Where are They Now? – Onyeka Obiocha of A Happy Life
This summer, with the help of our fabulous Communications Intern Isabel Thompson, we’ll be maintaining a “Where Are They Now?” blog series. It’ll check in with past winners of our annual Impact Challenge as well as with past participants of our Accelerator Program, and document where they are in their work today. In this edition, we interviewed A Happy Life’s President and Co-Founder, Ony Obiocha.
Ony sat down with me at reSET a couple of weeks ago to get me caught up with his evolving company, A Happy Life (disclaimer: I used to intern for them!). For those of you who don’t know, A Happy Life is a coffee roasting company geared to making the world happier “one cup at a time.” Whether its using their profits to help farmers in developing countries live sustainable, happy livelihoods, coming up with ways to help customers bring more happiness into their lives, or finding the most environmentally sound way to deliver their products, A Happy Life is wholly committed to doing everything they can to create happiness at home and throughout the world. The company is also registered as a Benefit Corporation.
Onyeka grew up in Windsor, Connecticut, and earned his undergraduate degree in Economics from The University of Connecticut. After graduation, he went on to work with a start-up company in Hartford, where he was responsible for building out their corporate social responsibility (CSR) work as their Program Development Officer.
It was through reSET’s Accelerator Program that he met his now business partner, Vishal, and they launched A Happy Life.
“I signed up for the Accelerator Program to get a better idea of what CSR is and how it can push to the forefront a lot of the things I was doing with the company I was with prior to A Happy Life,” Ony explained.
“I met Vishal, co-founder of A Happy Life, in the program and he told me an idea of a startup coffee roasting company with 100% of net profits going to coffee farmers in developing countries. I said you’re an idiot, he said no, hear me out and we’ve been working together ever since.”
After officially launching their company in 2013, Vishal and Ony submitted an entry to our Impact Challenge the following year.
“That was a great experience, too. We received a lot of valuable information while working alongside reSET,” Ony stated.
Ony talked with me about The Impact Challenge’s application process and how it forced him to consider components about the company he hadn’t before.
“Especially with A Happy Life and a lot of the stuff we do, such as investing our net profits and having a very open and honest hiring policy, we can get ahead of ourselves. So, to put our mission and what we do in a concise, articulate manner helps us to understand our core values within the company,” Ony said.
I asked Ony how people could involve themselves with the company and their Happiness Lab in New Haven.
“One thing I will never get enough of is people interacting with the brand. Either saying they like the coffee, they hate the coffee, they like the happiness aspect, or they don’t. Because really we wouldn’t be here if we didn’t think we had the unique opportunity to impact our customers in the wider world. We want to position ourselves well, and the only way to do that is to talk to our customers,” Ony explained.
As we neared the end of our time together, I asked Ony what he would say to a social entrepreneur just starting out in this industry.
“No one knows what they’re doing,” he said. “I think a lot of times people look at entrepreneurship and think, ‘I have to be a genius, or a Bill Gates, or a Zuckerberg. It’s really not the case. No one knows what they’re doing. The best thing you can do as an entrepreneur is just understanding that and really putting yourself in a position where your mindset is: I learn, I execute, and I keep going. And that really the only bad decision is indecision.”
For more information about A Happy Life or The Happiness Lab, please click here and visit their website.
