Three friends, alumni work to create opportunities for others

Good friends have your back. Great friends challenge you to strive for more.

Ashlee Carlisle, BBA ’09, Anndréa Moore, BBA ’10, Andrew Oyedeji, BBA ’12, are three of the best friends anyone could ask for in life. During their overlapping time at the Carl H. Lindner College of Business, they pushed each other to pursue leadership roles in student organizations, finding themselves embodying the words of empowerment they heard from professors and mentors. They connected each other to helpful resources across the university and formed overlapping, intersecting networks that expanded with each new connection.

When they reminisce together about their experiences and extra-curriculars at UC, Moore, Oyedeji and Carlisle help jog each other’s memories, as great friends do.

Carlisle, Moore and Oyedeji confidently point to the experiential learning inside and outside the classroom as the ideal preparation for their careers — and the driving force for them to fund and create those opportunities for future students.

Oyedeji’s role at Virtual Kitchen Co is the first he’s held with a domestic focus. The study-abroad opportunities he experienced in Mexico, China, Belgium, France, Canada and inside a Lindner classroom have not only helped him cultivate his global network, but continue to inform his approach to doing business as an inclusive leader.

“At Lindner, I took an online class about understanding cultural differences, and we worked with students based out of Austria,” recalls Oyedeji. “It was definitely not as commonplace as it is for students today, so it was out of this world at the time. But now, those remote or in-person intercultural exchanges are our day-to-day.”

“All three of us work in tech or in a tech-enabled company,” says Moore. “We’re leveraging technology as an actual form of business, scaling operations, marketing and sales. There is much about engineering that I don’t know, but I need to be able to communicate customer needs to them so that they build the right products. I’m not a designer, but I need to ensure they understand the feedback we’re hearing from the market.”

When they kicked off the Lindner Black Alumni & Friends Scholarship Fund a few years ago, Moore, Carlisle and Oyedeji focused on the opportunity to support Black and underrepresented students at Lindner.

“I had a really great experience [at UC], and a lot of that was due to the kindness and generosity of other people’s financial support,” said Oyedeji. “When the opportunity of the fund came around, with the three of us already being friends, being able to align our resources and our networks, we knew we could drive an impact.”

Moore points to the numbers.

“When we look at market data, Black students tend to have higher amounts of student loans. Black business professionals are underrepresented in corporate America,” says Moore.

After a year fraught with a global pandemic that laid economic disparities bare and brought combating racial injustice to the forefront of their intentions, the three friends have a renewed commitment to their cause.

 “I was compelled to evolve my thinking,” says Carlisle. “What I realized is that we can make an impact on an entire generation.” 

Featured image: Moore, Oyedeji and Carlisle together in Lindner Hall during Homecoming 2019 festivities.