On building confidence and going the extra mile with Hope Idaewor

Meet Hope Idaewor: a Nigerian-born, Atlanta-raised design researcher, educator, and mentor based in Seattle, Washington.

May 05, 2025

Hope Idaewor sits facing the camera in a yellow dress posing for a portrait on a brown couch. — Photography provided by Hope Idaewor

Meet Hope Idaewor: a Nigerian-born, Atlanta-raised design researcher, educator, and mentor based in Seattle, Washington. In this conversation, Hope opens up about her experience growing up in a Nigerian-American household, and how her father played a pivotal role in shaping her self-confidence and pursuit of excellence. She reflects on the formative moments that introduced her to the world of computer science and UX research—some inspiring, others challenging—and how building confidence helped her push through the discouraging parts. We dive into her focused work ethic, her determination to break into the tech industry, and how that drive has carried her through roles at major companies like Microsoft, Uber, and more. Hope also shares what it means to her to give back—whether it’s mentoring others or staying grounded in family life as a mom and wife—all while continuing to grow in her career.

Interviewed in January 2025 | This conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Please introduce yourself. Hello, everyone. I'm Hope Idaewor, a Senior Researcher at Microsoft. I'm currently living in Seattle with my husband and son.

I immigrated from Nigeria as a kid and grew up in Georgia. A lot of my life experiences, how I was raised, and how I navigated my life all connect back to my roots. My culture is very family-oriented, and I am the first child of five kids. It also brings in a piece of my personality—that go-getter mindset I’ve developed over time. Being the first in my family to go through college in America, I didn’t have a choice. That drive had to be there.

Pursuing a career in tech started from home. My dad is a self-made entrepreneur and IT consultant and has been in the tech industry for 20 or 30 years since being in this country, and he's done a lot of amazing stuff. It's a huge inspiration and connects to why I chose to get into Computer Science.

What do you think makes your upbringing unique and how has that shaped who you are today? I grew up in America but consider myself a Nigerian American, with my upbringing in a relatively traditional African household. My perspective now differs from when I was younger and how I saw my upbringing.

What was your perspective then versus now? I don’t think I realized how much my parents truly sacrificed until I got older. My dad started from scratch, working on his PhD in Economics in Nigeria to then come [to America] and started from blue-collar jobs, then eventually pivoting in a completely different space. He got into tech as a database administrator. He got in around the internet boom and landed a job at Oracle in the late 90s and early 2000s—when everything started. He came in at a good time and was observant enough to discover that having skills in tech was becoming increasingly important.

That's why he picked that career path. He taught himself database management, consulted for several companies in the U.S. and globally in the 2000s, then decided to help others and opened an IT training academy. He started pouring back into the diaspora, helping other immigrants and people of color up-skill themselves the same way he did.

So that was immensely inspiring, he got me my first computer when I was about 7 or 8. But there was some internal pressure I think that came with it, that I felt growing up. Having A's was expected, and I did well in elementary school. But when I got to middle and high school, I started to get into the social element, and I struggled with really stepping into myself. Where we lived in Georgia, there weren't a lot of immigrants or Africans living there at the time, so I started to feel like I needed to fit in somehow. For example, I would start unknowingly masking my accent to fit in more with the American kids (both black and white), and simplify my last name so my friends could pronounce it “better.”

I started to get more focused on fitting in, dating, than on educational excellence or joining academic clubs that would help boost my resume for college. When it came time for high school graduation and applying for colleges—I didn’t even want to go to the University of Georgia at first. It’s one of the top public schools in the state, so of course my parents were pushing for it. But back then, I just wanted to follow my friends who were all going to a different school in the state. My dad ended up forcing me to apply and accepting the invitation to attend. I was pissed.

Looking back at it now, that was the best decision he ever made for me. I met a lot of great people from all over, learned a lot, started to openly embrace my Nigerian identity for the first time, and truly grew out of the “bubble” I grew up in.

So that's an example of perspective shifting as I got older, but it also reflects the pressure of growing up in a first-generation household and as someone shaping the way for the rest of my siblings.

Were there any particular values that your father wanted to instill in you? What helped you realize his guidance helped you make the best decision for your future? He was trying to get me to always reach for the highest bar, shoot for the best, and see the best within myself.

He started from scratch and self-funded and started several businesses even after his academy. So he always instilled this value of, 'You can be excellent. You are excellent. You just have to do the work to get there, but also believe in yourself and that you can do it.'

He also ensured that I understood what it meant to think independently and be my own person rather than following others. That guidance and support, along with my own decisions, had a lasting impact. There's almost this shortsightedness that you have as a child, and your parents are there to guide you and ensure you can see beyond that.

“[My father] ensured that I understood what it meant to think independently and be my own person rather than following others. That guidance and support, along with my own decisions, had a lasting impact.”

Your dad also tried to push you to be yourself. I can see where who you are stems from that part of your upbringing, which involved having someone, in this case, your father, be confident in you to help you see the confidence in yourself.

So, what happens next as you decide to study at the University of Georgia? Were there any key moments that helped you as you entered the working world or as a young adult? Yeah, gosh, it's so hard to summarize because so many things happened in those four years!

But three things come to mind.

For context, since my dad always had computers around and got us personal computers pretty young, I always dabbled in coding. I taught myself Graphic Design, HTML and CSS in high school. Then I decided to pursue Computer Science since it felt the most relevant to my interests.

First key moment: my very first computer science class is the most memorable thing that comes to mind. My instructor was a guy who worked at Google as an intern and was also a PhD student. I remember the first day when I walked into the auditorium-style class; I was probably one of four girls, and one of two black people in the class.

We first started with a "Hello World" exercise in Java. All I remember is how technical and nerdy it was, but how genuinely happy and excited I was. It was very interesting, seeing how simple commands could make my computer do certain things. It was literally a new language, and I couldn't wait to learn more.

The way I look at our careers and the things that we do and spend 40 hours a week on, I think we need to love what we're doing and that there should be some connection that doesn't make it feel mundane and still feels integrated into our life, purpose, and all these things.

And I remember that day saying, "Oh my god, I can't wait to continue to learn software development and to be this developer and write more code." Granted, it became much more difficult after just coding "Hello world."

That moment was memorable because I remember how I felt in that class regardless of being the obvious minority in the room. I didn't really feel any “imposter syndrome.” At the moment, if anything, that was overshadowed by me just feeling like, "I can’t believe I get to actually do this every day.”

The second key moment is almost the opposite of that first memory in my first year of taking that first Computer Science class.

In senior year I had an appointment with my research advisor, the head of the Computer Science department at the time.

We were preparing for graduation and I needed four remaining Computer Science classes. I was a little behind in a few credits as I didn't take the right classes freshman year, so I needed a bit more to graduate on time.

The research advisor told me, "It's not possible for you to take these four classes and graduate in the spring. You're not going to be able to do that. He said, “my smartest students can't do that. You definitely can't do that."

Looking back at it, I actually agree that taking that many CS classes at one time was a bit of a stretch, but there was a layer of disbelief and disappointment I felt, in how he was so quick to assume I would fail before I tried. It wasn't a conversation. It was like he just made up his mind and was telling me I was out of luck.

After that meeting, I registered for the four classes that semester and passed them all. Guess who shook my hand and handed me my diploma on graduation day?

That memory stands out to me because that was a time I believed in myself even when someone told me I couldn't do something. Because back in high school, I didn't have many of these moments where I felt like I could do something on my own or even had support from someone to go against the grain.

Finally, one last moment, probably the most important, was when I went to the Grace Hopper Conference during my junior year in college in Phoenix, Arizona. I loved this conference—it was inspiring, just great. I ended up meeting a black woman who was a UX researcher. It was the first time that I met someone in the CS field who was a researcher, AND who was black.

I vividly remember her describing what she does: a UX Researcher is someone who might not be building or designing a product, but helping advocate for what's being designed and built. She also described herself as a cross-cultural researcher, someone who studies behavior in different countries and identifies cultural patterns in beliefs and values. It was like a lightbulb went off in my head. That instantly connected with me because of my own personal experiences navigating my identity as a Nigerian growing up in America. So, the idea of advocating for people of different backgrounds in how a product is designed was fascinating.

That was also the first time I heard of UX Research as a position, and this moment led me to take HCI (Human Computer Interaction) courses during my senior year of undergrad then eventually pursuing a Master's degree.

Was that the moment that helped you pivot towards a different career path, or did you feel you could keep going where you were? I don't think I decided at that moment to scrap my dreams of being a software engineer. It was more of a mental note, "Wow, [user experience research] sounds exciting—maybe more exciting than the idea of coding." I eventually want to get into UX research, and I knew my degree would still get me there because, at the end of the day, it's all under Computer Science and Computing.

The HCI courses helped me see what it meant to do research, its connection to human factors, the design process, and all of that, which was a good primer. But realistically, I had a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. When I graduated, I had to find a job and start as a software developer because I thought, "What else am I going to do?"

So, I got a job at a consulting firm as a software developer, and I did that for two years. At the end of the two-year mark, I said, "All right, it's time for me to figure out how to get back into UX."

Hope Idaewor at a conference. Photography provided by Hope Idaewor.

What was your journey like transitioning careers? What were your first steps, mishaps, or lessons learned along the way? While I hadn’t always been resourceful [thinking back to high school], eventually, I became a person who was more committed to seeing myself achieve my dreams and goals. That comes with learning how to be resourceful, learning to learn, to connect with people, to advocate for yourself, and to find champions.

I wanted to understand the UX field fully, not just the surface. I read books, I went online and completed certificates. I also reached out to as many people as I could. Many of these were people I randomly reached out to, so that meant there were a lot of rejections or people who just didn’t respond. But there was this one woman who actually took the time to speak with me, and had several mentoring calls with me. She was a designer at Publicis Sapient, a design agency. I also reached out to the woman from Google that I met a few years back.

I learned I needed a portfolio to showcase that I understood the design and research process, and that I really needed to show project and team experience. So, I immediately started working on my UX portfolio.

At the time, I was still working as a consultant. I was making weekly trips between Atlanta and Connecticut for two years, which was a bit stressful but a fun experience when you’re young. One day, during one of these trips, I met an older woman who owned a special collections library with her husband. During the conversation, I offered to run a heuristic evaluation on her website and do some light research to help her better understand the needs of her target audience. And just like that, that became the first project in my portfolio.

So, little by little, I found projects to put on my portfolio and eventually got interviews for user experience research and design. While I could get through the door for the first interviews and screening conversations, I was missing that product sense/team experience and was not getting called back. But it was good practice.

I eventually realized I would need to leave my job to fully focus on this thing. This period was around 2015 and 2016, and UX was very much an established field, about 15 or so years after being an official industry.. Yes, roles were starting to get more definitions around them. Exactly, and so there was more investment in UX at different companies with many roles open then. But it still felt like it was more of a specialized field where "you need experience to get experience." So it was very difficult for me to break into the industry, with no formal training outside of small business projects and software development experience. I probably got at least five interviews though, which was impressive to me because I didn't even have a lot—just a rough portfolio and dreams.

What stands out is that it shows you were doing the work. Some people wonder, "Why can't I get a job?" It comes down to being focused on your goals. You took a chance in the conversation with the woman on the plane and all the people you’ve reached out to, which is important.

In mentoring early-career individuals, I often find that many aren't willing to go the extra mile. Doing unconventional things, like offering free design services helped me land my first clients as well. Unfortunately, getting ahead isn't always tied to only getting paid opportunities. You have to be willing to put in the work to break into the field.

Moving forward in your career timeline, I'd love to hear how you landed your first role as a User Experience Researcher at ALU Education. Going back to the examples of shooting my shot and reaching out to as many people as possible, being laser-focused is a very good way to describe my mindset at that time. The biggest reason I could transition successfully was because of the connections I ended up making.

It was summer of 2016 and one of my friends introduced me to a PhD student studying HCI. From his perspective, he felt I really needed the academic rigor and foundation in HCI and Human factors so I began to entertain the idea of grad school and decided to apply a few months later.

I learned about the African Leadership University from a friend. It is based in Mauritius. The fellowship program aimed to create a first-in-class university and grow and retain talent on the continent. I worked there as a program advisor, where we participated in leadership courses, advising students, and shaping the university programs.

One day I raised my hand and offered to help out with UX projects. I got this wonderful job as a part-time researcher for the learning management system they use. I did some usability testing and helped them improve their implementation. It was the first time I was working with a team of other designers and researching with the team, and it was great.

What also sets you apart in your journey is that you raised your hand for something that wasn't your "assigned role" but drove you toward the direction you wanted. Personally I think it was just God aligning things and me being laser-focused and knowing what I wanted.

I was at ALU for six months. I then came back to the States, went to grad school, did some internships, and eventually got jobs at Intel and Microsoft. Everything that happened was a product of both my faith as well as showing up and doing the hard work.

Everything that happened was a product of both my faith as well as showing up and doing the hard work.

Now that you've transitioned back to Microsoft, were there any moments from ALU to now that stood out to you? One of my first roles was working on a large-scale project at Microsoft. I co-led an ethnographic study on employee experiences for the first time when I was here. That was a great role, but I was still fresh in my career and struggled a bit to navigate research at that scale outside of an academic setting. What I learned later after having worked in the consumer space at Uber then returning to Microsoft over the past eight years is that research is only a portion of our jobs as researchers. You have to spend a lot of time outside the research studies learning the business and building relationships and trust across the cross-functional team.

…research is only a portion of our jobs as researchers. You have to spend a lot of time outside the research studies learning the business and building relationships and trust across the cross-functional team.

Having a great manager and champions that support you really matter, as well as having more senior researchers you can learn from.

Definitely—it's not always about being purely a great researcher, but similar to running studies and gathering insights, it's also about understanding context and having the support scaffolding from your team, manager, and others to allow you to continue moving forward in your career is crucial.

A collage of images from Hope's ux research workshop — Hope Idaewor leading a UX Research workshop. Photography provided by Hope Idaewor.

And how do mentorship, coaching, and the UXR courses you create come into your career? I started working on hopetalks.design two years ago on and off because I realized I would hear the same questions from people time and time again, such as "How do I stand out in my career?" or "How do I get into UXR?' It's tough to answer because I don't think everyone needs to follow the same path.

But then I reflected on what I would tell my younger self as I entered the field. I channeled that and started writing and creating my own perspective of the research field. I thought deeply about characteristics and qualities that researchers should have, things that helped me, and how to build that support system.

I started by hosting free sessions, getting to know people who were early in their career and offering advice on how to decide whether a certain industry is even right for you and your goals. I wanted to show up for people in the ways I needed when I was new to the field and cold emailing others as well.

Screenshot of hopetalks.design website — hopetalks.design website

As I was doing these sessions, and navigating work, motherhood, , I had a lot of things going on in my life as well, and it started to take a toll. I needed to find balance and decided to begin charging for my time. If I was going to dedicate hours reviewing resumes, helping people tease out their core values and research strengths, I wanted to know both parties were fully committed.

So, while I still do free sessions if someone reaches out for them for some quick advice or to connect, I also offer more detailed sessions where I invest more time in co-creating career strategies with my clients and coaching them towards their next role. One message I try to convey is harnessing your superpower. What makes you unique and stand out?

Exactly—what's your differentiator? That's what really helped me. Regardless of how I got into the field, I don't think everyone will have the same career path, but the value that helped me was being laser-focused on what differentiated me, who I was, how I wanted to show up, and what unique soft and technical skills I had to offer. Balancing that kind of confidence with a desire to continue learning is powerful.

So, I share that through my platform, encourage people to harness that, and figure out what differentiates them. For example, I might meet someone who is currently working in clinical services and they are trying to come over to design and tech. I help them figure out, "What are your values? What brought you to clinical services? And why do you want to enter the design and tech field?" I get them to think deeply and reflect their values systems and connect them back to the hard and soft skills they are uniquely gifted with.

What I hear is connecting back to the roots of what you experienced in your upbringing and as you navigate your career: hearing what others might be saying but then figuring out your voice and perspective. And that's what you're doing with hopetalks.design to help people shape that personal narrative versus just telling them what to do.

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Reflecting back, what advice would you give a younger version of yourself? I would tell my younger self to get out of my head, get out of silos, and connect with people early. Coming from academia where I spent 2 years going really deep on a thesis, I learned the hard way that it is important to bring people along with you.

You also need to build trust and credibility with others on your team and leaders in your organization. So, I'd tell myself to stop working in a silo so much and to “manage up” a bit more, being vulnerable where it makes sense and bringing people along as I work on a study, even if it doesn’t go well.

I'd also say lean into your voice. One thing I've learned in my career is that a lot of people don't always speak from knowledge or know what they are talking about, oftentimes the loudest in the room pushes the agenda. I wish I had leaned more into my instincts and not been afraid to ask certain questions in a meeting, not being afraid to speak my mind when it matters, and not let people discredit me or take credit for my work. I would tell my younger self to have the wisdom to know when to speak up for something I believe in or want to advocate for. That took me a while, especially in the corporate environment. And finally but most importantly document your impact and the different ways you've made an impact across various roles, that’s your brand.

I would tell my younger self to have the wisdom to know when to speak up for something I believe in or want to advocate for.

Lastly, I would look at my career not as all the places I've worked with as "this is work I did at Microsoft" or "this is work I did with Intel," but as these are all skills that are still part of me. I look at my career as a whole package. I have the company I worked for and I have my brand. I'm my own person, and I have these skills that I've gained—interpersonal and technical—across several industries. That’s valuable. I also have my own perspective on the world based on my upbringing, how I view the world, and the experiences I've had, which are also valuable.

It is a good reminder because oftentimes, when we spend 40+ hours a week on something, that becomes a lot of our identity. How do you ensure you don't get absorbed into the big corporation but are still your whole self? Because wow, when you step out of it, it's still a part of you. It's not Severance—you're not split and are still the same person.

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