Ayodeji Babatunde is nothing if not adaptable. As a child growing up in Nigeria, she dreamed of putting her creativity to use by becoming an architect. But when her parents insisted she study science, she switched gears. A nature and animal lover, she came alive through zoology and animal biology courses. Babatunde planned to work with animals. However, when she graduated, the country was facing economic issues, and no decent jobs were available in her niche. She found herself working in a telecommunications call center fulfilling customer support requests.
The repetitive entry-level position could have made Babatunde feel stuck or resentful, but instead, she grew curious about the larger enterprise and its systems. She began volunteering with the workforce management team and learned how the call center matched customer support tickets to the correct agents. Incapable of being just a cog in the wheel, she spearheaded call center operations improvements and new performance measurements.
“Whatever life gives you, why not make the most of it?” she asked.
That contemplative lemons-to-lemonade mentality is what ultimately led Babatunde to enroll in the MBA program at Georgia State’s Robinson College of Business, where she now studies artificial intelligence and business analysis. But she made a few more career pivots before becoming a Panther.
Streamlining the call center’s processes revealed Babatunde’s knack for macro-level problem solving. She became a consultant, helping other businesses find efficiencies, and gained a reputation for business development and strategy skills. UPS approached her to join its marketing team in Atlanta. Just three months later—“not enough time to mentally prepare that you're going to change, to leave everything”—she’d moved across the world, trading the beach for the bustle of Buckhead.
Babatunde found out her manager and a friend were pursuing an MBA from Robinson. She’d always wanted to further her education.
“The universe was trying to tell me it was what I should pick,” she said.
Babatunde became president of Georgia State’s Graduate Business Administration (GBA) in 2022. Under her leadership, the student organization has become a robust resource for professional development and networking, with event attendance increasing by 30 percent. Babatunde has arranged guest speakers from Google, IBM, Pinterest, and Uber as well as a hackathon hosted in partnership with Girls Who Code.
Whether Babatunde ends up in strategic consulting, product management, or another sector, she’ll always be eager to improve the way things work and take advantage of whatever opportunities arise. She is most afraid of her own potential because she feels the obligation to actualize it. Where will her motivation lead her? Only up.