A Celebration With Big ‘Jamaican-Nigerian Energy'

New York Times

13-06-2025

When Ayokunle Olufemi Apampa first joined the Goldman Sachs office in Salt Lake City in 2011, there were about 20 Black professionals in the entire building, he said. He and a few colleagues led efforts to build a community of Black professionals in the city, which included recruiting summer interns.
Nia-Imani Adyira Mitchell, who joined a summer program at Goldman Sachs in 2017, was one of those interns. Before the internship started, a few members of the Black Network, an employee resource group at the office, held a welcome barbecue during the Memorial Day weekend. There, Mr. Apampa, who goes by Kunle, and Ms. Mitchell first locked eyes while he was flipping burgers behind the grill. He gave her a wave.
'Maybe he was checking me out,' Ms. Mitchell, 29, recalled thinking.
'I did notice her,' Mr. Apampa, 35, said. 'And I did also notice that people were trying to get her attention.'
Throughout the summer, they saw each other during events organized by Black professionals in the city. But when her internship ended, she returned to New York, where she completed her final year at the University at Buffalo and received a bachelor's degree in business administration.
They kept in touch professionally over the years, and in the summer of 2019, Mr. Apampa moved to Jersey City, N.J., for three months before settling in Brooklyn. Ms. Mitchell was living with her family in New Windsor, in Orange County, N.Y.
Mr. Apampa, who is from Lagos, Nigeria, and earned a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology, had transferred from Goldman Sachs's Salt Lake City office to the New York office. When he texted Ms. Mitchell about his move, he also intended to ask her out on a date. 'I really liked Nia's approach to life,' Mr. Apampa said. 'I was hitting her up to really try to figure out, like, what's up?'
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