Dr. Toyin Ajayi says she credits her parents with believing in her ability to be a “change agent.”
Ajayi, who grew up in Nairobi, Kenya, is the founder and CEO of CityBlock Health, a healthcare provider serving communities with complex needs in the United States.
Her parents’ “incredible approach” to raising Ajay and her two younger sisters shaped her path as a leader, she told CNBC’s Julia Boorstin on the latest episode of the podcast “CNBC Changemakers and Power Players.”
First, Ajay’s parents did not shy away from talking about difficult topics. “They treated us as equals,” Ajayi says. “We had a very mature, adult conversation at the dinner table.”
One of the big issues they discussed together was Africa’s high maternal mortality rate at the time. “My parents were very transparent with me and my sisters,” Ajay says. “They will say things like, for most women in Africa, the biggest risk in life is getting pregnant and having a child.”
Second, learning about privilege was not optional in their homes.
From a “very young age”, Ajay’s parents emphasized that he and his sisters were “lucky because of their birth, not because of their money.” “My father used to say, ‘You’re lucky that you happened to be born to us and to parents who were able to send you to school with a master’s degree education, who gave you options, who taught you about your life and your body.’
Finally, Ajay says his parents also instilled in him a strong sense of social responsibility.
Ajayi grew up in the middle of the global AIDS crisis, and “everywhere I looked, I saw evidence of this horrible, horrible, horrible pandemic,” she says.
In her late teens, her parents took her to volunteer for an organization serving women with AIDS. The experience of caring for a woman who died from an illness had a deep impact on Ajay.
She “vividly remembers” the anger she felt watching the news debate whether it was cost-effective to send antiretroviral treatments to people in Africa. “I remember feeling so angry and resentful that I decided that as a society, we shouldn’t be thinking about how we allocate resources,” Ajayi recalls.
Far from being discouraged, Ajay was inspired to make a change. “I think my parents were really good at instilling in my sisters and me the belief that we can be change agents, and I think we have an obligation to do so,” she says.
When you have the tools that she and her sisters used, she says, “that anger turns into a fire in your belly, turns into motivation, turns into inspiration.”
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