Teaching AI With Purpose: Fatima Jalloh on Building Her Own Lane

Freedom Files is our interview series. Real people who live on their own clock, telling us what that actually looks like. No scripts, no polish, real people in real places.

For this Freedom Files conversation, Jabari sat down with Fatima Jalloh, who teaches AI literacy at mstimaj.com and writes the blog The Human Algorithm. She spent about ten years in corporate academia work, and healthcare before that, and is less than a year into building something of her own alongside the client work she still does.

The conversation

Jabari: What is it that you do, and how do you live a life that's away from the nine-to-five grind?

Fatima: It's still a grind, honestly, just not the traditional kind, and I'm still very much a novice getting my feet wet building something of my own. I went to school for technology, and with everything happening in AI right now, I started a company where I educate people on the different types of AI and how to actually use them. I do web development too, and I dabble in social media management. It's all new, but it's the world I'm in.

Jabari: AI is the hot topic right now, one side says it's the future, the other says it's the end of us. What do you think people get wrong about it?

Fatima: I write about this a lot on The Human Algorithm. There's real reason for the doom and gloom, the layoffs, the environmental concerns, people losing skills. But I use AI so deeply, agentic tools, workflows, that I feel separated from most of that conversation. Most people are still typing "write me this email" and copy-pasting the output. That's using it as a crutch instead of an accelerant for your own thinking. Until people understand the difference, they're going to keep having the wrong argument about it. That's why education is what I'm building.

Jabari: Was there a specific moment that pushed you to build something of your own instead of staying inside a company?

Fatima: I don't know if I'd point to one moment. I've had toxic experiences in corporate America, absolutely, but it's still recent enough that I'm not fully ready to unpack that. What it did teach me is that my identity is not my career. Once you separate who you are from what you do and who you're around, you can actually pause and think about your purpose, and start taking a chance on your own dreams. Building this is the starting place for me.

Jabari: How do you keep your career from becoming your identity? Have you found that balance?

Fatima: I haven't found it yet. I've been in survival mode for a lot of my life, so this is really the first time I'm pausing to rediscover the things that make me excited. Identity is something you have to develop, you have to attend to it, like a garden, like a flower. You have to grow it, daily, in your habits, not just decide it once.

Jabari: What advice would you give someone thinking about going independent?

Fatima: Funding, honestly. It's not something I understood was missing until I didn't have it. If you can build a cushion before you start, your life gets so much easier, because building something from scratch means constant pivoting and adjusting, and that cushion is what lets you make those changes instead of panicking through them. Start by looking at what your own state offers, mine has programs specifically for women-owned businesses, and go to the networking events even if that's not naturally your thing. You never know who's holding the connection you need.

Jabari: What does a freedom lifestyle look like to you, personally?

Fatima: A freedom lifestyle to me is one where my time is invested in the things that give me purpose. Life is short. A lot of people have dreams and goals but stay clouded by expectations, clocking in and clocking out, and they don't invest energy into what they actually want, or into their family, or into this amazing world we were born into. We have such a big, beautiful world, and a lot of us become slaves to a clock instead of really living. Freedom is the balance of building the things you want to bring into the world while still getting to experience life while you're in it.

Jabari: Any last words for someone thinking about going their own way?

Fatima: No matter what happens in your journey, believe in yourself, whether people support you or not, and keep going. When you want to give up, remember why you started. It's not about turning the thing off when it gets hard, it's about tuning it correctly, giving it the right amount until you find the frequency you're actually looking for.

What stays with us

Fatima is less than a year into building what she runs at mstimaj.com, and she says that plainly instead of dressing it up as further along than it is. What she's clear on already is the distinction that trips most people up: using a tool as a crutch versus using it as an accelerant, and treating identity as something you tend to daily instead of something a job title hands you. She still works with Joe and with other clients while she builds. Freedom didn't wait for the business to be finished first.

New Freedom Files conversations land here as we film them. If there's someone whose story belongs here, tell us at crew@no925.co.