Afiya Bediako loves helping to awaken the best in others and enable their success by offering her skills and time. She does just that as an advisor at Square One Prep, with a manner that is both supportive and direct.
Afiya received her B.A. from Amherst College majoring in Black Studies and leading the campus' Big Brother Big Sisters program. After Amherst, Afiya worked at Goldman Sachs for 5 years in their Operations Division where she spent her time on Dodd-Frank initiatives and special initiatives, while supporting the Commodity and Structured Equity Sales and Trading desks. Afiya was awarded a full-tuition Consortium fellowship at and received her MBA from NYU Stern School of Business. During her time at Stern, Afiya was Co-President of the Association of Hispanic and Black Business Students and a Vice President of Stern’s Luxury and Retail Club. She was also involved with Stern Admissions and reviewed prospective students’ essays and conducted mock interviews. Afiya spent her summer between her first and second year in the Bay Area interning at Tesla. Post-graduation, she interned with Harlem Capital Partners, a VC firm committed to investing in founders of color. Afiya is currently working on her own start-up, Harlem Handbook, a digital guidebook providing an intimate perspective on Harlem by connecting readers with the changemakers fueling Harlem’s New Renaissance. As she is a native New Yorker, she is passionate about the vibrancy of the city and the people in it.
Afiya is also on the Board of Citizens Against Recidivism, a non-profit organization that helps formerly incarcerated individuals not return to prison and honors those who have served their communities. Afiya is conversational in Spanish, and for fun, she enjoys yoga, traveling, and cooking.