AFB Possibilities Podcast, Episode 7: AFB Scholars Josh Olukanni and Annika Ariel Join Us at AFBLC
Episode Show Notes
In 2025, the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) launched the AFB Scholars Program, which provides substantial financial support and mentoring to undergraduate and graduate students who are blind. Our first cohort welcomed four students into the program, and at the 2025 AFB Leadership Conference, we had the opportunity to meet with two of the scholars: Josh Olukanni at Georgetown and Annika Ariel at Stanford. Applications are open through February 17th for our next class of scholars. Visit the scholars program page to learn more and apply: www.afb.org/scholarships.
AFB Possibilities Podcast, Episode 7 Transcript
V/O Intro: AFB.
Tony Stephens:
Welcome to AFB Possibilities, a podcast from the American Foundation for the Blind. I'm Tony Stevens. In our episode today, we have a chance to talk with two members of the inaugural cohort of AFB Scholars in the AFB Scholars Program. Joshua from Georgetown and Anika from Stanford joined us at the AFB Leadership Conference, and we had a chance to sit down and learn more about them. Applications are open now through February 17th for the next cohort of participants in the Scholars Program. So be sure to go to afb.org/scholarships to learn more about the program and how you can apply.
And welcome back, everybody to another episode of AFB Possibilities, a podcast produced by the American Foundation for the Blind. And I am joined with a very special guest, Joshua Olikani, who is a graduate student at Georgetown University. AFB is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia and right across the Potomac River in the lovely old neighborhood of Georgetown. It's a wonderful school. And we are fortunate to have a wonderful student from that school with us here today who's going to be sharing a little bit about his experiences, his life, challenges and successes and all the things that come with that. But how are you doing, Josh?
Joshua Olukanni:
I'm doing great. I feel like it's been a great conference so far. Everyone's been treating me nicely. Yeah.
Tony Stephens:
We should give the caveat. We are recording this at the AFB Leadership Conference where you were attending as one of AFB's inaugural AFB scholars in our AFP Scholars program. Yes. But yeah, has everyone been nice to you? You're still here, which is good. Yeah. You made it through one day.
Joshua Olukanni:
It's been great. No complaints here.
Tony Stephens:
Is this your first time to a blindness related conference?
Joshua Olukanni:
No. I've actually been part of a lot of organizations for the blind through NFB or USABA. No,
Tony Stephens:
It's cool. US Association of Blind Athletes. Yes, exactly. So let's jump in a little bit because we have set up that obviously you're a person who's blind. Tell us a little bit about your condition and when did you learn about it and how it has sort of just in a sense carried its way through your life?
Joshua Olukanni:
Yeah. So I always tell people I was born and raised blind. I was born with a condition called optic nerve atrophy, and this condition essentially just does not allow images to come through clearly through my eyes going to my brain. So it's just something I've always been living with. And I honestly, initially when I was a kid, I didn't entirely understand the gravity of what blindness was. So we'd always go to the eye doctor. The eye doctor would always prep my dad to say the sad news of like, "Oh, your child is blind." And I didn't fully grasp what that entirely meant. So you'd go home, my eyes would be done, but the dilated eyes, my dilated eyes would return back to normal and then I'd be like, "Okay, I'm just going to go outside and play basketball." And eventually I started realizing that I wasn't able to do things that my friends were doing outside with the ball, whether that's coordination wise or whatever.
And sometimes the ball would just bounce off the rim and hit me in the head. And I'm like, "Huh, why didn't I see that?
Tony Stephens:
Joshua Olukanni:
So it was the moments like that that really illustrated to me the difference between my vision and my friend's vision.
Tony Stephens:
Not the most fun way to find out the challenges with your impairment if you're getting nailed in the head by a basketball.
Joshua Olukanni:
100%.
Tony Stephens:
Yeah. You mentioned USABA. Did you play sports? Did you have some vision early on? Did it get worse as you got older?
Joshua Olukanni:
No. So my vision's fairly stable. And so I've had the same vision since I was born and I always enjoyed working out, lifting weights, running. And once I started to get closer to people in the blindness community, they picked up on this. I call her my NFB mom, because she's the one who introduced me to the NFB. But she was like, "Oh, you should look into USABA. I think you would really be able to grab something from there and enjoy whatever it is that you find in USABA." So I was like, "Okay, let me give it a try." And so I looked into it, found the sport of goalball, and I started playing goalball and I was like, "Huh, this is a really fun sport." And initially I was not good at all. I was pretty bad. And so I really was like, "Okay, I really want to level up in this sport." So I ended up going out to the Paralympic Training Center.
At the time it was in Fort Wayne, Indiana. So I lived there for a little bit practicing with the Paralympians and got decently good. So that's kind of how my trajectory with USABA began.
Tony Stephens:
Did you ever get to compete on an international stage at all?
Joshua Olukanni:
Not on an international stage. I only played at regional and national tournaments. And I quickly realized that the level of commitment that the Paralympians were putting in day in and day out was not what I saw for myself, just because they were in the gym five days a week, repping goalball, day in, day out. And I wanted to do other things. And unfortunately, there isn't really money in goalball.
Tony Stephens:
Yeah, you don't see major multinational groups, unfortunately.
Joshua Olukanni:
Exactly.
Tony Stephens:
Sponsoring. Yeah.
Joshua Olukanni:
So I was like, man, if I'm going to commit to this, I have to commit to not poverty, but just not having as much as I would be able to-
Tony Stephens:
It's like minor league baseball players. You got to really love
Joshua Olukanni:
It. Exactly. Exactly.
Tony Stephens:
Eat and breed it to live that kind of life.
Joshua Olukanni:
Exactly. So I was just like, I still really love playing it. And I ended up making a team at the University of Minnesota because of how much I enjoyed it, but I just decided that going to the Paralympics was not for me.
Tony Stephens:
Yeah. What is it when you started to define what it was you wanted to do? Was this in high school when you were doing the Paralympic stuff? And what is it that got you to college?
Joshua Olukanni:
Yeah. So I actually started goalball my junior year of high school. And then once I graduated, I went to the Paralympic Training Center in Indiana and lived there for a month and some change. And then I ultimately ended up going back and forth between Minnesota and Indiana to go for the practices and the clinics for a little bit there. And that's kind of how that started. But to kind of transition into how I started defining what it was that I wanted for myself, it's honestly like an evolving story because initially I wanted to be a therapist. And so I started my undergrad as a psych major and I was like, "This is what I want to do. " And I ended up taking a counseling psychology class. I was like, "Man, this is kind of depressing." This is why they say therapists need therapy.
Tony Stephens:
No, that's true.
Joshua Olukanni:
I was like, "Okay, no, this is not for me. " And then I found HR and HR is psychology adjacent where you're kind of in there dealing with like-
Tony Stephens:
It's human focused.
Joshua Olukanni:
Exactly. It's very much human focused, but you're on the business side of things. And then I had an internship summer of 2024 and it was at a global company. They were going through a big reorg at the time, so a lot of people were getting fired and my manager was the main one on this, firing people. And I was like, "Man, do I want to do this? Do I see myself doing this? " And then so I started thinking more and more about what I saw myself doing. And that's where I transitioned again into looking at finance because I found the career path of wealth management and I was like, "This sounds like an amazing opportunity to talk to people, which I really enjoy doing
And kind of help people learn about what opportunities there are out there to help them become financially free, create generational wealth, learn about taxes, learn about credit cards." And as someone in wealth management, you're the person curating investments and educating people on these things. So that's where my focus started to go. And I was very fortunate that I had a friend who was already doing the master's of science and finance program at Georgetown and he was like, "Yeah, this is what it's about. " He gave me the whole rundown. I was like, "You know what? Let me just throw my hand in the ring and apply, see what happens." And so I ended up getting in and here I am.
Tony Stephens:
That's awesome. Yeah. Are you in the first year?
Joshua Olukanni:
I'm in my first year of the program.
Tony Stephens:
And it's a two year?
Joshua Olukanni:
Yes, sir.
Tony Stephens:
How has it been at Georgetown, Go Saxons, by the way? I'm an ex- Jesuit, so I'm about the mission of the Jesuits, which is to serve person in service of others, right? Yes,
Tony Stephens:
Sir.
Tony Stephens:
And it's interesting to hear you say that with the idea of it ... If you were to come to me today and say, "Yeah, I'm studying finance at Georgetown," I wouldn't have thought, oh, this is somebody who had that soft human psychology side to them, right?
Tony Stephens:
Yep.
Tony Stephens:
But it's an interesting, when you talk about wealth management in that sense and just guiding people through the complexities of finance, I can see the benefits that you'd bring to that.
Tony Stephens:
Yeah.
Tony Stephens:
What has it been like as someone going to a private school that isn't always the same as a public school? And it's just not a huge school. It's a great school, but University of Minnesota where you went to undergrad, right?
Joshua Olukanni:
Yes, sir.
Tony Stephens:
I imagine there was an enormous disability students program.
Joshua Olukanni:
Yeah.
Tony Stephens:
Georgetown, are there other blind students at Georgetown even?
Joshua Olukanni:
Yeah, so there are, but probably not as many as Minnesota. Minnesota was huge. There was like 53,000 students, so it's like a small city.
Tony Stephens:
Yeah. How's Georgetown been? What are the hardest parts you find in your studies with your vision impairment?
Joshua Olukanni:
Yeah. So I think the big thing is PDFs because in the master's program, there's a lot of cases, as I'm sure there is in other business programs throughout the country, but there's a lot of cases you have to do a lot of discussion posts. You have to analyze the information in different statements of accounts, whether that's income statements, balance sheets, whatever. You have to look at it and analyze it. But the issue is when it's a PDF, the best way I can explain it, if it's on an Excel sheet, you can go sell by self, orient yourself to it and know where everything's at. But PDF, your screen reader just reads it all as
Tony Stephens:
Joshua Olukanni:
So it's harder to parse through, but I think one thing that I'm trying to push myself to do is figure out alternative ways to get the same information out of that as my peers, just because it ultimately ends up being very important in our classes. And professors love to cold call, so you have to come prepared.
Tony Stephens:
I have heard ... It's funny, Anika, who's here as well, our other AFP scholar, she was talking about Professors Cole calling her when we had a chance to chat with her. And it's funny you bring that up too, just the skillset of you got to know your stuff so much better because otherwise you're going to be fumbling through an inaccessible document to try to find out where the site a person could just look at it immediately and it's like you have ... But then again, it's the catch 22, it's miserable, but it's probably one of the reasons why people that are blind are such strong employees in the sense that being able to retain information and also too, just working extra hard. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. 100%. But I know that feeling of it'd be nice not to have to work hard all the time. Nice to be a little lazy.
A little lazy. Yeah.
Joshua Olukanni:
I want to be as lazy as my peers
Tony Stephens:
As- Exactly. I want to be as accessible as my peers and I want to be as lazy as my peers too. Exactly. When do you find the medium? Well, what are your dreams and hopes, man?
Joshua Olukanni:
Yeah, so I think right now it's mainly predominantly getting an internship in the short term that's in the sales side of finance because like I stated earlier, I've really enjoyed that people side of things in finance and more so in the long term, I would ideally ... I genuinely think that the insufficient amount of education around finance is a problem, and I don't know how it's going to manifest, but I want to create something at some point in the undetermined future of education around finances or a company, a nonprofit, something around finances. So I'm right now thinking about the different ways that that could be possible and building that out just in my mind and in something that I want to do in the future. But I guess between now and then, I'm just going to try and work a corporate job and help people learn about these things in the meantime.
Tony Stephens:
Yeah. Excellent. Well, I mean, congratulations on the success of just getting into Georgetown, which is a wicked smart school. I appreciate it. And being one of our AFP scholars and getting out here to the conference, we're so glad that you're able to get out to the leadership conference.
Joshua Olukanni:
No, I really appreciate it. I feel like AFB is the reason I thought going to Georgetown was even possible because before that, I don't really come from an affluent background. So once I saw that price tag, I was like, "Man, I'm going to have to start."
Tony Stephens:
It ain't community college.
Joshua Olukanni:
Yeah. I'm going to have to start applying to a lot of scholarships why.
Tony Stephens:
We took a valid poverty as Jesuits, but the universities that don't make it cheaper. Exactly, exactly. Yeah. Well, that's awesome. Well, best of luck with everything and thanks so much for coming on the podcast today. It's been great to meet you, Josh. Yeah, 100%.
Joshua Olukanni:
Likewise.
Tony Stephens:
Thank you so much for having me. And thanks again, Josh, for joining us at AFB Leadership Conference. Next, we get a chance to hear from Anika Ariel from Stanford University as Erin Priest from our Access World Magazine and I had a chance to sit down with her. We are so excited to have a guest with us today who has flown in all the way from Stanford, California. I think probably wins one of the prizes of traveling the furthest to come to our conference this year, but it is Anika Ariel from University of Stanford. Hi, Anika. How are you?
Annika Ariel:
I'm good. How are you? It is quite a bit colder here than in California.
Tony Stephens:
Yeah. We wanted to make sure you were very not comfortable. So we set it up with a nice Arctic blast. What was it like when you left Stanford? What was it?
Annika Ariel:
I think it was like 60 and it was the coldest day we'd had
Tony Stephens:
In a while.
It was like, what, 30 something, low 30s, I think, and the wind was brutal. Yeah. Well, thanks so much for coming out and traveling the blustery start of winter that we will say started way too soon. We're recording this in early November. But no, no, it's exciting to get to know you. For folks that don't know, that maybe haven't seen news from AFB over the summer and into the fall, Anika is one of our AFB scholars. It's one of our new programs we launch at the American Foundation for the Blind. And you are currently enrolled in your second year of law school at Stanford Law. Congratulations on surviving year one.
Tony Stephens:
Thanks.
Tony Stephens:
It's one of those things that is sort of a test that everyone I talk to that goes to law school. It's kind of that first sort of coming of age. If you survive that, then hopefully it's all downhill. But tell us a little bit about what you're interested in studying and we're going to jump into some of the stuff that actually will tie into Access World and we tend to be a tech podcast, but we'll get into some of your tech background in a minute, but tell us what it is that you're really interested in studying right now. What are your goals with going into law school?
Annika Ariel:
Yeah, definitely. So I'm sure we'll get into this, but I worked in tech for a couple of years before deciding to go to law school. Before that, I double majored in English and political science at Amherst, which is in Western Massachusetts and very cold. I originally grew up in Northern California, and I remember my first winter there, all of the people from the East Coast were like, "Oh, this is such a mild winter." And every day I was furring on another comically-
Tony Stephens:
Did you think you had a real winter coat when you moved out there?
Annika Ariel:
I thought I did and I quickly learned I was wrong. It turns out you really can't buy them in California. I mean, you could probably order them online, but it's not like you walk into a store in California and
Tony Stephens:
Can buy a
Annika Ariel:
Proper winter coat.
Tony Stephens:
So you went out to Amherst. Yeah.
Annika Ariel:
Yeah. Well, I was there. I had vague ideas of going to law school. It was kind of always part of my plan. I was one of the captains of the mock trial team and I really liked mock trial. When I tell it now, it's kind of, I was either going to join the student newspaper or do mock trial. And when I went to the student newspaper meeting, they were kind of weird about my blindness and the mock trial people weren't. So I was like, "Okay, I guess I'm doing mock trial now."
But I found out that I really, really enjoyed it. I just really liked standing up in court and arguing and having a good time and thinking about the legal theories behind everything and applying case law and all of that stuff. So that was kind of ... I kind of knew I was going to go to law school then. And I graduated undergrad in 2019, which was pretty much right before the pandemic. And after that, I started at Google and I knew I didn't want to do Zoom law school, nothing but respect for people who did that, but I don't think I would have done well in Zoom law school. I really like traditional academic life.
Tony Stephens:
Tell us a little bit about how you got into Google, because you're from California, right?
Annika Ariel:
Yeah.
Tony Stephens:
Where are you from again?
Annika Ariel:
I'm from Santa Rosa.
Tony Stephens:
From Santa Rosa. So that's north part of the state, kind of near the valley.
Annika Ariel:
Broadly speaking, there's a debate about whether or not Sonoma County counts as Bay Area. I think it
Tony Stephens:
Does, but ... You're on the side of the state where all the wicked smart tech people are at least, if you were to divide it
Annika Ariel:
In house. Fair
Tony Stephens:
Enough. The artsy people to the south and the techie, smart people in the north. Is it just an expectation that everybody that grows up in Northern California will work in tech somehow or what is it, because you were literature and political science, what was it that got you to Google?
Annika Ariel:
Yeah, I would say there wasn't really that expectation where I was growing up. It was just enough outside of the tech bubble. I would say what brought me to Google, I did a program called Lyme Connect, which basically at that time was kind of if you were a disabled college student and pretty high achieving, they helped you meet with corporate companies. And I really liked everyone that I met at Google and they had a program where I was kind of in this program where you didn't really need a tech background or anything. And I ended up becoming a business analyst, which was weird because I was in SQL and R all day and Amherst at that time had a true open curriculum. So I mean, I took a bunch of Russian language classes. I didn't take a single STEM class and all of a sudden it was like, okay, learn how to code, which I really enjoyed.
I thought that it was a really cool job and I did that for ... I was on teams like that for about two and a half years and I find that just really engaging. I liked thinking about coding. It was a good job during COVID too, I think, because a lot of it was done remotely anyway and accessibility wise, I never really had any significant issues in that role.
Tony Stephens:
Nice. Very nice. Do you have a sense of, in terms of, because what was it you did at Google? Give us a sense of what that was because you shared with us before, so we already know, but for the audience, because I think that wants to lead into a question.
Annika Ariel:
Yeah. So originally I was a business analyst, like I mentioned, and then for the last bit of time I was there about two-ish years, I was on a team called Responsible Innovation, kind of like AI efficacy focused. And basically the thing I really liked about that was getting to just work and learn about a ton of new products all across the company. And this was a bit before generative AI became a thing. So as you can imagine, that job changed focus pretty quickly. But what I kind of started realizing was like all the people getting to do really interesting stuff were the attorneys and I was like, "Oh, wait a second. I actually do want to go to law school." So ended up applying to law school.
Tony Stephens:
Very cool.
Annika Ariel:
I mean, when you're applying to law school, you kind of apply all over the country, but I not so secretly wanted to stay in Northern California, so very grateful to have ended up at Stanford.
Tony Stephens:
Very nice. And congratulations. That's one of the top law schools in the country indeed. The question and why I asked you to share a bit about that, and that AI efficacy thing, there's a lot of conversations about the legal profession. I know as we talk about replacing jobs and will AI start taking the place of, at a minimum, like paralegals, right? But where does that sit? Are there conversations about the role that AI is playing in sort of the legal space at all that you all are having at the university there?
Annika Ariel:
There are definitely a good amount of them. I'm also like, one of the things I do at Stanford is I'm on the board of the Stanford Tech and Law Review and we get a lot of articles on AI as you can imagine. So I've had some involvement from that space. I think in terms of actually being an attorney, I don't know, maybe this is naive of me having just completed one year of law school and almost another quarter. This quarter is only like another month. I feel like a lot of what attorneys are paid for is judgment, and I feel like that's something a lot of people can agree on that generative AI cannot really help with.
Tony Stephens:
Interesting.
Annika Ariel:
And I also think there's a lot of role for nuance, like never for any of my academic writing, but just for stuff I've written for other stuff. Occasionally I've been like, after submitting or whatever, I'll be like, "Huh, I wonder what ChatGPT or whatever would have to say about edits for this piece." And I've never ... I mean, occasionally it'll point out you missed a comma or something and like, "Okay, cool. Maybe I should have gone back with Microsoft Word or whatever." But I've never found any of its substantive editing to be very decent in my opinion. Yeah.
Tony Stephens:
Yeah. What are your thoughts with that, Aaron, just in a sense of, because that was interesting about judgment, that the technology, that's one of our human qualities, I guess.
Aaron Preece:
Yeah. In some ways, AI where it's going to synthesize things based on what we've, all sorts of differing opinions that it's learned from, and that might not be ... It's just going to give you the most common answer in some ways, and the answer that you are happy with versus potentially the best answer, and that's really its goal versus giving you an answer you might not be happy with, or that might be out of the box. That's one thing it kind of struggles with because it is looking for the most common denominator, the way I understand it. When it is generating text for you, it's looking for what is the most common way I should complete answer this question, not what is the best answer or the most analytic
Annika Ariel:
Answer. Yeah. Yeah. And I think inherent in that is like you miss a lot of nuance.
Aaron Preece:
Like you said, I find it really useful for catching spelling mistakes and like you said, commas and things that like a screen reader might not be able to pick up, but when it comes to content or sentence structure a lot of the time, it's just not quite there.
Tony Stephens:
Interesting. So with regards to year two, you're going to be going halfway through the year soon. Where in a year and a half from now, where do you think you want to try to drive toward then?
Annika Ariel:
Yeah. So I guess at that point I will have pretty much finished law school. I worked at a law firm this past summer and I really enjoyed it. I was in the litigation department at Morrison Forester and
Tony Stephens:
SF.
Annika Ariel:
I'll be back there for part of this summer and then also at a different law firm for most of the summer. I really love litigation. I really love legal research and writing, which it's kind of funny. Sometimes you'll hear people be like, "You want to be a litigator if you like legal research and writing in law school." And that was very much my experience. I'm not really taking any super writing intensive classes this quarter and I keep being like, "What's missing?" And it feels like that, which has been an interesting experience.
Tony Stephens:
What accessibility tools do you have? Can you share your condition and has it been lifelong?
Annika Ariel:
Yeah. So I had grew up with a pretty minor visual impairment, like really minor. And then when I was 15 or 16, I developed an autoimmune disease and that's how I lost most of my sight. In terms of assistive tech, for law school, I almost entirely use a screen reader. I also have a Braille Mantis, which I use. I use both to just take notes in the word processing software it has, and also mostly as a Braille display. I also, because a lot of legal case books have string sites and stuff like that, I also work with a human reader part of the week. And in terms of like actual like how do I get my work done, I would say it's a lot of very careful reading and very carefully briefing. And it's also, I feel like one of the classic things people think about with law school is cold calling, which is basically the professor just like, "Okay, Anika, what are the facts of this case?
What are the holding?" I actually never watched the movies that apparently it's very popular in, but apparently that's what ... Yeah. And I think for me, when I get cold called, it's a lot harder for me to look at my notes quickly.
And if you're in a classroom of like 90 people, like people at Stanford Law are very friendly, but it's just awkward to be there for 30 seconds trying to figure it out. So I kind of just have to know stuff cold
Tony Stephens:
In
Annika Ariel:
A way I think some of my sighted classmates don't have to,
Tony Stephens:
Which
Annika Ariel:
I guess, I don't know, maybe cold call is an appropriate title for me.
Tony Stephens:
It's the hard extra steps we have to take to be equal, but I think it probably makes us better in the long run, right? That's going to be a quality that you can, that immediacy knowledge recall and things like that. I'm imagining 10 years from now when you're like in front of the bench and you hear something and you say, "Well, actually, you kind of throw it down. Your honor." I don't know. I love legal shows, but what do I know? I
Annika Ariel:
Haven't actually watched any. I keep meaning to. I haven't even seen Legally Blonde.
Tony Stephens:
Oh, well, that's probably a good thing. All right. Well, best of luck with those studies. We can't wait till maybe you turn down law to become a judge, the practice of law that is, I should say, for the Ninth Circuit maybe in San Francisco, but they always get a lot of accessibility cases. But no, it's been wonderful to have you join the conference, Anika. Thanks so much. And thanks for taking a few minutes for folks to get to know you.
Tony Stephens:
Yeah, definitely.
Tony Stephens:
And we'll look forward to following how things go. You survived your methodology of trying to manage the massive amount of information that needs to be fed into your head in law school must be working because you survived year one and that's always the hardest year. So can Congratulations.
Annika Ariel:
Thanks. I've really enjoyed being here so far and I'm really grateful to AFB.
Tony Stephens:
Awesome.
Annika Ariel:
Yeah, also very glad to have survived 1L.
Tony Stephens:
It's all downhill. All right. Excellent. Thanks everybody.
Tony Stephens (MUSIC OUTRO):
You've been listening to AFB Possibilities, a podcast from the American Foundation for the Blind. To learn more about AFB or help support our work creating a world of endless possibilities for people who are blind or have low vision, visit us at www.afb.org. Be sure to like and subscribe to this podcast wherever you get your podcasts from, and leave us a comment. It really helps us out. AFB is produced and edited by Tony Stephens at the Pickle Factory in Baltimore, Maryland. Additional digital media support from Kelly Gasque and Breanna Kerr. For questions or comments, email communications@afb.org.