What was your first job, and what did it teach you about yourself?

My first job was as a Math Activity Specialist for an out-of-school summer program back in Queens. I worked with elementary and middle school students to make math feel accessible, fun, and relevant to their everyday lives. That experience taught me how much I value meeting people where they are, breaking down big ideas into understandable steps, and creating spaces where everyone feels capable and seen. It showed me that I love helping people discover their own confidence and voice in a subject that often feels daunting.

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Ugochinyere “Ugochi” Ejiogu is the Community Data Analyst at Baltimore’s Promise, where she turns data into action that centers community voice and equity to improve outcomes for Baltimore’s youth. She brings experience in quantitative and qualitative research, community engagement, and program coordination—combining analytical precision with human-centered insight to help partners make meaning of data and drive change.

Her approach to data and partnership is rooted in treating communities as equal partners, not research subjects. She is committed to deconstructing traditional power dynamics and ensuring that community expertise meaningfully shapes how projects and programs are designed, implemented, and evaluated. Her greatest hope for humanity is that we learn to see and care for each other’s full dignity, especially for those too often left out of decisions that shape their lives. She gets out of bed to do this work because she believes data should be a tool for collective accountability and imagination—helping communities advocate for what they know they need and holding systems responsible for delivering it.

Before joining Baltimore’s Promise, Ugochi worked as a Public Health Advisor at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, stationed at the American Academy of Pediatrics. There, she supported national early childhood health initiatives. She has also supported state-level Medicaid policy research as a Research Analyst at Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. She holds a Master of Public Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, with a focus on social determinants of health and applied data science, and a Bachelor of Arts in Statistics from the State University of New York at Buffalo. 

Ugochi is a proud first-generation Nigerian-American, born and raised in Southeast Queens, NY. Her full Igbo name, Ugochinyere, translates to “crown of glory given by God.” She enjoys cooking with new recipes, lifting at the gym, going to brunch with friends, and serving in the children’s ministry at her church in Baltimore.