Built the first open-source flood-risk modeling platform tuned specifically for U.S. Gulf and Atlantic coasts. Raised $84M across three rounds. Today the model runs in 3 Florida counties (Pinellas, Hillsborough, Miami-Dade) and is being licensed by 12 more across the southeast — at cost, not for profit.
Adaeze Okonkwo was born in Lagos in 1985, the youngest of four. Her father was a civil engineer; her mother taught secondary-school chemistry. The family came to Florida in 1992 — Pinellas County, two streets back from Tampa Bay — when her father took a job rebuilding bridges.
She grew up on the water. She grew up watching it move.
The morning of her thirteenth birthday she walked outside and the seawall behind her house had a six-inch crack that hadn't been there the day before. She asked her father what would happen if it broke. He said: "Adaeze, that's why you study what makes the water do what it does." Twenty-five years later she's still trying to answer the question.