Welcome to Where We're At podcast with Terri Nwanma. The big things are shifting for everyone right now, and even the experts don't quite have a firm grasp on where any of this is headed. These pressures are curdling in the softer parts of our lives too: our relationships, our sense of who we are, and what we think we're supposed to be doing with our time. This first season of the podcast checks in with peers in their 20s from around the world, people intentionally steering their own lives and redefining identity, work, love, and community as they brave rapidly changing tides with the rest of us.
Welcome to Where We're At. This week, I'm sitting down with Amya Bhalla.
They make jewelry under their own line, Ai Bo Kaate, in slow batches using recycled metals and natural stones. Art has run through their whole life, even in the years they spent initially chasing academia. They never separated the two, turning in a zine instead of an essay, and always finding a way to fold creativity into their work. Their Instagram bio, "my propaganda will be beautiful," sums up their ethos: everything they make is in some way them trying to pull people into how they see the world. Even as honoring their interests pulled them from hand drawing maps into crafting jewelry, their emphasis on storytelling and connection has led them to create deeply personal pieces such as a pendant made in memory of a client's late cat.
We talk about moving to an unfamiliar home after years living in the US and their journey to letting go of the "big" definitions of success.
Find Amya and Ai Bo Kaate at @ai_bo_kaate
7 Sept 2026
An Engineer's Case for Pruning the Noise and Optimizing your Life for You
Welcome to Where We're At. This week, I'm sitting down with Osemudiamen Peter Akhigbe.
She's 27, starting out the final chapter of her twenties, and has spent this last stretch of it learning to actually take herself seriously. By day, she's an engineer. On the side, she runs Aik Studios, her floral business, and is currently obsessed with Bird of Paradise and Spanish moss.
She also keeps a running Substack, where she writes reflections on her journey so far. Her early twenties were built on the expectations to graduate, get a job, maybe move back to Nigeria and start a farm, but had a reckoning in 2020 that reshaped how she saw the country she'd once idealized.
We talk about tuning out the noise of everyone else's "locked in" 5am routines and 900k houses, a tight-knit group of friends in her small UK town and a season of heartbreak that pushed her deeper into a spirituality she'd already been building for years, through therapy, shadow work, and eventually a clearer, calmer version of the faith she grew up with.
29 Aug 2026
Passion built her Portfolio, now for the Payoff
Welcome to Where We're At. This week, I'm sitting down with Tritima Achigbu.
Tritima's path started with writing, and she pursued it through journalism at her university paper even while working toward a finance degree. That writing instinct found its way into her career anyway, through copywriting and social media management. She's since co-founded Crowdr, a crowdfunding platform helping Nigerians raise money for everything from medical bills to tuition, all while working full-time in strategy and operations.
We talk about the shift from chasing passion in her early twenties to being well-compensated for her expertise now, the burnout that came from running a nine-to-five, a startup, and a full personal life all at once, the hard decision to rehome her dog when something had to give, and how her approach to friendship and romantic relationships has changed as she's learned the difference between hallway friends and couch friends.
Find Tritima on Instagram at @tritimaa, and check out her Substack here (https://tritimaachigbu.substack.com/?utm_id=97760_v0_s00_e0_tv4&fbclid=PAT01DUAT-0IpwZG9mAmV4dG4DYWVtAjEwAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDzU2NzA2NzM0MzM1MjQyNwABpzOCC6Qvu9dSXbUhcnvCzq0yEss5VKk7cPd3bKoml-mv0vyS2d6499rpHP3S_aem_JVkJ0hYyvZ5V72AtfEkaHQ), where she writes about identity, culture, and taste.
22 Aug 2026
The Ex-Extrovert Running Nigeria's Largest Outdoor Movie Experience
Ihechi is a Law graduate who's never practiced, because somewhere between hosting a teen radio show at 15 and presenting for a national bank at 17, he realized there was more excitement in being in front of people than behind a legal desk. He calls himself an "ex-extrovert" now and has since found more peace working behind the scenes: producing events and managing talent.
He's the founder of Movie in the Park, Nigeria's largest outdoor movie experience, which started as a lunch conversation with a friend and has since grown into a touring, legacy brand-backed event drawing thousands of people per city.
We talk about proving yourself as a young person in rooms that might not want to make space for you, being intentional and selective about friendship, and why he's not satisfied with where he's at, even when things are going well.
Find Ihechi on Instagram @ihechiopara (https://www.instagram.com/ihechiopara/) and Movie in the Park at @mipexperience (https://www.instagram.com/mipexperience/)
14 Aug 2026
Chosen Family and Curated Shelves borne of Self-Permission
Welcome to Where We're At. This week, I'm sitting down with Azzah.
Azzah describes her 27-year-old self as grounded, someone who's finally learned to take things slowly. She studied philosophy, politics, and economics with dreams of Oxford, built a stable career as a financial advisor in Canada, and did everything right by the metrics she'd set for herself. Then her work permit expired, and she had to leave the country she'd spent almost a decade building a life in. Rather than let that loss define her, she turned it into something else entirely: Buka Buku, a book cafe in Jakarta built from her own personal library, seven hundred books deep, that she'd been collecting since childhood.
We talk about the fear of sharing something that precious with strangers, the friendships that carried her through every major transition in her adult life, how her relationship to romantic love shifted once she stopped optimizing for achievement, and the leap of faith it took to open a business she wasn't even sure she'd get to keep.
Find Azzah and Buka Buku cafe on Instagram at @azfarras and @bukabuku.kafe
8 Aug 2026
From Pre-Med to Multi-Hyphenate, On her Own Clock
Welcome to Where We're At. This week, I'm sitting down with Jayla Moss.
Jayla describes herself as a multifaceted, STEM-focused creative, and that barely covers it. She left South Carolina for Maine at 18, spent years preparing for medical school, and then walked away from an acceptance letter when she realized it was not her calling. Now she's building a life in Atlanta that looks nothing like the one she planned. She's a content creator, a commercial model, an AI professional, and a student, all at once, all on her own terms.
We talk about starting her twenties somewhere she never planned to be, building community from scratch in a new city, how her view of romantic love has sharpened without losing its optimism, and the faith that's carried her through the hardest parts of the better part of a decade.
Find Jayla online as @gullahbeauty on Instagram and TikTok.
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