The North Star

Disruption Beyond DEI: How Entrepreneurship Drives Equity — with Martin Ekechukwu

• JeffriAnne Wilder, Ph.D. • Season 2 • Episode 2

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Brand builder, marketing strategist, and entrepreneur Martin Ekechukwu joins Dr. JeffriAnne Wilder on The North Star to unpack how entrepreneurship can drive equity in a time when formal DEI programs are retracting.

From his immigrant roots to founding WHTWRKS, Martin shares the mindset required to build resilient businesses, align profit with purpose, and create brand ecosystems—not mere diversity checkboxes. He lifts the curtain on the truths of influencer marketing, opens up paths through supplier diversity and local impact, and shows why AI-fueled service models are the next frontier for founders and students alike.

Whether you’re starting out or scaling up, this is a guide to turning tension into opportunity.

• Immigrant roots, academic household, love of culture
• Leaving corporate to build, connect, and lead
• The limits of “change agent” roles in big firms
• Ecosystems over campaigns in multicultural marketing
• Influencer work as discipline, not luck
• DEI retrenchment, new access and supplier diversity gaps
• Social impact through arts, politics, and partnerships
• Profit with purpose in health and skincare needs
• Student playbook for organizing and peer networks
• Act local: councils, boards, and community service
• Becoming fluent in AI for practical business value
• A 10-year vision to reinvent product promotion


🔗 Find out more about Dr. JeffriAnne Wilder.
🔗 Follow the Center for DEI Innovation and Leadership on LinkedIn.
🌎Visit Oberlin College's website.
Podcast Produced by: Paradigm Media Group

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the North Star, a space for candid conversations on leadership, equity, and social justice. This season, we're exploring disruption, how bold thinkers are reimagining what change looks like. Today, I'm joined by Martin Ekachuku, an entrepreneur and change maker whose story challenges the idea that social impact is limited to nonprofits or education. Martin is the co-founder and CEO of What Works and co-hosts of the newly launched The Quiet Truth podcast. Together, we'll explore how innovation and business can drive equity and what that means for the next generation of leaders. Welcome, Martin.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you very much. I appreciate all of it. And the great, great intros.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. All right, let's jump right into it. So you were born and raised in Nigeria as well as the Czech Republic before coming to the U.S. How did your immigrant experience and family values shape your outlook and your career path?

SPEAKER_01:

Honestly, because I'm coming from an immigrant family, my entire outlook was all based off of achievement and taking advantage of things that most people are taking for granted, unfortunately. So my father being Nigerian, my mother being Czech, very highly educated academics. They wanted to come to the States in order to be able to have a better opportunity for their children. So for me, it's all about education, achievement, identifying new opportunities, and really understanding that nothing is promised and we have to work extremely hard for it. And being transplanted from one country, not even like a state or a city, one country to the next, the adjustment period and the understanding of how to blend my cultural background with the cultural background and the platform that I'm stepping into, and then using all my experiences to bring things to life uniquely, which is really what I've been focusing on the last, you know, since I've been a real an adult, like a real full-fledged, fully formed adult, has been trying to figure out ways to build opportunities for myself and my kids because I know that there's a very short time period for all of us to kind of do things that we love to do. And uh and I hope that I'm actually trying to achieve some of it now.

SPEAKER_00:

So I'm a sociologist, and I hear that um, is it your mom who was an anthropologist who's an anthropologist?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh my father uh is a has got his master's degree from the Czech Republic.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

Um and his doctorate from Oxford, one or the two. I keep on forgetting which one is. But uh yeah, he's an anthropologist and sociologist. And so I used to listen to him talk. He became a family counselor, uh, you know, kids in learning, and got into sociology and taught for many, many years, almost 20 years. Still actually, frankly, quite as he's still teaching as an adjunct professor online to a bunch of core um schools now. So he loves it. And being in an academic family, uh that that was also part of it as well, is kind of learning about different people and backgrounds. And I actually enjoyed it. My dad used to used to take us to Oklahoma to learn about the Amish and their culture, which was actually quite fascinating. And I used to actually enjoy those trips quite a bit.

SPEAKER_00:

You know, when you you have a family member, your parent is, you know, a sociologist or an anthropologist, right? You learn to be a lover of culture, people of culture. You consume that, right? In what ways has that shaped you and maybe think thinking about how that shaped you as perhaps uh a parent or uh even a lover of culture and society?

SPEAKER_01:

I absolutely love culture and I absorb so much of it as a as much as possible, and really is instilled into me from my father. Um, and you got to love New York City. You know, I'm in the middle of culture right now where anything can happen in the back streets, absolutely any moment in time. You could hear fights and you could hear loves, you can hear agreements, children, everything. So to me, being embedded inside a culture is incredibly important. My father, who brought me into the Amish country, Amish culture, taught me how to really appreciate other cultures. Frankly, uh, because I'm Czech and Nigerian, I kind of came a little bit naturally. My father really kind of broadened my experience beyond just my particular background, helped me to understand other cultures in a very unique way. And also within black culture as well, having to go into the United States, move to the US, move to the South, move to Arkansas from two big, very disparate countries, that that was also a culture shock. But I also had to take it the same way my father took it, which is try to understand the culture, immerse yourself in the culture and allow it to shape you somewhat.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. So um, and thinking about sort of your career path, um, you know, it's it's very fascinating learning a little bit about your path because you sort of charted your own path and you've said a lot about how you didn't really choose entrepreneurship, right? Um, you realized that you weren't really built to conform to corporate expectations. How did you think about that decision now in terms of creating disruption in your own life and finding alignment?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, when I was younger, it scared the everything out of me, frankly, because you're brought up to be able to go through a particular pathway. And going into business school, it's almost like you go to business school and there's a journey you kind of follow as a result of going to business school, whether it's finance, marketing, operations, branding, whatever it might be. It is a pathway that's created. And for me, coming from another culture, another experience, another career path, coming into business school and allowing me to kind of go into new experiences was really what helped me shape my entrepreneurial journey. It allowed me to have so much exposure to so many people. Even when I was interning, even when I had my first job, it allowed me to really get a sense of how companies run. What are what are the operational capabilities that are required to run a bit large company? What are the ways to network? How do you ultimately work within a large team environment? How do you build um things from scratch, from the ground up? And how do you lead teams to kind of do things? How do you also get coalitions? How do you uh get folks to be on your side? How do you get advocates? All those things are created. And all of it has served me in some way in entrepreneurship. The thing about entrepreneurship versus corporate is really about resilience, right? Is it entrepreneurship is continuously grinding and pushing your foot on the gas all the time. And I'm not saying corporate, you don't necessarily do that too, but it's a little bit different. You can, you have a little bit more time, you have a little bit more grace, you have a little bit more ability to maneuver within a system and get advocates for you and get team members for you. While here you're largely on your own, kind of an island for the most part. But your job at the end of the day is to bring people around you. And so from the corporate experience, entrepreneurship experience, I brought people around me that were able to help me be smarter, make better decisions, support me, open up doors. I didn't necessarily know we're there. And I align myself with people that I frankly are and very blessed to have in my life that were able to create a pathway for me into some level of success. So entrepreneurship for me was not necessarily a uh a given from day one. But once I got into the roles of corporate and I realized on my skill set's actually not best served here, it's best served building things and having ownership of the build of those things and then watching it grow and then rinse, wash, repeat. I just didn't know what job, if there was a job description at Pepsi that says that, I probably would be there, frankly. Would be there. But there was no job description that really fit my expertise. The closest that I could find was actually a cultural change agent or just change agent. It's like marketing senior brand leader responsible for culture or responsible for change or some sort of change agent, right? That was like the closest that I found, but I found that most organizations they want they say they want to see change, but then the minute you prov present them with change, they just want to do what they did last year.

SPEAKER_00:

How did you know when you were on the right track? What what did it take? And I and I imagine there are a lot of barriers that you kind of met along the way. At what point did you know, yep, I'm doing the right thing?

SPEAKER_01:

I I still don't know. Uh there is there is no there's no no no. It's uh you know, I I I was on the podcast, The Quiet Truth with Enaton, and we were actually talking about one particular topic, which is if for those of you that remember the TV show Martin, um there was Tommy, and everyone was like, What does Tommy do? What does Tommy do? And and I saw myself as a real life Tommy, right? That's because I was always in the mix, moving the ball forward, doing different things, but I didn't necessarily have a box to be able to put in. But somehow wasn't homeless. Somehow I was able to buy things, somehow I was able to kind of move things around, able to kind of shuffle all together. But I never really knew because I have I I've always had multiple interests in multiple things. And my wife, bless her heart, has been like, Martin, find the thing you're really most passionate about and do that. And and I'm still trying to figure out to this day, frankly, it's like what what do I what have I figured out? What I figured out is that I know how to build things, I know how to create ecosystems, I know how to create connect dots. Those are the three things that I know absolutely that I do hands down better than anybody out there. The difficulty becomes how do I monetize it?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Yeah. So in 2013, you launched your own marketing agency, right? Rather than, like you said, stay in stay in a role that felt like you were being boxed in, right? How did that sort of um disruption change the way you saw yourself and what you felt like your purpose was?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, my purpose um then was to really write impactful strategy for brands looking to get into the multicultural space and having necessarily figured it out. So I had just come off of a multicultural marketing role. And from that role, I realized that brands think they know what multicultural marketing is, but simply putting a person of color into the ad doesn't necessarily make it multicultural. So from that process of working with people within particular roles that were like, let's just make the imagery, imagery diverse, that was not multicultural marketing. Obviously, things have changed in the last 12 years, but at the time it was do it differently, uh create alignment between brand and talent that happen to be diverse, create ecosystems around brands where they can plug into multiple diverse spaces and fee, and then as a result, provide audiences and consumers what they're looking for and develop real emotional connections between the brand and the audience. Now, today, social media helps you to get there a little bit, activations and events helped you to get there. But back then, everyone was just thinking campaign, campaign, campaign. And we were saying, let's create an ecosystem that actually has some value that's ownable by a brand. So it's it's it's completely different now than it was then. But that was really what helped me to focus because I was like, I see a problem that was not being addressed within the brand marketing, uh, marketing flywheel. Can I present something that might be unique and different?

SPEAKER_00:

Now forgive my ignorance on this question, but this is something that's always, you know, been very curious to me just as a sociologist. So over the past, I don't know, decade, maybe even past five years, you've seen a lot of folks who go onto social media become influencers, right? And generate tons and tons of content. And it makes it seem like marketing, there's just like this super easy sort of magic to becoming an influencer and a marketer. It becoming marketing, right? And I know for a fact that it is not that easy. Can you sort of dispel this myth for us right now?

SPEAKER_01:

It is the hardest thing on the planet. It's like going to the NBA. It really is. You have 450, you have 450 slots every year, 450 new jobs every single year that show up, right? That's all you get out of 10 million people that are in that are playing basketball on an ongoing basis. So it's 0.00001% of the folks that actually can get traction and make money off of it. Influencer marketing is probably some of the hardest like career jobs to do. Looks like fun. And frankly, even in our current podcast, it's an everyday job. It's continuously engaging the audience, talking to them, and building a relationship. You're dating and dating and dating for you know thousands of people, hoping that you'll monetize it at some point. So influencer marketing and becoming an influencer and being successful at it is an incredible difficult thing. Sometimes people will get there because of one of three things will happen. Super aggressive clickbait strategy where you're being incredibly divisive and denigrating or whatever, which will bring a very polarized audience to the table. And that frankly has some level of success. I'm not gonna lie to you. It does. Because what you're doing is you're creating a pit right between a large audience, creating them to fight against each other. Whatever it is, they're gonna fight, they're gonna create news, noise, and whatever, which brings brands and money inside the funnel. There's the other there are other people within influencer space that simply just have a product that they'd like to be able to promote, have a lifestyle, an attitude, things like that. That requires a curation, which which also has a condition that you should have taste. And not everyone has taste to be able to create a lifestyle that actually has is interesting. Now, there are others that play in very niche categories that are incredibly successful. Those that play specifically within, you know, healthcare or anything related to politics or other other spaces. Healthcare in particular is a unique space. So if you are like, I follow like a bunch of dermatologists, a bunch of medical professionals that are just talking about things about your body and skin and changes and whatever, incredibly niched, but very effective because you're coming with credibility. So it's kind of like the three places that I see. But no matter what, building an audience is some of the hardest work, especially if you're building it organically. I can just go buy some people, but if you're building organically, it's incredibly difficult to do.

SPEAKER_00:

So I'm gonna shift gears a little bit and talk about, you know, things within the diversity, equity, and inclusion space and how that um impacts the world that that you live in. A lot has shifted um over the past year as it relates to diversity, equity, and inclusion. And when we we've seen so much change within diversity, equity, and inclusion, um, how have you seen entrepreneurship become this viable avenue uh for impact and change now that um diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives effectively being shut down? Is there a way for an avenue for entrepreneurship to um become sort of this pathway, if you will, to revive potentially diversity, equity, inclusion?

SPEAKER_01:

I I wish I had a very clear answer for that because it it's multi multilayered. DEI initiatives have gone away in the official way, but there are still a lot of there's still a lot of energy around targeting people of color generally to be able to kind of have them drive revenue for brands. That's that's still there, right? So, so some of the supporting systems have kind of gone away. Um, if you're an agency like mine, we were preferred vendors for a lot of brands, and that sort of kind of went away. We were also part of an internal group of others that were advocates for us, and so that kind of went away. So a lot of the like underpinnings there within the DEI space, but there's still, if you can maneuver your way through an organization, you can still find the bread, the money, the opportunity that's that's there, right? So that there's that part of it. Entrepreneurship as a segue into building back up DEI initiatives and diversity initiatives, the the entrepreneurship opportunity really exists in helping other entrepreneurs, right? So if you have, if you were able to start a company because you had access and network into large organizations where you can help them maneuver through an organization. Uh, for example, if you happen to be an expert in supplier diversity and have all the right networks into the Cokes and the Pepsi's and the and such, right? You could be a great value to someone like myself as and that we would pay you for the access to get into the door to then pitch our business to those that we would never have access to because you're an expert in supplier diversity and you have the network that we just don't have. So that's an that that's a way to kind of connect two dots with um with a missing piece, which could be an entrepreneur, a major entrepreneurship opportunity because that gap has not been filled, because all the opportunities now that we are seeing, we are on the same level of as any everybody else, get no prefer preferential treatment and no doors are opening just because we happen to be people of color.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. Over the course of your careers, and especially given um the role that you've had as an entrepreneur, have you been a part of any projects that have created any social change? And if so, what has that experience looked like for you?

SPEAKER_01:

Mm my biggest opportunity within the social change uh atmosphere is actually through my business partner, Jeffrey Burroughs. And we he's actually has been working very closely with the Sankofa Foundation. So I was pulled in to work with the Harry Belafonte and Sankofa Foundation years ago, and that was incredibly enriching. In addition, we've also done a lot of work here in New York with the mayoral race and trying to advocate for certain individuals as well. And we've also been working and donating our time to the arts as well. So Robert Kraft uh put money into an organization called Chelsea Factory, which helped to bring the arts together in New York City of local artists and helping them to establish themselves in the New York City area. He took over a full building, paid a bunch of money for it. And so we supported in bringing the arts into New York City in a different, unique way, in a much more of a diverse way. So yeah, it has been incredibly enriching, frankly, because again, I know what it's like to have to build from the ground up, both personally and professionally. And I like helping all those that are looking to be able to cross barriers. If that means supporting from the social change side, that's what I'll do.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. One of the, you know, conversations that a lot of folks have, particularly when it re relates to social justice and and social change, um, and then also, you know, in in entrepreneurship is is making this uh reconciling the tension between um, you know, profit and purpose, right? How do you reconcile that tension? What does that mean to you?

SPEAKER_01:

Profit and purpose, I'd like to make money while doing good. So I actually joined an organization four or five years ago. Uh, while I was in the agency, I stepped out to be able to build brands for celebrity talent that addressed a lot of the issues that were unaddressed by products already sitting in the market. So we developed products for uh underrepresented communities, under addressing underrepresented needs. So I developed the Neomini Saka Suncare line, which addressed the needs of people of color when it comes to melanoma, which unfortunately people of color die at a three times greater uh rate than non-people of color because of late stage diagnoses. In addition, I've also developed things with uh Gabrielle Junga and Dwayne Wade when it comes to providing products for children of color, in particular because we have drier skin and a lot of products that exist on the market don't actually address the challenges with loss of moisture and more darker skin tones. So we created that, right? And so, so for me, the way that I've always been impactful is by developing things that fits a need in the audience, in the market rather, that has didn't exist before. So it's and it's very fulfilling.

SPEAKER_00:

So I've been an educator for almost 20 years and then been teaching at the college level. And it's something that I truly, truly enjoy. And I have the the wonderful pleasure right now of working with students at Oberlin College. And in particular, I'm working with a group of students who are um going through a three-semester fellowship program related to social justice and change. And one of the things that has really struck me thus far over the course of working with these students is how much of an impact students currently want to make. Students are really uncertain right now on how exactly to make that change, particularly given a lot of the shifts that that we've seen recently as it relates to diversity, equity, and inclusion, especially within the nonprofit um and you know, um, the not for profit spaces. And many of my students feel in a number of ways, particularly boxed in and aren't necessarily certain about how they could make effective changes in corporate spaces, right? So what kinds of things could students learn um from your journey about how to effectively carve out space for change, regardless of the space that they're in, but particularly if they're in a corporate space?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, a few things. One, a lot of corporate spaces now are going doing away with ERG programs. They're doing away with programs that focus on um diverse audiences and bringing diverse uh employees together to talk about challenges and ways they can sort of make it through. I would encourage anyone on a corporate track in a corporate environment where that's not there to create their own space and create moments where they can all come together and help to identify ways to support each other from an and from a black executive or an Asian executive or Hispanic executive and creating these moments where they're able to pass on information from their careers and their pathways and their journeys, right? So that that's one way. Uh the second way is to frankly, I've I've always been a big advocate of supporting local. So we have an unfortunate or fortunate uh homeless population in New York City. We have a fortunate drug addiction um population here as well. So we try to always be local and support locally. So doing things at local food banks, local houses, local homeless shelters, and really be engaged in that way uh as well. So it's it's important to us that we do a lot. So I would encourage anyone that's in the corporate space that feels as though they can't necessarily be impactful socially to step out and actually create these groups and be and frankly be advocates for the people that look like them.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. Um so you and I aren't necessarily Gen Z, right? But uh we are both interfacing a lot with people who are. What advice do you have for young people who um are truly discouraged about our current state of affairs?

SPEAKER_01:

Man. Uh I would say, hey, Gen Z, you have more power than you think you do. And sitting on the sidelines is not gonna solve the problem. And sitting in your parents' basement for whatever reason is also not gonna solve the problem. What I would encourage everyone to do is they have to be act active in their own community. They've got to actually be there, show up to all the conversations when it comes to the local politics. It look all all national politics starts locally. So be involved in your councils, be involved in your school boards and show up and talk and email, write. And I know it's difficult to do that because you're stretched. You're simply trying to figure out, you know, what the next job is gonna be, what the next move is gonna be, what the next opportunity lives. And you have to do that and also be impactful in your community in some way. So don't sit on the sidelines and just just hang out and just know that things will pass. This country, life, opportunities are on a pendulum. Sometimes you just catch it on the wrong one. And uh, but things always swing back at some point in time and just be patient about it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So for students who have a social justice heart, and there are a lot of students who I work with who truly have a social justice heart who might be thinking, you know, my only options are really disappearing. How can they still be disruptors? And I know you've already talked about engaging locally and, you know, don't sort of dig your head in the sand. You know, what are some other ways that students can still be um dis disruptors and and social justice warriors?

SPEAKER_01:

Listen, if you want to be a social justice warrior and then stay in involved, there are some easy things that people can do. You can create a Facebook group around a topic to be able to bring people together to have this conversation about it. You can petition your local congressman about challenges you're seeing. You can also show up to the protests and show up where you need it. I think that all social justice warriors should be frankly enraged if they are not seeing change in their neighborhoods or in their country and should show up to all the things that have energy behind them. I think that there's also a lack of leadership out there. So look for leadership positions, jump in and lead people. The challenge that we have right now is that I don't think we have anyone that's really stepping out. Like back in the 60s, you had Dr. Martin Luther King, you had Malcolm Max, you had so many people. You even had um, I mean, John Mo Bryan is probably the closest that we have to sort of like a political slash, you know, leader for black culture. But you're we're still we're still missing a lot of people that can really step out. You can be one of those.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. What about students who are thinking about entrepreneurship and business as a route? What else should they be considering right now?

SPEAKER_01:

Frankly, they should be jumping directly into AI, but not AI and tech and development. Not like not like let me work on, but but be a student of AI and understand how it works, be more informed with the operations of it, and figure out where it can be beneficial to business, right? Because everyone is heading there. We are using AI more, frankly, in the last two weeks than we probably used ever. Frank, because we now have discovered new plant programs and new ways of doing things and new ways of approaching things, and we're using it to help us get a lot better and faster at the end of the day. So it's it's for entrepreneurs, potential business, business owners, and founders, getting into tech is standard. Developing an app is obviously standard, developing new tools and tech might be standard. But understanding tech, being a service provider in tech is also incredibly important. So those are the those are the missed opportunities, is that a lot of my friends that got super wealthy developed service lines, service businesses that were able to sell off, that they were able to present and provide that had absolutely nothing to do with the ownership of that thing. They just knew how to work that thing and they solved the problem for those that could not figure it out. A lot of people will buy versus build a solution. So figure out how to buy, how to create a solution so that someone can buy.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. Before we close, we've got sort of three rapid fire questions for you. Okay. Um, first thing, something that keeps you up at night.

SPEAKER_01:

Something that keeps me up at night, besides my children and my new 18-year-old son driving. Um the the one thing that keeps me up at night is what did I forget to respond to the day before, right? That's what's like it is like, wait, I'm forgetting something that I should have done. And that's that's the business side of it. What keeps me up at night really is trying to figure out right now, it right now what's keeping me up at night is where my kids are going to college. That that's really, we're in the middle of college everything. So we've got two, one burgeon 18-year-old, one 18-year-old, both of our are seniors, and we're trying to figure out where to go to college. So that's what's keeping me up at night is where they're gonna go and how am I gonna pay for it?

SPEAKER_00:

How are you gonna pay for it? Oh my goodness. Second rapid fire. Something that has made you smile really big this week.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, see, my wife was gone to visit uh actually, my wife was gone on a school visit with my with our son, and I'm not and she's been on rapid fire traveling for the last like couple weeks. And so she came home yesterday, and I that was that put a big smile on my face when she was home.

SPEAKER_00:

Now that puts a big smile on my face. That's very sweet. That didn't start off. I was a little worried how that was gonna end. Okay. Were you happy that she was gone? Okay, but you're happy that she's gone.

SPEAKER_01:

So that's good.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. All right. And last question as we close. Ten years from now, when we look back on this era, what kind of disruption do you hope your work will represent?

SPEAKER_01:

Oh man, I'm literally in the middle of developing that 10 year vision. And what I will tell you is that I hope that my my soon to be achieved work will Disrupt the entire way that we promote products within the media and marketing ecosystem. That I want it to be a brand new way for us to be able to discover new things that we need as a society, whatever it might be, whether the toothbrush, toothpaste, and whatever. But I want to make it easier for creators to make money off of their businesses.

SPEAKER_00:

Love that. Today's conversation with Martin Ekachuku reminds us that disruption isn't only about challenging systems, it can also mean disrupting your own life to find alignment, purpose, and a new way forward. Thank you so much for joining us on the North Star. Stay tuned for more conversations with leaders who are shaping what's next.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you so much for the time.