OUR STORY
Building Generational Infrastructure
for Black Excellence
Black Founder’s Formula was born from two lives that collided at the intersection of excellence, faith, and unfinished reform.
Timothy and Nicole Olaniyi built it together — a wife-and-husband team who refused to accept that brilliance should ever have to apologize for existing in elite spaces.
Their shared mission: To engineer access where systems were never designed for us to win.
“This Black-owned firm is closing gaps we didn’t even know existed—and helping families compete at the highest level with confidence and dignity.”
— Parent of a rising 9th grader
OUR ORIGIN: TWO STORIES, ONE VISION
Nicole grew up watching her father play a game most people didn’t even know had rules. A Howard and Wharton alumnus and the first Black board member of Valley Bank, he taught her that success in elite systems — the private schools, Ivy Leagues, and professional networks — requires fluency in power, not just proximity to it.
Earning admission to five T20 colleges including her alma mater Princeton University, she learned that brilliance alone doesn’t create access — strategy does.
Meanwhile, Timothy’s journey began very differently. A second-generation Nigerian-American, he earned an athletic scholarship to a Division III university but graduated with significant student debt and deep questions about how someone so talented could still fall through the cracks.
He saw firsthand how many gifted Black students and families were left to navigate elite systems alone — brilliant but undersupported, ambitious but uninformed.
When Nicole and Timothy met, their stories converged:
her Ivy League vantage point on systemic inequity,
his lived experience of the gaps those systems never closed.
Together, they began to build what they wished had existed for them:
a roadmap for strategic, purpose-driven access that preserves both excellence and wholeness.
After the 2023 Supreme Court ruling that ended affirmative action,
elite admissions quietly shifted.
THE MISSION: REBUILD THE PIPELINE FROM THE INSIDE OUT
Black Founder’s Formula exists to engineer access, equity, and endurance across the educational and entrepreneurial spectrum for Black families.
Our framework turns high achievement into lasting influence — because the game has changed. Colleges no longer reward achievement alone — they seek innovation, leadership, and measurable social contribution.
That’s why we build systems that prepare our children not just to qualify, but to compete.