My Immigrant Story Ep. 14: Meet Sam Baddoo, Co-Founder of Fleri
Welcome to the My Immigrant Story podcast! Every other week we bring in a new guest who is a first generation Canadian immigrant skilled professional or entrepreneur and learn about how they first discovered Canada, immigrated to the country, and set themselves up for success professionally.
Our latest guest on the podcast is Samuel (Sam) Baddoo, the founder and CEO of Fleri. Fleri is a company that directs remittance funds into the health services immigrant families need back in their home countries. Starting with healthcare, Fleri ensures that the money sent back home by immigrants goes exactly where’s its intended.
This is a very special episode of My Immigrant Story - while most of our guests are immigrants based in Canada, Sam is a Ghanian immigrant entrepreneur living in the US. His immigration tech startup, Fleri, was a part of the Techstars Toronto 2021 cohort. Nino and Sam connected through the Toronto tech ecosystem with the support of Sunil Sharma, Managing Director at Techstars Toronto.
Sam was originally inspired to move to New York City from Ghana after he visited the country a few times when he was younger. He saw opportunity in the country based on how the people that moved to the US achieved success by applying themselves.
During the episode we talk about the most impactful decisions Sam made while building his career in the US. Joining a software development bootcamp and networking with like-minded people (entrepreneurs in his case) were at the top of his list. In general, Sam mentions that the people you meet is the most important part of immigration – having someone that you can talk to along the way, whether it’s other immigrants or immigrant organizations that can help (FYI: if you’d like to learn more about the VisaWire immigrant community, check out the following link!).
Fleri (Sam’s startup) is actually the creole name for the word “Flourish”. One of the reasons people emigrate to other countries is because they want to thrive and flourish rather than just survive. Based on his personal experience with poor healthcare options back home, Sam wants to help immigrants flourish through providing access to healthcare for their families.
To hear Sam’s full story and takeaways, check us out on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts! You can find all of the My Immigrant Story episodes at the following link.
