help write the College’s next chapter as campaign chairs. We asked them to fill in the blanks.

Our Pomona meet-cute started with…

Emily: A textbook. I needed the most expensive book on my list—about $110—and Sam had already taken the class and still had his copy. I figured if I borrowed his, I could save the money and buy him lunch as a thank you. We were both so busy that lunch kept getting rescheduled, until it finally became dinner—and then 11 hours of talking. We started dating about three weeks before graduation, and here we are.

A Pomona moment we still think about…

Emily: I received an Iberian Grant, funded by an alumna, for independent study in Spain. I lived in Madrid and studied what the Spanish government was doing to help people experiencing homelessness, creating a black-and-white photo essay and written report. It was a lesson in independence, among other things—you had to find a roommate, figure out your international cellphone and make your own way. I learned about poverty and about telling people’s stories without exploiting them. But mostly, I learned I could land in another country, figure things out and do something I hadn’t done before.

Sam: In a class on medieval mystery plays, we had to enact a scene where a woman throws her baby over a balcony. We did it from the second floor of the Smith Campus Center—with a small watermelon wrapped up like a baby. It was a pretty gory moment. But we were learning how to draw emotions out of people and think about how audiences hundreds of years ago might have experienced the story. I still think about the lesson on how you can have a serious impact on people with limited resources through commitment and ingenuity.

The thing about Pomona that’s hard to explain until you’ve experienced it…

Sam: Every moment at Pomona is part of that Pomona education. I started learning from Day One through late-night dorm hallway conversations with my sponsor group. I had the opportunity to sit on a presidential search committee as a student, and that was part of my education. Doing summer research with faculty was part of my education. And then every course I took—from general education requirements to intense courses in my major to classes I chose on a whim because they looked interesting—helped me gain new perspectives and connect dots across topics I might never have thought were related.

What motivates us to lead the campaign is…

Emily: There is a sense of community and commonality. And even if you weren’t on campus at the same time or you’re in a different career field, I think Sagehens find a togetherness through a similar mindset and a similar set of values. The campaign is a little like showing up at a wedding where everyone cares about the couple getting married. Love is in the air. It is a sense of we’re all here to promote a good thing that we believe in.

The campaign priority that gets us up in the morning is…

Emily: The recruitment, retention and success of students from middle-income families. Talented students from families of every income level need to know that they should apply, and that attending and successfully graduating from Pomona is achievable for them.

Sam: I agree. Pomona is for everybody. For someone who is qualified and can benefit from a Pomona education, there should be no financial barrier to them getting that education. Period.

Originals Are Coming Your Way

The Campaign for Pomona College is taking flight. Join fellow Sagehens, families and friends across the country and around the world to celebrate Originals, connect with the Pomona community and hear how the campaign is shaping what comes next for the College. Mark your calendar and watch for more details:

San Francisco
November 4, 2026

Los Angeles
February 11, 2027

Asia
March 29–April 2, 2027

Chicago
May 18, 2027

New York City
May 20, 2027

Wherever Sagehens gather, original thinking follows. We hope you’ll be part of it.

pomona.edu/originals/events

These Sagehens, original thinkers all, turned blue sky thinking into the real deal.

It’s not enough to have a good idea, though it’s a good start.

What follows that moment of inspired thinking is what really matters. Will that precious germ of an idea shrivel on the vine, or will it flourish and bear dazzling fruit? That, of course, depends on myriad factors—timing, talent, toil, grit. A dash of good fortune?

In the following pages, we present a baker’s dozen of Pomona alums who took their boundary-pushing ideas and ran with them, turning inspired dreams into lasting realities. Some of our visionaries created something entirely new; others solved an intractable problem, inspired vital change, transformed our perceptions, or simply made an aspect of daily life so, so much better. All our idea makers have made an outsized impact in their field, the ripples of their achievements fanning out far and wide into the world at large.

Pomona College has been nurturing innovative thinkers for well over a century now, and the Sagehens we recognize here represent just a fraction of a much longer list that could have filled many issues of the magazine. We hope you’ll let us know who else we should have included.

James Turrell ’65
Artist
The Big Idea: Make art out of light

Not content with limiting himself to traditional materials—paint, metal, wood, stone—James Turrell chose light itself as his sculptural medium, launching a lifelong artistic investigation into the very nature of perception. A pioneer of the California Light and Space Movement of the 1960s, Turrell has created immersive installations around the world that employ light as a tool to alter how we sense space, depth, color and form. Most famous are his Skyspaces (including our very own in Draper Courtyard), which open up to the sky and, with programmed lighting at dawn and sunset, offer a profound, perception-altering experience for those seated below. Turrell also has been working since 1977 on turning an extinct volcanic crater in Arizona into a naked-eye observatory that connects visitors with celestial events and the cosmos.

Stanton Avery ’32
Inventor/Businessman
The Big Idea: Invent self-adhesive labelsGrowing up poor in Oklahoma during the Great Depression, R. Stanton Avery went on to create a global company and invent a revolutionary technology—the self-adhesive label. Labels had existed before, of course, but those required moistening or gluing. Avery’s inspired concept was to create a sticker that was pressure sensitive, self-adhering and resealable. He created his first set of labels soon after graduating from Pomona, with a $100 loan from his future wife Dorothy Durfee and a combination of used machine parts and a saber saw, from which he crafted a rudimentary die-cut labeling machine. In 1935, he founded Avery Adhesives, a small company in Los Angeles that grew into Avery Dennison, a global Fortune 500 company. Avery’s invention forever changed the world of packaging, retail and shipping, making it feasible to apply large numbers of labels quickly and affordably.

Gary Acosta ’85
Entrepreneur
The Big Idea: Expand Latino wealth and business ownership

As an advocate for Latino wealth creation, Gary Acosta wears many hats. He is co-founder and CEO of the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals (NAHREP), the nation’s largest Latino business organization, with around 100 chapters across the U.S. Acosta also is a founding partner of venture capital fund L’ATTITUDE Ventures, which invests exclusively in Latino-led companies, and he is a founder of the Hispanic Wealth Project, dedicated to increasing household wealth and economic mobility in the Latino community. Through his entrepreneurship, investing and public policy work, Acosta has become one of the nation’s most influential advocates for Latino economic advancement. While at Pomona, Acosta played varsity basketball under future NBA Hall of Fame coach Gregg Popovich, and he has said his mentor’s intensity and consistent commitment to excellence has stayed with him.

Stephen Smith ’17
Health Care Entrepreneur
The Big Idea: Make OCD therapy accessible and affordable

After struggling for many years with undiagnosed obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), Stephen Smith eventually found help through exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy, a type of cognitive behavioral therapy now considered the gold standard for treating the condition. Knowing that many with OCD face long delays in getting an accurate diagnosis or evidence-based treatment, Smith co-founded NOCD, a digital community and telehealth platform that offers OCD prevention and management therapy. The service officially launched in 2017, the same year Smith (a transfer student and Sagehen football player) graduated from Pomona. The company has since grown into the world’s largest OCD specialty telehealth provider, with more than a million therapy sessions annually and 140 million people able to access it through their insurance. Recently, NOCD acquired a PTSD-focused platform, launching a parent brand called NOTO, with comedian Howie Mandel—who also lives with OCD—as its spokesperson.

Maya Horgan Famodu ’13
Venture Capitalist
The Big Idea: Re-envision investing in African companies

A two-time Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, venture capital investor Maya Horgan Famodu has been named a Most Influential Person of African Descent by the United Nations and a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. The Nigerian American entrepreneur, who grew up poor in a trailer park in rural Minnesota, founded her investment fund Ingressive Capital in Lagos, Nigeria, at the age of 25. Since then, she has been a powerful force in building Africa’s technology startup ecosystem and increasing access to early-stage venture capital for African founders. Key to her success has been her ability to persuade influential investors in Silicon Valley and around the world to pay attention to the continent’s tech sector and consider it worthy of investment. Famodu also is helping to prepare tomorrow’s tech workers through Ingressive for Good, a nonprofit she co-founded that provides scholarships, technical training and career opportunities for young Africans pursuing technology careers.

Myrlie Evers-Williams ’68
Civil Rights Activist
The Big Idea: Push forward the goals of the Civil Rights Movement

Myrlie Evers-Williams arrived at Pomona to begin a new life as a student and young widow with three children a year after the 1963 assassination of her husband, civil rights leader Medgar Evers. She would go on to chair the NAACP from 1995 to 1998 and to give the invocation at President Barack Obama’s second inauguration in 2013, the first woman and layperson to do so. For more than three decades, Evers-Williams sought punishment for her husband’s murderer, efforts that finally led to a successful murder conviction in 1994. Through her speeches, writing and public service, Evers-Williams has advocated powerfully for civic engagement, voting rights and equal opportunities for all people. In 2023, Evers-Williams donated her archival collection of papers and other memorabilia to Pomona, making them available to future scholars and the public.

Sharon Camp ’65
Public Policy Expert
The Big Idea: Get emergency contraception directly to women who need it

Known as the “Mother of Plan B,” Sharon Camp led the effort to develop and launch the emergency contraceptive in the U.S. Before Camp committed herself to the cause, major pharmaceutical companies in the U.S., fearing potential backlash, had shied away from developing and marketing emergency contraception. Camp, who previously led a nonprofit focused on reproductive health, had seen firsthand the harm caused by poor reproductive care in developing nations and knew the importance of getting contraception directly into the hands of women and making abortion safer. In the late 1980s, she worked to bring Mifepristone to the U.S. and a decade later founded Women’s Capital Corporation as a three-person startup, overcoming a slew of hurdles to develop and commercialize Plan B—the so-called “morning after” pill. Bridging research, public policy and pharmaceutical development, Camp, who died in 2025, transformed access to emergency contraception, impacting millions of women’s lives.

Mikey Dickerson ’01
Software Engineer
The Big Idea: Modernize government software

If you tried to sign up for “Obamacare” health insurance in 2013, when HealthCare.gov went online, you might have experienced glitches with a website that crashed within hours of launching and seemed doomed to failure. Enter Mikey Dickerson, then a site reliability engineer at Google, who was brought in to overhaul the government website. The recovery team he headed up stabilized and rebuilt the system, allowing millions of people to sign up for health insurance. In 2014, President Barack Obama appointed him as the first administrator of the U.S. Digital Service, a new department designed to improve government technology. By bringing the same engineering standards that Silicon Valley was already using—modern software engineering, user-focused design, rapid iteration—to government systems, Dickerson changed government technology. He came back to Pomona as a professor of practice from 2021 to 2024, teaching a popular computer science elective called Managing Complex Systems.

Chinasa T. Okolo ’18
AI Strategist
The Big Idea: Make AI more equitable and inclusive

Chinasa T. Okolo, a Nigerian American computer scientist, has been named one of the most influential people in artificial intelligence by Time and included on Forbes’ inaugural 30 Under 30 in AI list. Okolo, who has consulted for the United Nations and the World Bank and contributed to the International Scientific Report on the Safety of Advanced AI and Nigeria’s national AI strategy, argues that AI must do a better job serving Africa and other parts of the Global South. Countries outside the traditional tech centers, she insists, should be included at the table in policy discussions determining the future of AI. Her research, much of it in the field, explores how people in low-resource settings, including frontline health care workers in rural India, interact with AI and how AI systems can be designed to be more understandable and useful for everyday users.

How (and why) a Pomona alum quit investment banking and launched a friendship and dating app for the neurodivergent community.

Jamil Karriem ’12 had just met up with his younger cousin for drinks and dinner at a trattoria in his hometown of South Orange, New Jersey, and he was worried. His cousin, with whom Karriem is very close, is autistic, and during their conversation he confided to Karriem that he was having a hard time finding friends and expressed fear that he would not be able to find a partner in life.

When he returned home that night to his brownstone in Brooklyn, New York, Karriem did some research. “What I found really terrified me,” he says. “Autistic adults were far more likely to report feelings of loneliness and far more likely to die by suicide. The research suggested it had nothing to do with neurological predispositions and everything to do with lack of access.”

Karriem decided to help. “At first I assumed I was going to Google some resources to text him, and that would be the end of it, but I just wasn’t able to find anything that I was comfortable sharing,” he says. “That sort of triggered my own educational journey.”

“Our users are seeking companionship, whether it be platonic or romantic. Also, the way neurodivergent brains often experience the world is that conceptually it wouldn’t even make sense to skip friendship to get to romance.” —Jamil Karriem

Karriem kicked some ideas around in his head that night and hit on the idea of creating a dating app for those with autism. Nine years later, the app Karriem first envisioned, Hiki (which means “able” in Hawaiian) has millions of downloads and half a million daily active users. In the process, Hiki has grown rapidly (it officially launched in 2019) and is now open to all neurodivergent persons. It’s expanded to be a combination friendship and dating app, which connects members interested in romance, but also includes a social media area for conversations. “Our users are seeking companionship, whether it be platonic or romantic,” says Karriem. “Also, the way neurodivergent brains often experience the world is that conceptually it wouldn’t even make sense to skip friendship to get to romance.”

At the start, Karriem had little idea of what his new quest would demand. He was living in New York City, working in investment banking and already had a full plate, but he knew he was onto a possibly transformational idea. “I was working all day at my job, then developing the app from 10 until 2 in the morning. Rinse and repeat,” he says. “I’m a non-technical founder—I don’t write code—which is more common now than it was then, but I know how to design with empathy and I know how to bring a product to market.”

Puzzle With 1,000 Pieces

Before designing an app, Karriem first had to learn more about people with autism. “I was dealing with a sample size of one, my cousin, and so I started reaching out to more autistic adults to learn what they were experiencing.” Karriem asked friends and family and contacted any organization he could find that worked with autistic adults to see if they knew people who would speak with him about their lives. In total, he conducted more than 1,000 interviews.

His sociology degree was a major asset. “This was all qualitative data. Shout-out to Pomona College, and to my professor, Dr. Gilda Ochoa, who was my advisor and taught me all those skills.”

“We were updating and implementing what the community wanted. Sometimes we were adding new features every day.” —Efstathios Ntonas, Hiki CTO

Contrary to the typical tech startup, where developers first seek deep-pocketed investors, Karriem instead first funded his project by emptying his savings account. From there he raised $5,000 in a pitch competition, and another $10,000 at a second pitch competition. “At the second one there was a venture capitalist who just happened to see my pitch. He wasn’t part of the competition,” says Karriem. “After I won, he took my card and then cut a check for $100,000. That’s when I quit my job. Now we’re a pretty traditional venture capital-backed startup and have raised about $5 million to date.”

The development and growth process for Hiki was relentless. Karriem and Efstathios Ntonas, the chief technology officer at Hiki, responded to new needs and ideas for the app, almost in real time. “We were updating and implementing what the community wanted,” Ntonas says. “Sometimes we were adding new features every day.”

Unique App for a Unique Group

The abundance of features and options built into the app are all part of Karriem’s goal to give users the power to customize the app as they wish, and the staff of seven at Hiki, who are also all neurodivergent, are always listening.

“We’ve built the tools to enable people to do things their own way, which is all that neurodivergent people have ever really wanted—to be supported to do what we know is right for us and be guided along the way in case things go a little wrong,” says Sef Cavendish, community moderator and user outreach coordinator. “The famous phrase is, if you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person. We are all so different, even though we have a lot of similar traits that have led to the construct of us sharing the same diagnosis.”

“Giving individuals control over their unique experience honors the reality that no two neurodivergent people are alike.” —Jamil Karriem

Ntonas says he more or less retains the code for the app in his head. He is tasked with implementing the massive array of controls for users and can tell right away if a change will conflict with the functionality of the site. Ntonas says the complexity is a challenge, but worth it to make the user experience of the neurodivergent community that use the app more comfortable. “There’s no part of the app that users can’t put their hands on and control.”

That is not a trivial aspect of the plan, Karriem explains. “Some things are so customizable that it can feel excessive compared to other platforms. Other details may feel redundant. We make counterintuitive decisions all the time based on our community’s input. Giving individuals control over their unique experience honors the reality that no two neurodivergent people are alike.”

Hiki has enjoyed booming growth since its debut—Karriem estimates the user base has doubled year over year—and those on the app have responded positively. One user, a 52-year-old with autism, said Hiki had helped them break an extended cycle of isolation. Another said, “I’ve talked to more people in two hours on here [Hiki] than I have in the past 10 years probably.” Karriem has received notes from users saying they met their current spouse on Hiki. “We will be forever grateful for what you made possible,” wrote one, announcing their upcoming wedding.

Looking Inward

As part of the discovery process, Karriem learned about his own ADHD, which had been veiled to him throughout his life. “I began to think about things I struggle with. I never understood why someone changing plans at the last minute would give me extreme anxiety. When I was a kid it could lead to an outburst,” he says. “I learned coping mechanisms, but then you realize, wait, my neurotypical friends don’t have to sit alone in a dark room after they socialize. I’m just a little different.”

Says Cavendish: “In Jamil, we have somebody that took a risk and created something from a place of care for a community he didn’t even realize was his own yet. We’ve been through so many big waves that have almost broken up this boat, but we’re still here. Jamil got us through.”

On principle the company leaves money on the table that other tech firms don’t. “We don’t run ads on the platform because they’re overstimulating, we don’t track user data, and every single core feature is available completely for free,” says Karriem. “People are meeting the love of their life, and they’re meeting their best friend, or they’re finding somebody that they can talk to.”

Hiki workers are all remote and stay in touch with a virtual meeting each morning, and Karriem has one-on-one meetings with each employee every two weeks. A typical day for Karriem begins with a 6 a.m. walk with his dog, Money (a rescue dog and likely a chihuahua mix) around his Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in central Brooklyn, followed by several hours of focused work before a trip to the gym mid-morning to work out. Afternoons he typically works in a remote office, doing Zoom calls or other tasks, or he may head in to Manhattan for an in-person meeting before returning home for dinner. “I’m a huge cook, and I’m also Jamaican, so I typically make a lot of Caribbean food.”

Pomona Homecoming

During the spring semester, Susie Wise, innovator in residence at The Hive, and author of the book Design for Belonging: How to Build Inclusion and Collaboration in Your Communities, asked Karriem to join her Advanced Human-Centered Design course. “I think it was really interesting for them to get to both meet Jamil as an entrepreneur but also understand how he’s really paying attention to these deep human needs of the users on his platform, which is about making human connections,” says Wise. “So it had a really nice resonance with our using human-centered design practices.”

The class examined a Hiki feature called Match, a tool for users that helps them find people with whom they could be compatible as friends or partners. “The challenge was to reimagine it, and there were lots of interesting implications. There were four project teams, and they all built stories of ways that Match could work differently. So they built those and shared them with Hiki,” says Wise. “I think this is also a great full-circle moment when students get to work on a real-world challenge that’s brought to them by somebody from Pomona.”

For the final presentations by the class, Karriem returned to campus. It was the first time he had been back to Pomona in many years. “It was incredible. The campus is so beautiful and the energy so special. The relationships that I made on campus are still, to this day, the most important in my life,” he says. “Two of my best friends—Jesse Stoneman [’12] and Rahul Misra [’12]—married each other. They just had a baby and are literally raising her in the condo above two more of our best friends—Greg Wright [’12] and Nicola Parisi [’12]. The first person I ever met was Andre Shepley [’12] while high school seniors on prospective student weekend for students of color. We hit it off right away, were freshman roommates, and I was best man at his wedding. We’re brothers to this day.”

Karriem said the student work was excellent. “They were so full of vibrant ideas and strong opinions,” he says. “Having this outlet to teach, support and learn from the students gave me a new creative outlet that I absolutely loved.”