How Agnes Iwaye Is Designing the Future of Work through Product Innovation

Mary Nnah

In an age where product innovation is often measured by profit margins and platform subscriptions, Agnes Iwaye is leading a different kind of revolution, one where product management meets public service, and inclusion is not a footnote, but the feature.

At the Bobby Dodd Institute (BDI) in Atlanta, Iwaye serves as the lead Product Manager behind some of Georgia’s most transformative workforce development platforms for people with disabilities. Through her leadership, digital-first initiatives like Bridge Academy, G.R.O.W., and Empower Georgia have emerged not just as programs, but as scalable product ecosystems reimagining who gets access to economic opportunity, and how.

These aren’t hypothetical pilots. They are working solutions that have already placed 50% of their participants into stable, skills-based jobs across the tech and public service sectors. With each iteration, Iwaye and her team move closer to a future where economic inclusion is no longer aspirational, it’s engineered into the infrastructure of work.

“Designing for accessibility is not about checking a box, it’s about unlocking a labor force full of brilliance, resilience, and overlooked potential,” says Iwaye, who began her journey in public policy before translating that insight into digital product innovation. “The talent is there. Our job is to remove the friction.”

Her work reflects an acute understanding of both the systemic barriers and structural opportunities in modern workforce design. Under her stewardship, Bridge Academy has partnered with Cisco to offer industry-standard cybersecurity certifications to individuals with mobility impairments and cognitive disabilities. G.R.O.W., developed with the Georgia Vocational Rehabilitation Agency, guides students with disabilities through career discovery, worksite visits, and tailored skills training. Meanwhile, Empower Georgia, built in collaboration with state legislators, helps marginalized youth transition seamlessly from education to employment, closing a readiness gap long ignored in tech-forward hiring pipelines.

What sets Iwaye apart is not only her user-centered approach but her ability to navigate the complex intersections of public policy, product design, and people. By integrating accessibility features into platform builds, collecting continuous user feedback, and measuring placement outcomes, she treats inclusion not as charity, but as a product design challenge worthy of agile iteration and enterprise-level ambition.

Her work has earned the attention of state representatives, disability rights advocates, and international institutions including the United Nations and World Bank, where she has shared her inclusive innovation frameworks as models for other economies.

In a time when tech often distances itself from the people it impacts most, Agnes Iwaye’s work reminds us that the best products aren’t always the most profitable, they’re the most principled.