Every founder story Black women get handed starts the same way, with the leap: quit the job, bet everything, hope it lands. Folake Ibe, 37, did not do that. She is a first-generation Nigerian American and a mother of three; she has held the same full-time job for fifteen years, and in September 2025 she opened a Mathnasium tutoring center in Clinton, Maryland anyway. It broke even within two months.
What she was aiming for was smaller than the story usually allows. “I came into this business with a very practical hope: I did not want to be in the red,” she said. The center opened with 25 students. Enrollment has tripled in the year since.
It started in her own house. Her daughter was in third grade and struggling with math, and the nearest Mathnasium was a thirty-minute drive from southern Prince George’s County. She opened one closer.
What she did next was not a growth plan. “I believed the way to build a healthy business was to focus on the value we were giving families,” she said, and then she studied the ground she was standing on. “I also leaned into one of my strengths: studying the environment around me,” she said. “I took time to understand our families, our schools, and the educational needs in our area. I built connections and listened closely to what parents were looking for.”
She was most deliberate about the first appointment a parent ever has. “I was especially intentional about the assessment experience,” she said. “Whenever possible, I want parents to see how their child approaches math,” so the conversation starts from something the two of them watched together rather than from a score.
She is plain about what makes two jobs possible, and none of it is willpower. “It is no small feat! My mother is a tremendous help to our family,” she said. “We have reliable childcare, and my husband is my greatest supporter.” Her full-time job is demanding, she said, but its hybrid schedule gives her the flexibility to carry both. The center also had to be built to run without her. “I have also had to build a center that can function when I am at my other job or with my family,” she said, describing continuous staff training, team huddles and regular reviews of student progress.
She is listed as Owner and Center Director at 8943 Woodyard Road in Clinton. On Monday morning, she is also at her other job, which is where she has been for fifteen years.
