Meet Noonies 2022 Winner Celine 'Oibiee' Aju of Online-Education

“Things are only impossible until they’re not.”–Captain Jean-Luc Picard

Congratulations Captain! 🎉 🎉🎉 You have won the following award/awards:

What does it mean for you to win this title?

It’s the end of the year and I had begun to feel like maybe writing is not a career path for me, but this win validated my goal to build a career that honors my skills in writing and my passion for education development. This win gave me the push to keep going in 2023.

How do you or your company intend to embrace the responsibility of this title in 2023?

After establishing my knowledge of instructional design, ed-tech, and online learning, the next step in my goal to develop a learning program for out-of-school children in Africa is to put together a research team to start developing the program framework as we work towards deploying a pilot program in 2026.

What goals are you looking forward to accomplishing in 2023 (whether it be through company initiatives or your personal journey)?

My goals and activities revolve around three major categories: Writing, Music & Education Development. My goal is to end 2023 with a digital noma visa funded by a lucrative freelance writing practice.

I am also working towards building a boutique storytelling collective that will connect African creative writers, illustrators, and animators to proliferate the world with authentic African stories, and I will be applying for a few year-long writing fellowships in preparation for 2024.

Musically, I will be releasing my first single and possibly my first EP alongside my first short animated film. With regard to education, I will be building a team of researchers to begin working toward the design and development of the learning program.

Which trend(s) are you most excited about in 2023? Share your reason.

I’m excited about the changes in online writing platforms and the impact they will have on writing as a profession - the potential drop in clickbait content. Also, I’m curious to see what interventions and innovations will be championed in the fight against learning inequality across the globe.

Share your biggest success so far and/or your biggest failure so far.

My biggest win has been exploring my skills as a songwriter and pivoting into an all-encompassing writing career which started with the Hackernoon Blogging fellowship and has led me to a role as a junior editor in an entertainment agency.

We would love your feedback on HackerNoon as a tech publication! How has your experience been with us?

I love the Hackernoon writing process, especially because of the band of exceptional editors who fact-check and revise articles.

Any words of wisdom you’d like to share with us?

Your dreams will not come to be the way you anticipate but be patient, persistent, and adaptive to change. It will surely come to be.