The Refugee Who Rewrote His Future With An MBA

Plenty of MBAs take an unconventional route to business school. Almost none start where Adjetey Wilson did.

“My background is very nontraditional. I’m actually a refugee,” he says.

Wilson was born in a refugee camp after his parents fled Togo under government threat, and he spent nearly five years there before the family resettled in Detroit.

“It wasn’t an easy life at all trying to get used to a new place, not speaking the language very well,” he recalls. “There were a lot of nice people along the way but there were also a lot of people that took advantage of us.” One of the earliest betrayals came when his parents were talked into buying a home with a hidden lien. “The bank took our house.”

EARLY HARDSHIPS & RESILIENCE

Detroit was a hard place to grow up, he says. “It was dangerous and dirty. Rats, mice, and roaches were everywhere.” Violence was a constant.

“The first ten years of my life in the US were incredibly hard,” he says. By his early twenties, he had lost 13 or 14 people close to him – to suicide, to violence, to illness. Through all of it, he worked to help support his family.

His first real anchor arrived in his teens, in the form of a police officer who literally grabbed Wilson and a friend by the shirts and marched them off to sign up for sports. Wilson chose football and wrestling.

“Wrestling was tough – it taught me not to give up,” he says. “I went from not knowing how to wrestle to being a great wrestler.” The lessons stuck. One of them: “If you put in the time and effort, things do get better.”

One of his earliest mentors was Jim Wilson, whom he met in high school. “Jim would take my little brother and I to camp… sometimes without gear, only a tent without a blanket.” At the time, the outings irritated him. Now he sees them differently.

“He was helping us build even more resilience,” Wilson explains. Jim taught them to chop wood, shoot a bow and arrow, handle a gun safely, and grow crops. “He’s incredible. To this day we are in touch and I consider him a big brother.”

FAITH AS A GUIDING FORCE

Faith has become one of the defining threads of Wilson’s life. “I was always a very spiritual kid growing up,” he says. As a boy he asked for children’s Bibles as gifts and read the adult versions too. “The Bible has always been very near and dear to my heart.” He was raised Christian, without a denomination.

Everything shifted in high school, when LDS missionaries knocked on the door. After French-speaking members translated for his father, his dad found the message spiritually familiar, and the whole family was baptized.

As he neared mission age, Wilson chose to serve, partly to test his own belief. He studied scripture for hours and even read anti-Mormon literature “to understand both sides.” He came to believe that “anyone who genuinely strives to live in a godly manner and wants a relationship with God can have one.”

During his Spanish-speaking mission across Alabama and Mississippi, Wilson met John Nolan, a leader in the mission whose own life had taken some similar turns. “He’s a great guy… he endured some hardships himself.” The two connected over faith, ambition, and a shared conviction that resilience can be chosen as much as inherited. Nolan saw something in him and decided to invest.

Then came the offer. “He offered to pay for my education,” Wilson says. “It was an amazing feeling. John Nolan, who has started so many successful companies and done so many great things chose to invest in me without looking for anything in return.”

MENTORS, EDUCATION, AND A NEW DIRECTION

The list of people in Wilson’s corner keeps growing. At American Express, he found a model in his boss, Katy Blommer. “I think she’s one of the most inspirational people ever, and she says the same about me.”

His academic path was just as winding. He started at a community college, dropped out because he assumed he couldn’t afford it, then re-enrolled after his mission. From Ensign College he transferred to Brigham Young University, raising his performance at every step.

Somewhere along the way he caught the AI bug, and a particular interest in AI safety. He has since launched a nonprofit, the Trust and Safety Institute. “I’m trying to democratize AI so that everyone has access,” he says. “We want to keep AI safe and trustworthy so that nobody gets taken advantage of.”

The MBA was a different kind of leap. “I feel like I’ve always had to be resilient because of my background, but the MBA was different because it was a choice,” he says. After years of upheaval, he had finally reached solid ground. “I had just gotten to a point where I felt like, wow, I can breathe,” he laughs.

The thought of stepping away from work for two years terrified him. His wife, one of his fiercest supporters, was certain he was meant to do it. So he went.

It paid off. The program reshaped how he sees the world. “Coming out of this experience, one of the biggest things I’ve gained is perspective on others … it’s helped me be a lot more patient, and to empathize with others.” Peers and faculty took note, honoring him with the Williams Leadership Award, given to those who demonstrate Christ-like leadership.

MOVING FORWARD WITH PURPOSE

Now, with a role at Toyota starting in August, Wilson is thinking about the people coming up behind him. “I want to be able to help others who grew up like me who didn’t get the opportunity to meet the kind of people I met,” he says.

He has spent time in rooms full of people whose lives look nothing like his, and if he has one message to pass on, it is that discomfort is where the opportunity lives. “It’s okay to be uncomfortable. You’ll grow in uncomfortability,” he says.

Recently he was in Washington, D.C., seated among Fortune 100 CEOs debating how to help America win in business. “I would have never imagined I would be doing that.”

Looking back, he has no doubt he made the right call. “If I didn’t go for my MBA, I definitely would have been doing myself a disservice,” he says. The degree reset his sense of what was possible. “My life was just starting to open up. The MBA feels like the very beginning. This degree has opened doors to opportunities that I would have never imagined in a million years.”

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