Transforming Campus Life: Anastasia Jackson's Journey from Howard University Student to Tech CEO

A company that uses artificial intelligence to improve the experiences of HBCU faculty staff and students .

And for those of you who have gone to HBCUs , you know we love our institutions , but at the same time , we have complaints about systems and processes that are at times , inefficient , and this woman decided that she wasn't going to be a complainer , that she was going to go do something about the issues that she saw in her own HBCU experience and decided to

found a company that would provide a solution . So , anastasia , just tell us a little bit about who you are , what you're doing , but also tell us the story of the worst day of your life .

My housing had been given to somebody else and also my classes on my schedule just magically disappeared . So I really spent that first semester just trying to figure out how do I solve these problems and , to my surprise , everybody's response was pretty much the same . It was like oh yeah , I've had that similar issue , or yeah , yeah , that happened to me too .

That's common . And it wasn't just students , current students , it would be like alumni that I was talking to . That went back in 1980s and they had the same exact problems and so just a little more transparency . That made me very , very depressed because I'm like this is something I'm supposed to just accept .

This is like the common trauma bond between not only HBCUs but there's PWIs that experience this too , and I was like you know what ? No , no , no , I can't accept this . There has to be some solution . We just haven't created it yet , and now we have with we Night .

And you're right , it's a common experience among a lot of HBCU current students and alum going all the way back . Everybody knows , right , you made me think about so many things . And it's like we normalize that . Yeah , it's going to be like this , but I still love my HBCU .

We normalize the thing that's bad about our experience and we just accept it and we use that as almost like fuel for our unconditional love for our institutions .

I don't think that the love is wrong , but the acceptance of the processes and systems that don't necessarily allow us to have the best experiences is something that we shouldn't accept , and I'm just impressed by the fact that you decided to come up with a solution . So talk a little bit about what we Night is and what it actually does .

We use React Native , so things that you see with Instagram , youtube , they use React AI , and then we also use blockchain so that information is secure , but you also have ownership of your data and the content that you create , and really we just focus on streamlining the operations and the communication aspect of the HBCU , the entire HBCU ecosystem .

So for our first feature , we have the class scheduling .

The class scheduling feature where , whether you want to graduate in three years and you're part of five different orgs , with all these time constraints AI can quickly , within seconds , make you a class schedule to fit your needs and then go further to actually book that appointment with your advisor , so you don't have to go back and forth and emails with that

advisor and like that's just one feature . So just imagine all the other operations and communications that you need to just attend and matriculate at your HBCU .

Were there any mentors , people who were sponsoring you ? How did that occur ?

They weren't really able to help me as far as like supporting me with the team or anything material , because I didn't even know I didn't have all that structure capital ready and like how I wanted it to be , but they did give me a lot of wisdom and a lot of support . They always made sure that they told me that this is something that we do need .

So please keep going like , figure it out . By any means , we need this . But I will want to say that Howard is our pilot school , so they did later come back and partner with us .

We have now access to all 50,000 students , faculty and staff on their platform , so I mean in their school , so they do support us and all these features were doing it with them first .

They gas up a little bit , so like I feel like I'm old enough to do that to you , like now I understand how like the elders felt like when I was in grad school , getting my master's in PhD , and they just like , and I think it's just normal stuff .

But the way that they feel like that's how I feel about you right now , that common bond where we just my advisor didn't show up to the meeting today , you know what I'm saying . But your advisor at a black college a lot of people don't know this is oftentimes sometimes also your professor , right ? Yeah , literally yeah . Your professor has classes .

They have other hundreds , 80 , 90 students that they also have to advise , and so finding a tech solution to make those things easier , I think is a brilliant idea and maybe it'll help us not lose that , because I know so .

I work at a large Hispanic serving institution now that in some ways functions like a PWY , and so what I mean by that is that the students , their advisor is an advisor and their faculty member professors are professors , so there's no overlap , nice .

So it was mandatory for that professor to sit down with me at least 10 to 15 minutes extra every semester to figure out where I was going , and the conversations that happened because of that are the reason why I was able to go to graduate school , and so I think what you're doing is a solution for things that maybe are built into the culture of the HBCU ,

but making those things sustain in a more modern type of way .

So just imagine the technology . All those papers go away . You got more time to connect and do what the networking that we love , the family relationships that we have with your community .

It is meant to be a space where maybe you don't feel the microaggressions and all of those things that you would experience outside of the walls of Howard University or whatever HBCU . But Howard has also provided you all with this other opportunity , as alum , to build and grow your businesses , right ?

So talk about the program that you were in with Asha to help facilitate the growth and put you in a position to picture , idea , grow your idea and all of those things .

The student , and so taking that time , one-on-one , to really have us question the way that we're strategizing , the way that we're executing on our businesses , really helps open up our minds . It's growing pains . So I will say that it's growing pains , but it helps . And that's not the only opportunity that Howard Gibbs .

They just recently launched their Entrepreneurship Center that's partnered with PNC the biggest donation a bank has ever given an HBCU I think it was 16.1 million to do this , and it's not just Howard . So there's Howard , there's Buoy , there's Morgan , there's multiple HBCUs and they want to go to all of them and even that , that initiative to okay .

No , look , we want to grow the black economy . We spend like what was it ? 1.6 trillion ? The black community is the number one spender out of all of the communities . So like to be able to really like , curate and have these not so transparent resources available for all of us entrepreneurs .

I really I just love that they're focused on it and making it a priority .

Like across from you and really just hearing other other entrepreneurs who are in your same shoes , their stories and how they're overcoming their challenges , you will be so surprised on how fast you guys will overcome it together . There's this other quote that goes if you want to collapse time , collaborate . And it's so true , like it's so true .

So , just if HBCUs would just take the time to like , hey , let's have a networking event . Hey , let's do like a quick conference where those who aren't in the business school but there's a lot of other business owners , like , let's just give them the space to learn together , to grow together

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But I think one of the things that we all want to do as alum is go back and contribute to the betterment of our HBCUs , right , and so that's something that I've chosen to do .

And some other folks in my circle of folks who have gone to get their PhDs are like plotting to do it at A&T , like how do we work our way in there to give back to , to grow the legacy ?

And so that came to you a lot earlier than it came from me , and so I look at you as someone who was accelerated beyond your years in ways that maybe you don't even understand . What you're doing is . It's crazy . It's crazy transformative . Because in my mind I see I know you have to have this , this narrow focus . Your focus is on the students .

That's primary and it's necessary , but scaling to smaller , private HBCUs , the public HBCUs . I think about my time as a school teacher in K through 12 schools . I was a PE teacher for the elementary school in a K through 8 , in a K through 8 school , so I wasn't the first grade classroom teacher , ms Jackson .

Okay , ms Jackson had 15 to 21st graders in her class , so those students with disabilities had an IEP or a 504 plan . She maybe had like one tenth of the students in her class , so maybe two that had an IEP , maybe three at the most .

But because I taught all the students in the school , I get there the first day and there's a stack of papers that's above my head , like the lady you described , that has to deal with international students , and I don't know how to sort through the applications for WeNight .

I think for me , long term , throughout the educational ecosystem , it's tremendous , and so I'm just . I'm glad I got to interview you early . I hope I'm the first person to ever interview on a podcast , because I'm gonna say I knew her , I got her first .

For those students who are encountering an issue at their HBCU , it could be something , a systemic problem that exists , like the housing issues and things like that , just navigating the information and the data getting messed up , or it could be something as simple , as I don't like my roommate , that happens everywhere . What advice would you give them to orient ?

To orient themselves to being the solution and not the complainer ?

So , like , advocate for that and no matter how many knows you get , just internalize it as not yet , like this is not the person that I need to talk to yet I need to talk to somebody else . This isn't the person , because there's always a solution . There's always a solution . You just have to discover it . I mean , you have to let it come to you .

There's plenty of students , hungry , ambitious , ready to get into those prestigious roles , like like alumni are , alumni are now , and so to really just pour into them , pour into those entrepreneurs that are already on their way , already doing those great things .

Imagining a world where you actually get to be proactive about your health like be able to go to the hospital , to go for yoga classes or taking a cooking class , versus going because you're sick or emergency room level and using a system like this will be able to bring those resources to people .