Introduction
Imagine being refused a reference by your previous employer because you had the audacity to raise a complaint about how you were treated. That is not a hypothetical. It happened to Abadesi Osunsade, and it is part of the reality of being a Black woman in tech.
Instead of ending her career, it started a company. In this conversation with Sope Agbelusi, the founder of Hustle Crew, co-host of Techish and the first ever VP of Global Community and Belonging at Brandwatch talks about turning pain into purpose, the friends who kept the dream alive, and what leadership looks like when you take belonging seriously.
A role that did not exist five months earlier
When Abadesi joined Brandwatch, she was the first person in the role and helped the leadership team pick her own title. The job existed because the company's diversity and inclusion committee had argued for years that someone needed to own inclusion, and the events of 2020 finally made it undeniable.
She started that year laid off from Product Hunt in the pandemic, applying for jobs and hearing nothing back. Then, during the Black Lives Matter movement, demand flipped overnight. Hustle Crew went from no inbound leads to pages of unread emails from around the world.
Wearing different hats on the same day
Abadesi is honest about the complexity of that period. With her CEO hat on, it was a lifeline: revenue returned, and she could give her contractors, all women of colour, more hours instead of cutting them.
As a Black woman, it was something else entirely. Companies she had been telling for years that this work mattered only responded after watching a police officer choke a Black man to death. Her question cuts to the bone: is that what it takes for me to be human in your eyes, or did you always believe and just not care enough?
She is clear-eyed about the aftermath too. A system that is centuries in the making does not change because of black squares and a few months of training.
The friends who fund the dream
Running through this whole story is community. Friends paid for meals when she had no money. An aunt and a half-sister covered rent. When the sudden demand of 2020 pushed her into a new level of burnout, her friends threw a barbecue and told her, with respect and pride, that it was time to rest.
Her view is simple: people's pockets kept the dream alive. Entrepreneurship shows you who your true friends are, the ones who support your focus rather than quietly willing you to fail so you can go back to being who you used to be.
Saying yes to yourself and no to your parents
Abadesi grew up between cultures, with a Nigerian economist father and a Filipino mother, and a path that was decided before she could choose it: economics, a serious career, make the family proud. When she asked to study drama at A level, the answer was blunt: am I paying all this money so you can enjoy yourself?
At university she realised something that many first-generation children take decades to learn: it is okay to disappoint your parents sometimes. In her 30s, the goalposts still move, from get married to have kids to why that job. Making peace with that, she says, is how you stop saying yes to everyone else and no to yourself.
Hustle, chaos and autonomy at Groupon
Her route into tech started with watching The Social Network and deciding a fast-growing startup beat a suited life in the city. She engineered multiple referrals into Groupon, pitched the co-founder directly, and landed the job.
Groupon pre-IPO was chaos: tens of millions made weekly, no systems, everything built on the fly. It also taught her autonomy. When she suggested email templates, the response was: engineering is over there, go build it. Her boss's line stuck: we're a startup, so we build as we go. If the idea is good, build it and see if it works.
She is equally honest about the costs: a pace that leaves no room to zoom out, and being so valuable in one team that moves into product or engineering were quietly blocked.
What leadership actually means
Abadesi's leadership philosophy comes from a management training line she has never forgotten: you don't manage teams, you manage individuals. Everyone has different needs, support requirements and communication preferences. A one-size-fits-all manager is optimising for someone, and it probably is not you.
She adds two more tests. Integrity: would you defend your decisions and words in a public forum? If not, you are not a good leader, you are a shady one. And humanity: good leaders see people as human beings, not resources. Energy wasted navigating a manager who does not see you or hear you is energy that could have gone into the actual work.
Purpose through pain
Hustle Crew was born in 2016, when Abadesi was, in her words, just another woman in tech: unhappy, sold seniority that never materialised, and ignored when she tried to build a more inclusive culture. When former colleagues refused her a reference, the fallback plan disappeared. So she built her own thing.
In year one, every single invoice was paid by a woman of colour, and she realised she had sold to everyone who already got it. Investors told her to make it a non-profit. She refused: companies pay for consulting and training, so they can pay for diversity consulting and training.
Three years after being labelled unreferenceable, she was on the Financial Times list of the 100 most influential people in tech.
Community as a business model
Hustle Crew does not do outbound sales. Abadesi learnt that cold outreach about inclusion can feel like an accusation. Instead, everything for the community is free, and the insight gained from that community shapes paid workshops and training for companies, including the NHS, Snap and Facebook. A membership launched in June 2020 covers operating costs. The community is the moat: partnerships come inbound because the community makes Hustle Crew unlike a standard consultancy.
Her legacy ambition is bigger than any company: educating women, especially Black and Asian women, to navigate a working world that was not designed for them.
