OJO Spotlight: Kamilla Yunusova

Meet Kamilla Yunusova! Kamilla is a Product Manager at OJO Labs on our Agent Tools team. When she’s not building products to help foster productive relationships between real estate agents and consumers, Kamilla is the Co-Executive Director of Rise First, an organization devoted to helping first-generation and low-income students and professionals overcome barriers and find success in their professional lives. Recently, we sat down with Kamilla to discuss her work with Rise First and why she’s passionate about advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion for disadvantaged and under-resourced communities.?

Tell us a little about your background

“My family immigrated to the United States from Uzbekistan, and I grew up in a low income neighborhood. I went to an urban public high school in Philadelphia with 3,500 students and one college counselor. I kind of learned as I went. What really stuck with me was that I didn’t know what I didn’t know, until I (often) learned it the hard way. I realized there are a lot of unspoken rules to success that are often not taught or not passed on, unless you come from a more privileged background.”?

How did you get involved with Rise First?

“I met Cindy Rentala, who was my first real mentor, my senior year at University of Pennsylvania at a first-generation, low-income students conference. She sat a group of us down and shared her vision to use technology to build a first-generation, low-income-focused platform that would reach underserved students nationwide, especially in flyover states, which was a niche that wasn’t really being addressed at that time. I felt so called by that idea — being able to apply my interests and strengths to create a more equitable world — that I signed on immediately. I’m also personally driven by bringing impactful ideas to life. It’s what gets me up in the morning. I feel like I have a superpower of imagining a world that doesn’t exist yet and then making it a reality, so I’m really grateful to be able to do that both at OJO through my Product Manager role, and also through leading Rise First and being challenged in a different forum there.”?

“I’m personally driven by bringing impactful ideas to life. It’s what gets me up in the morning. I feel like I have a superpower of imagining a world that doesn’t exist yet and then making it a reality, so I’m really grateful to be able to do that both at OJO through my Product Manager role and also through leading Rise First.”

What is the overall mission for Rise First?

“At Rise First we believe everyone should have equal access to opportunities no matter where they come from, especially those from first-generation, low-income backgrounds, who face unique barriers to success. The four areas we focus on primarily are: combating impostor syndrome, navigating unwritten rules in the workplace, managing personal finances under unique circumstances, and building networking skills.

Our mission is to level the playing field for first-generation, low-income folks nationwide by reducing the common barriers that they face. We’re also a platform built for and by the first-generation and low-income community so the experience of building and growing Rise First itself has helped a lot of students and early professionals build their own skills.”

How has being involved with Rise First helped you grow professionally??

“When I think back to early in my career, I didn’t believe I belonged where I was. My experience at Rise First has helped me build confidence and ease that impostor syndrome through real-world experience. It gave me the opportunity to learn how to build relationships and provided me with challenges that I might not have gotten at work until much later in my career, such as leading a team, inspiring people, and driving a vision. A lot of that experience has been translatable to my role at OJO and has helped me build my confidence as a leader, as a product manager, and as an employee.”

Why is this something you’re passionate about?

“I’m really passionate about diversity, equity, and inclusion, and being someone who succeeded despite odds makes me really aware of the systemic inequalities that exist in our world. Impostor syndrome isn’t clear cut — you can’t just build a course to eliminate impostor syndrome. Representation and diversity and inclusion have been long-standing issues in tech, so I’m also involved in OJO’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion team, and we’re trying to partner with OJO, as well as other tech companies, to help expand the recruiting pipeline to bring in more candidates from underrepresented populations. I’m excited to bring my experience full circle and help more people gain confidence, build a network, and navigate unwritten rules through something like Rise First that’s really tactical and hands-on.”

You can learn more about Rise First here

OJO Team Member Spotlight is a monthly content series to celebrate all the unique and amazing hobbies, volunteer work, and passion projects our employees pursue in their personal time.?