Page 31 - Winter/Spring 2015 Issue

Michael Ajakwe is one you may not know if you saw him on the street...
“Anytime you can do what you love for a living and get paid for it too! Now, that’s the job for you.”
--Magic Johnson, after being drafted No. 1 by the Los Angeles Lakers in 1979
When Michael Ajakwe heard that statement by Magic Johnson, he was a freshman in high school. Those words never left him as he aspired to do what he loved for a living and get paid for it.
Ajakwe is the son of Nigerian immigrants who came to the U.S. in the early 1960s and had planned to go home after college, but got stuck in America thanks to the Nigerian Civil War (better known as the Biafran War). Mike grew up in L.A. where he attended Inglewood’s Morningside High (alma mater of Magic’s teammate and now Laker head coach Byron Scott) and, upon graduation, received the school’s Outstanding Service Award and a full academic scholarship to the prestigious University of Redlands.
While most of his college classmates were writing for the school newspaper for free, Mike was getting paid to write for the university’s public relations department, which led to more paid assignments at the city’s Redlands Daily Facts, and later, the Riverside Press Enterprise. By the time he left the UR, Mike was President of the Black Student Union, earned two degrees (English & Political Science), a fellowship to attend law school, was named Most Outstanding Senior of his graduating class, and had a job waiting for him at one of the local newspapers. But Mike turned down the
guaranteed gig for a gamble; a chance to take his talents to greater heights by writing for the quintessential dream factory—Hollywood.
His big gamble paid off. As you will later discover, Mike’s prolific writing career isn’t confined to Tinseltown or even the United States, for that matter. Michael Ajakwe Jr. is global. With a resume so impressively massive you’d think that he has a secret twin, who wouldn’t want to know more about this dynamic, first-generation Nigerian-American? Hustle Mama had to put it in overdrive to catch up with this Emmy & 2-time NAACP Image Award- winning TV producer.
Story By Pam Baez
www.ipammedia.com
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