by Lauren DeLisa Coleman

Time for the third installment in my profile series on cool African-American females who are fellow colleagues with me in the tech space. The first two, as you may recall, hailed from the prominent hallways of Google and Microsoft. But lest you think we only exist in the corporate world, I’ve decided to focus the spotlight this time on a entrepreneur-to-watch who is the force behind an innovative start-up.

So lean in and ponder as Zuhairah Scott, Founder & CEO of Kahnoodle, a startup that helps busy couples build awesome relationships. According to the company’s description it is “the first mobile productivity tool for couples that provides a “relationship dashboard” which visually tracks how well each person is meeting the others’ needs and allows couples to set goals to improve/maintain their overall relationship.”

LdC: I’m particularly interested in profiling you because of your unique career background which is not necessarily typical to the digital space. But before we get into it, where are you from?

ZS: I was born in Newark, NJ and raised in Los Angeles, Ca. I grew up in the San Fernando Valley so my east coast family used to tease me for having a valley girl accent. Growing up in LA was fun. The biggest benefit was the weather and naturally warm disposition of Californians and the ethnic diversity of the valley. Growing up I had close friends from Korea, Iran, Israel, Pakistan and Mexico. So although I didn’t travel extensively until I went to college, I felt that I had a good appreciation for other cultures, their food, family values, etc.

LdC: And it obviously provided a great foundation. You went on to attend college at UCLA and from there to obtain a JD/MBA graduate at Harvard University. What lead you to pursue this particular joint-degree?

ZS: My personal mission is to leverage technology to profitably and substantively improve lives. I have always been very socially conscious and empathic to disenfranchised populations around the world. I am not one to sit on my hands. I like to solve BIG problems in innovative ways. I think there is lots that can and should be done via traditional routes as lawyers, politicians, teachers, and non-profits. What excites me most about technology is that it allows a whole new generation of problem solvers to tackle real issues in innovative, profitable and world-shaking ways. That’s what gets me fired up! I believe that is what I was put here to do and that is what I work on achieving every day. I knew that in order to do this work I not only needed a degree that would equip me with the skills to critically analyze and bring about social change, but I also needed to understand business.

The JD/MBA is something that looks very logical and methodically planned out on paper but my path to pursuing a joint degree was a bit more circuitous. First, I knew very early on that I wanted to go to Harvard for graduate school. Because I was a Political Science major, law school was the logical option. I applied to HLS and was fortunate enough to get in. However, between the time I graduated from undergrad and got accepted to HLS, I moved to New York and discovered Wall Street and began to become more and more interested in business and how it could be used to solve social problems. I knew I couldn’t turn down an offer to go to HLS so I enrolled and applied for the business school during my first year of law school.

That all being said, I do not believe that any of these degrees are pre-reqs for doing what I am doing. This was my path and I wouldn’t change it one bit. But there are several others.