• When Dapo Bankole moved to Canada in 2012, he had years of IT experience under his belt.
• But he struggled to find a professional job for months and did minimum wage work to make ends meet.
• Bankole said he thinks companies weren't hiring him because he lacked Canadian experience.

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Dapo Bankole, 47, about moving to Canada from Nigeria. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

My Canadian Dream began in 1993. I was living in Nigeria, where I was born, and had to sit an exam. My brother's friend drove me there. A few months later, I asked after him and was told he moved to Canada.

It was the first time I heard about someone relocating to a new country. I dreamed of doing the same.

I studied biochemistry at university and completed a postgraduate program in computer science. I worked in IT for around 12 years in Nigeria, where I gained experience in computer engineering, billing administration, and team management

My desire to relocate heavily influenced my life. When I courted my wife, I told her about my dream because I didn't want it to be a problem for her. I started getting myself ready to move by gaining IT certifications through a Canadian society.

In 2012, I moved to Canada with my wife and two children after successfully applying for permanent residency in the country.

But it ended up taking me around nine months to find a professional job. I struggled to get my foot in the door and provide for my family's basic needs. I feel I was overlooked because I didn't have Canadian work experience.

I applied for professional jobs in Canada but didn't hear back

We arrived in Canada in 2012 and stayed with my sister, who had moved there ahead of me, for two months before we got an apartment.

My wife worked in a bank in Nigeria, but when we moved she decided to pursue her hobby of making clothes, so she went back to school to go into fashion design. Meanwhile, I started job-hunting.

I applied for professional jobs, such as analyst and project manager positions, but it mostly was crickets. I wasn't hearing anything back.

Peers who were also immigrants asked to look at my résumé. I'd put Nigeria all over the place, someone suggested I remove it. When I did, I started getting follow-up calls.

I felt I wasn't getting opportunities because of my lack of Canadian work experience. Recruiters didn't say it directly — it was subtle. In phone conversations, recruiters would ask where my experience was based. I'd explain it wasn't in Canada, and the conversation would continue, but they'd never get back to me.

It became glaring that companies weren't hiring me because I lacked local experience, but I'd never get it if they didn't hire me. It's a chicken-and-egg situation.

I took on minimum-wage work. We struggled with our basic needs.

After a month or so of job-seeking, I started applying to lower-wage jobs as well. Living in Canada wasn't cheap, and I needed to stop depleting my savings.

I worked at a call center for CA $10 an hour for around two months. Then, I got a job as a grocery store clerk doing night shifts. I also did evening shifts unloading cargo from planes at the airport.

I kept my days free to pursue more professional opportunities. I didn't want to get stuck in a low-wage job. But it meant I hardly saw my kids. They were asleep when I got home and went to school when I was asleep. They started speaking to me less, and it made me question why we left Nigeria.

We were comfortable in Nigeria, but we lived in a basement in Canada. We struggled to cover our basic needs. There was a day when I only had around $10 left and had to decide whether I'd use it to buy food or put gas in the car. I'd never been in that situation.

Moving back to Nigeria at that stage would have meant starting all over again there, so we decided to push through the pain of integration.

I received help from a mentorship program and was eventually hired as a business analyst

During my struggle to get a professional job, my confidence levels crashed and I started to doubt myself.

Through an organization that offered loans to immigrant professionals, I received some money to attend a short training course. I interacted with professionals on the course who listened to me. I found myself leading conversations and felt my confidence being restored.

I also joined a mentorship program that reaches out to companies on your behalf. They didn't have a magic wand that automatically gave people jobs, but it leveraged social capital on behalf of immigrants like me.

They helped me get an unpaid opportunity, which led to a full-time offer for a business analyst job. I was able to keep doing my night shift work to make money in the interim and actually kept my grocery store job for months afterward for extra income.

Even though the road isn't completely smooth, it always becomes easier once you have that initial foot in the door.

I stayed in the business analyst role for around two years before I was headhunted by another company to work as a senior business analyst. In 2015, I started my own business. My team of six builds software and consults with organizations on software and implementation.

Employers should give people like me a chance

The program I did gave me an in-route for Canadian experience, but I don't think it's right to filter out candidates who don't have Canadian experience.

You don't need Canadian experience to succeed in Canada. You only need experienced people who are ready to do whatever it takes to fit in and deliver on the work priorities. We should give people a chance to prove themselves.

Immigration shouldn't make people suffer. It should help them transfer their skills, which can positively impact the economy.

Do you have a story about how relocating to a new place impacted your career? Email Charissa Cheong at [email protected]

• A JetBlue passenger opened an emergency exit on a taxiway in Boston, the FAA said.
• One witness said that the man was arguing with his girlfriend before the incident.
• A pilot told air traffic control that the passenger was subdued by an officer on board.

A JetBlue passenger delayed his fellow travelers after opening one of the plane's emergency exit doors.

The incident occurred while Flight 161 was preparing to take off from Boston Logan International Airport on Tuesday, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.

It added that the Airbus A320, heading to Puerto Rico, was on a taxiway when the passenger opened an emergency exit. This also caused the slide to deploy.

Fred Wynn, a passenger on the plane, told local CBS outlet WBZ-TV that he was sat just in front of the man and his girlfriend.

"Boyfriend and girlfriend were arguing behind in me," Wynn said. "Boyfriend got mad, got up walked down the center aisle, grabbed the emergency door, ripped it off, completely off."

He added that the man was handcuffed by an FBI agent before state police boarded the plane and escorted him away.

In an audio recording archived by LiveATC.net, one of the pilots tells air traffic control a law enforcement officer subdued the passenger.

"I can hear all the passengers screaming. Looks like they tried to grab him before he went out," he added.

Data from Flightradar24 shows that the flight took off almost three hours later than scheduled and landed in San Juan at 3:17 a.m. local time.

Passengers on other flights told WBZ-TV that they were also delayed because the runway was temporarily disabled since the slide was deployed.

According to FlightAware data, 95 flights, or around 17%, were delayed at Logan Airport throughout the day.

Massachusetts State Police told CBS that one person was detained after the incident.

"Shortly before takeoff, a passenger who wanted to deplane opened an aircraft door suddenly and without warning," state police said. "Other passengers restrained the individual until troopers arrived on scene to detain them for further questioning."

JetBlue and the Massachusetts State Police did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent by Business Insider outside US working hours.

• BYD released a video of its $233,000 electric supercar leaping over potholes and road spikes.
• The Yangwang U9 comes with intelligent suspension that allows it to "jump" up to six meters forward.
• The U9 is part of BYD's efforts to diversify into luxury EVs as it looks to take on Tesla.

BYD's most expensive EV has a novel way of dealing with potholes.

The Chinese Tesla rival launched its first supercar, the $233,400 Yangwang U9, last year and has now shown off the luxury EV's ability to "jump" over potholes and road spikes in a new video.

In the video, released on BYD's Weibo account on Monday, an autonomously-driven U9 accelerates to 120 km/h before using its suspension to launch itself up to six meters forward over a pothole, a set of road spikes, and a chalk flag.

BYD is known for its ultra-cheap electric vehicles, such as the $10,000 Seagull, but like other Chinese automakers, it is now expanding into higher-end luxury vehicles.

The company began selling the U9, which has a top speed of 192 mph and can sprint from 0 to 62 km/h in just 2.36 seconds in February 2024.

The luxury EV can charge from 30-80% in just 10 minutes and is packed with futuristic features.

Its DiSus-X intelligent suspension allows the U9 to leap over small holes, "dance" to music, and drive with only three wheels, as the company showed off at the vehicle's launch last year.

BYD's Yangwang brand offers its most high-end models. The Yangwang U8 hybrid SUV, which BYD began selling in April 2023, comes with an onboard drone and can even float on water for short periods.

While the Tesla rival's luxury offerings frequently turn heads, BYD's in-demand affordable EVs and hybrids have turned the company into arguably Elon Musk's most potent challenger.

The Chinese automaker announced record annual sales earlier this month and is expanding into a host of new markets. BYD announced on Tuesday that it was sending nearly 5,000 electric vehicles to Europe aboard its third purpose-built container ship.

• As a professor, I use grades to help my students identify strengths and areas for improvement.
• Students panic when they get bad grades because they attach their self-worth to their performance.
• I'm working to change that by teaching my students that bad grades can be valuable.

When I was a college sophomore, I stopped looking at my assignments and exam grades to loosen the association between straight A's and my self-worth. At the end of each semester, I checked my course grades before enrolling in the next term, but that was about it. The strategy didn't fix all my overachieving and perfectionistic tendencies, but it did set a foundation for a healthier perspective on success and self-worth.

Now, as a professor, I encourage my doctoral students to develop a similarly detached relationship with their grades, and I'm often surprised by how much resistance this evokes.

Some students balk at the possibility that anything less than an A on any assignment could be inaccurate, urging me to consider their effort more than their performance. But that's not what grades are meant to mean.

Students have rightfully attached a lot of meaning to their grades

Granted, the landscape of higher education has changed dramatically since I was in college and graduate school, especially in terms of the competitiveness of college admissions.

Survey data in the US confirms that getting good grades is a significant stressor for most high school teens. I spent three years working as a staff psychologist for a large university counseling center, so I have seen this stress firsthand, and it can be devastating.

A number of other factors have been cited as contributing to younger generations' stress about grades. For example, parenting styles such as helicopter parenting can put even more pressure on students to perform well.

Social media and its association with increased depression and anxiety among youth also have an effect on self-worth. Finally, increased evidence of racial bias in educational testing has caused students to distrust the enterprise of testing, and rightfully so.

Professors and teachers struggle to see eye-to-eye on grading

I've noticed a widening gap between my and my students' assumptions about grades. To me, grades are a form of feedback in a learning environment. Therefore, students who are learning something new will not get high grades at the outset unless they have a particular strength in the area. No one who ever mastered their craft (or even came close) did so without receiving critical feedback. It's necessary for growth and completely separate from a person's intrinsic worth. In this way, a bad grade can actually be viewed as an opportunity.

Many of my students, on the other hand, consider grades to be an indicator of their career potential and worth. For them, every assignment is a high-stakes test of their fundamental value as a person and a professional. Within this framework, low grades are neither useful nor informative.

As an anonymous student of mine said on a course evaluation last year, "Giving students low grades does not facilitate learning."

Professors I know are changing their techniques to loosen students' grips on grades

Some academics have responded to these challenges by adopting effort-based grading practices. Others, like myself, have abandoned multiple choice exams and closed-book testing for written assignments and oral presentations.

Some of my colleagues now tell their students on the first day of class that everyone will get an A, rendering the resulting A's meaningless in the hopes of facilitating real learning.

I don't have a solution yet, but for now, I continue to use grades as a form of feedback. It is not easy sometimes to be the first teacher who has ever told a student that their writing isn't strong or assign what I think is a fair grade, knowing that it might cause a student to doubt their career potential.

At the end of the day, though, I respect them too much to collude with any system or mindset that confuses grades for goodness.

• A millennial paid off more than $100,000 in student loan debt in two years by juggling two jobs.
• Secretly working multiple remote jobs allowed him to double his income.
• He said being "overemployed" is stressful at times, but the financial benefits are worth it.

Adam paid off his student loan debt last month, after more than doubling his income by juggling multiple remote jobs.

Two years prior, he had roughly $118,000 in student debt and was earning about $85,000 annually from one job as a security risk professional. Adam, who is in his 40s and based in Arizona, was eager to become debt-free as soon as possible. He started looking for ways to boost his income and discovered "overemployment."

Since early 2023, Adam has secretly juggled two full-time remote roles simultaneously. While his overemployed lifestyle has been stressful at times, he said he typically doesn't work more than 55 hours a week across his gigs — and that the financial benefits have outweighed the downsides.

"I would like to be a millionaire before I turn 50," said Adam, whose identity was verified by Business Insider but asked to use a pseudonym due to fear of professional repercussions. "I want the financial freedom to give more time to family and friends."

Adam is among the Americans who have worked multiple remote roles on the sly to boost their incomes. Over the past two years, BI has interviewed more than two dozen job jugglers who've used their extra earnings to pay off debt and travel the world. To be sure, holding multiple jobs without company approval could have professional repercussions and lead to burnout. But many current and former overemployed workers have told BI the financial benefits outweigh the downsides.

Job juggling is worth the stress

In 2022, Adam began supplementing his income by driving for food delivery platforms like DoorDash. But after growing frustrated by his meager earnings, he decided to explore other options. That same year, he watched a YouTube video about people secretly working multiple jobs to boost their incomes.

When Adam began looking for a second remote gig in early 2023, he said his two main goals were to double his income and pay off his student loans within two years. In February 2023, he landed a second remote security risk professional role that pushed his combined earnings to more than $170,000 annually.

Adam said working multiple jobs has been challenging at times. He said it can be difficult to juggle overlapping meetings and deadlines, and that coordinating vacation time across both jobs can be laborious — as each employer has a different policy and approval process. While he's generally been able to manage his workload, he said it can be difficult when colleagues quit or are out of the office, and he's asked to pick up some extra work.

"Managing priorities and ensuring both roles receive adequate attention requires careful planning and adaptability," he said.

While these challenges have been stressful at times, Adam said he's generally been able to avoid burnout. He tries to stay organized and automate his work wherever possible. Outside work, he makes an effort to spend plenty of time with his friends and family. When he needs a break during the workday, he sometimes plays video games.

"I have learned to manage stress pretty well," he said.

Looking ahead, Adam said he has no plans to stop job juggling. His goal is to boost his combined income to at least $250,000 annually by swapping one of his jobs for a higher-paying one or starting a consulting business on the side.

"I do plan on staying overemployed for the foreseeable future," he said. "The way I am overemployed may change."

Are you working multiple remote jobs at the same time and willing to provide details about your pay and schedule? If so, reach out to this reporter at [email protected].

• VC firm Flybridge is using AI for writing investment memos, a critical part of any diligence.
• It's making the generator available for public use via its website and GitHub.
• Flybridge aims to help founders refine pitches and save investors time on routine tasks.

When Chip Hazard, a longtime startup investor at Flybridge, finds a startup he wants to fund, he writes a multi-page investment memo for his partners, outlining in detail all the risk factors and opportunities of a business. Now, he's using AI to help write these documents and saving hours of work.

It's the latest example of how venture firms are eating their own dog food. Investors aren't only funding startups exploring the application of large language models and "agents." They're also experimenting with these tools internally to improve how they source deals, research companies before investing, and track performance.

"If we could free up capacity on more routine tasks and therefore give us more time for judgment," said Hazard, "that's a good trade in our business."

This week, Flybridge is unveiling the AI-powered memo generator to the public — free for anyone to use.

How it works

Following the release of ChatGPT, Hazard made a cheeky bet with an associate at his firm: he promised a bottle of wine from his private collection if the associate could build an artificial intelligence that writes investment memos.

Flybridge's memo generator looks like a simple web form. The user uploads a pitch deck and a transcript of the pitch, fills in the round size and valuation, and adds links to the founder's LinkedIn page and the company website.

Under the hood, the memo generator was built on top of OpenAI's o1 model, according to Daniel Porras Reyes, a self-taught developer and Flybridge associate. This model is considered superior to its successors because o1 was designed to spend more time thinking before providing an answer, improving its output quality.

Flybridge used CrewAI, a portfolio company, to build "agents" — a new set of artificial intelligence tools that can work autonomously without much human supervision. Those agents can search the web through Exa, a search engine designed for use by agents, and create content about a company's competitive landscape or market size.

In as little as three minutes, the memo generator spits out a Word document with sections on the opportunity, risks, business model, go-to-market strategy, and team. It also proposes a list of follow-up questions for the founders.

Hazard said that by releasing the tool to the general public, Flybridge hopes that founders will run their pitch decks or investment memos through the generator before they meet with the firm. This could give founders an idea of how their pitch comes across so they can smooth out the kinks ahead of time.

Like most generative AI tools, the memo generator sometimes gets it wrong. It might leave a competitor off the list, said Porras Reyes, or reach a wrong number in the financial projections, Hazard added. Still, Hazard said the product shaves hours off of production; he spends less time writing a founder's bio, for instance, and more time thinking about whether they have the right characteristics and the best idea.

Hazard said if the memo generator was more capable, users might be tempted to "check their judgment at the door." He continued, "The point is to have it 'good enough' that you can then start to really apply your judgment."

Founders and investors can access Flybridge's open-source investment memo generator on its website or clone the project on GitHub.

• Nutrition expert Tim Spector said that most people get enough protein, but not fiber.
• He recommended people focus on increasing the amount of fiber they eat each day.
• His tips include switching meat for beans and eating different types of plant-based protein.

Protein-enriched foods such as cereal bars, energy drinks, and pasta have taken over grocery store shelves as consumers try to up their protein consumption. But a top nutrition scientist says that we're focusing on the wrong macronutrient.

More than half of Americans meet or exceed the minimum daily requirement of protein — 0.36 grams of protein per pound of body weight each day — according to the US Department of Agriculture's Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2020-2025.

Yet the Guidelines said more than 90% of women and 97% of men in the US don't meet the recommended intakes for dietary fiber.

Tim Spector, a British epidemiologist and cofounder of the nutrition company ZOE, told Business Insider that people should focus more on increasing their fiber intake than protein if they're aiming for a healthier diet. Fiber is great for gut health, can improve heart health, and can help ease constipation, BI previously reported.

Other health practitioners may not agree with Spector's call to prioritize fiber. Rosa Becerra-Soberon, a registered dietitian at Top Nutrition Coaching, told BI that the main goal should be focusing on a well-balanced diet with enough fiber and protein.

Spector shared three tips on how to hit your protein intake goals while getting enough fiber as part of a healthy diet.

Prioritize natural protein sources

Spector doesn't eat meat often but wrote in his cookbook, released in the US in 2025, that he still gets around 1 gram of protein per kilogram of his body weight per day, mostly from plants and whole foods

While plant-based protein sources tend to contain less protein than meat, they contain more fiber. According to the US Department of Agriculture, 100 grams of fried tofu contains about 18 grams of protein and 4 grams of fiber.

Becerra-Soberon said that if you don't consume meat, you should make sure you get all the essential amino acids by eating grains and seeds.

Swap meat for beans and lentils

Spector wrote that replacing meat with legumes is a great way to increase your fiber intake while meeting your protein needs. Legumes like beans and lentils are protein-heavy, but higher in fiber and better for the environment than meat.

For example, canned chickpeas contain about 8 grams of protein per 100 grams, as well as 7 grams of dietary fiber. Chicken has 22 grams of protein per 100 grams, but no fiber, according to USDA data — and tends to be more expensive than chickpeas.

Longevity researcher Dan Buettner previously shared dietitian-approved recipes for cooking with legumes with BI.

Variety is key

Because plants generally contain less protein than meat, Spector wrote that he incorporates "a good mix" of plant-based protein sources into his diet throughout the day. This is because different whole foods contain different amounts of protein, so you might have to eat a "variety of nutrient-dense whole foods to take care of your protein needs," he wrote.

For example, Spector's go-to breakfast of yogurt, kefir, berries, nuts, and seeds contains about 30 grams of protein from multiple sources. He might also have butter beans with quinoa for lunch and a portion of tofu for dinner, he said.

His colleague at ZOE, Dr. Will Bulsiewicz, previously shared his favorite bean chili recipe, which he eats for lunch every day. The recipe includes beans and farro, both of which are good sources of protein and fiber.

Becerra-Soberon also recommended little additions of protein throughout the day, such as sprinkling hemp seeds on meals, which contain 31 grams of protein and 4 grams of fiber per 100 grams, or eating almond butter as a snack, which contains about 21 grams of protein and 10 grams of fiber per 100 grams.

While eating healthily can be more expensive, BI has previously reported on how to eat healthily on a budget.