Alumna of the Year Nominee

GDST Alumna of the Year 2024 nominee, Nadia Odunayo (2010), returned to South Hampstead to give an assembly.

Nadia, founder and CEO of The StoryGraph reading app, came back to talk to the girls about her career as a software engineer. During the conversation with Head Girl Arya, Nadia shared her warm memories of the school and recalled how, as a bursary recipient, her South Hampstead experience changed the trajectory of her life. One particular memory that Nadia shared was a conversation she had with her Art Teacher, Mr Hunter, which led her to think about charting her own career path rather than letting other people’s ideas influence what she could become.

Nadia studied Politics, Philosophy & Economics at Oxford, but moved away from her initial goal of a career in finance and instead combined her passions for reading and technology to set up The StoryGraph. Nadia shared her process of launching her own tech start-up, and told us how her faith in the product was strengthened by the people around her who really believed in it, especially its early adopters. Testament to her hard work, The StoryGraph has seen astounding success and currently has upwards of 3 million active users.

Her return to the school was also a chance to reconnect with Head, Mrs Paul; Nadia was one of her first students when she began her teaching career. It was a wonderful full-circle experience for Mrs Paul to welcome back one of her first English students and to celebrate her success.

Read about our other inspirational bursary recipients here and find out more about how to support our bursary campaign here.