Nelson Ngouenet - Class of 2017

 Not many people who work 80 hours a week can say that it doesn’t feel like work. “I find a lot of fulfillment in what I do because I meet very cool people and work on solving important problems. It doesn’t feel like work,” shares Class of 2017 Overlake graduate Nelson Ngouenet.  

Perhaps when you do what you love and contribute to something meaningful, the long hours feel doable. Founder of a non-profit organization and for-profit company, he’s running two businesses despite having graduated with both a BS and MS in Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania last year. Nelson’s business, Avian Dynamics, is a drone start up that builds drones and drone programs for disaster relief. “We are essentially designing flying boats that can be utilized in scenarios where you don’t have the same kind of infrastructure or aerial logistics that can field larger-scale aircraft for support.” Taking the world by land, sea, and air, Avian Dynamics began in 2023 and is already gaining acclaim in the aviation and aerospace sectors.   

But Nelson’s true passion comes through his work with his non-profit, GLBL Foundation, an organization on a mission to build sustainable opportunities to make the world a better place. The foundation began with Nelson’s desire to share an open-source prototype from graduate school that garnered awards but wasn’t ready for deployment. “I took a stab at redesigning it to make the prototype operational so that people around the world can build or adjust as needed,” he shares. This was the first project for GLBL but other current projects include a smart bin for detecting levels in clothing donation bins and a financial training program that provides curriculum for students to gain financial education before graduating from high school. In fact, current Overlake student Avani Bansal (’25) worked as an intern for GLBL for the last two summers, spending the summer of 2024 focused on establishing partnerships with other organizations to build out the financial training curriculum. 

So how did Overlake prepare this graduate for life in the fast lane of tech start-ups and non-profits? “Overlake taught me to think through complex problems. Not only did I gain a really good understanding of the fundamentals, but Overlake helped me to tackle the abstract. I learned how to think creatively and how to expand my thinking without being hesitant or holding back,” shares Nelson, further adding “When you’re starting companies you must have curiosity for anything that comes your way and Overlake provides that base. That ability to understand the way a system works roots to Overlake and, as projects and my businesses scale, complex thinking and systematizing have been instrumental to their growth.”  

Somehow amid running two companies, Nelson still finds time to keep up with golf, a passion from his time on the Overlake golf team, as well as to train as a runner, completing his first half marathon last November in Seattle. Nelson also loves to travel and has been to Singapore, France, and Japan all in the past year. Though these were primarily work trips, he’s been lucky to layer in some sightseeing and he hopes to get to Argentina in the next year, a country that fascinates him because “they’ve had a lot of financial bankruptcies but have been resilient as a country. They’re still going, and I want to find out how and why,” he shares. Ever curious, ever creative, Nelson is always looking at how he can learn and then share that understanding with the world. If you know a young Alumni interested in interning for the GLBL Foundation next summer or are interesting in partnering with Nelson in any of his work, you will find him connected to Overlake’s LinkedIn Group.