ANNA GIFTY OPOKU-AGYEMAN ’19

Mathematics And Economics

HOMETOWN: Kumasi, Ghana and Columbia, MD

Finding Her Footing

The discovery of our passions and dreams is rarely a linear process, as Anna can attest. She began her college journey as a business major, but it just didn’t fit. “It just wasn’t satisfying the itch I had in terms of the career I wanted,” says Anna. After a semester, she transferred to UMBC to pursue biology. She was conducting a project that examined the experience of school-aged children in Malawi. Although she was excited about the project, she constantly found herself leaning away from the biological implications and instead looking at things through a policy lens.

The Courage to Shift Gears

The more she thought about it and talked with friends and family, the more Anna realized that she felt drawn to mathematics and economics. Despite that pull, Anna worried about changing directions again, but Dr. Jacqueline King ’09, psychology— her mentor and associate director of the U-RISE program—put her mind at ease.

“I asked if she thought I could change my major,” says Anna, “and she said, ‘You can do whatever you want.’” That implicit trust and encouragement was the push Anna needed, and she made the shift.

To Harvard, and Beyond

There’s no doubt it was the right step. Following that change, Anna was able to deepen her research and she won an internship with a nationally known economist.

What’s more, Anna co-founded the Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Conference for Economics and Related Fields—the first formal space for black women in economics to convene and benefit from the resources of a supportive network. Now, she’s earning her doctorate in Public Policy at Harvard.

“The field needs me as a black woman,” says Anna. “Especially as someone with passion.”