Pearl Tiawon, the Cybersecurity Student Retelling Liberia’s Story

Published: October 7, 2026

Couragh Pearl Kou Tiawon remembers the exact feeling of falling for Liberia’s history.

“I started reading from multiple sources, and boyyyy, was I impressed,” she said.

She had set out to answer a simple question as Independence Day approached: what happened before July 26, 1847?

“There was so much I had never known about Liberia’s history and the Indigenous people. And I thought, if I’m a young person living in this country and I know this little, I’m probably not alone,” she said.

So one day in class, she picked up her phone.

“I took my phone, pointed it at the window, and said, ‘I’m starting a series called Beyond 26. We’re going back to what happened before July 26, 1847.’ Just like that,” she recalled.

“The engagement got crazy and people started following.”

That clip launched Beyond 26, and with it a platform that now includes Things You Don’t Know About Liberia, a general Liberian history series and History to the Streets, her effort to carry that history to young people where they are. Pearl, a cybersecurity student at BlueCrest University Liberia, says the thrill has not worn off.

“You know that feeling when you discover something new and you get that childlike excitement? That’s how I’ve felt since I started,” she said. “I’m learning while I’m sharing.”

None of it was planned, and none of it began with history.

A Doctor, Then a Computer

As a child, Pearl wanted to be a doctor, until “this incident with blood” changed her mind.

Technology found her during a girls’ program with Plan International Liberia, where she was assigned to an office with computer work and was, in her words, “literally the only novice in the room.”

Then a man in the office asked her a question she never forgot.

“‘You don’t know computer? Why exactly are you learning in school?’ And for some reason, that just sparked my curiosity.”

She volunteered at an internet cafe in high school, tried mass communication after graduating, then switched to computer studies.

“I’ve loved it ever since,” she said.

The Push

Content creation arrived through the persistence of Sylvester Nagbe, now her creative director, who kept urging her to start, first as a model.

“He was always telling me, ‘Courage, you should start creating content. You have the physique and everything,’” she said.

She was serious enough to beg campus friends to film her walking. One day, Nagbe recorded her himself. Outfit checks followed, then a vlog at the learning center that did well enough to change her direction.

“He told me, ‘Courage, I think this educational content is what you should be doing.’”

July 26 supplied the subject.

“Honestly, I was even a little annoyed at first, like, why do we have so many holidays?” she said. “But then I started thinking, there has to be more to July 26th than this.”

After the first episode of Beyond 26, Nagbe called, and they got to work, often in his living room with nothing more than a phone. History to the Streets grew out of that period, she said, “because I kept asking myself how to take this history to young people where they are.”

Against a Single Story

Pearl traces her work to Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s talk on the danger of a single story.

“Because when people hear about Liberia right now, it’s basically just ‘a random country in Africa.’ And we have SO much here,” she said. “We need to tell our own story, because people cannot tell it for us.”

“We have so much story to tell and so few people telling it,” she said.

What she did not expect was what the work would do to her.

“At first, I was somebody who didn’t have Liberia at heart. Not ‘hate’ hate, but I didn’t really carry it in my heart like that,” she said. “Once you start getting to know something, you appreciate it, and once you appreciate it, you grow a whole new love for it.”

Getting the Story Right

The videos look simple. The work behind them is not.

“I think the hardest part for me has honestly been getting the story,” she said. “Sometimes I can spend hours, even days, just trying to understand one thing.”

When a follower asks a question, she researches it, sometimes buying books. “I don’t want to answer from half knowledge,” she said. She then rewrites the material in her own words, scripts it and memorizes its core ideas before recording, all around classes and volunteering.

As her audience grew, so did her sense of responsibility.

“I’m more patient with research. I’m more comfortable admitting when I don’t know something. I’m more willing to go back and correct myself. And I’ve learned that sometimes the story isn’t ready just because I’m ready to post it,” she said.

Judged Before She Speaks

Pearl is blunt about what it costs to do this work as a young woman.

“I’m a pretty girl, I’m young, and half of my following is men, even on my professional page, not just my personal one. So people will stigmatize you before listening to you,” she said.

Some assume her serious work is a phase.

“People will say, ‘Over time she’s going to get bored and start posting nudes,’ just assuming that’s where it’s headed,” she said.

Others have messaged her directly to insult her.

“I remember somebody telling me I’m just a young kid, a young woman who just woke up and is trying to do nonsense, because ‘that’s what females do,’” she said.

Even her most serious posts draw men flirting in the comments.

“Starting something new is already hard. Then you add being a woman, and it makes it three times worse,” she said. “But at the end of the day, I keep doing the work.”

The criticism that hurt most came from someone who meant well and told her that talking to a camera about Liberia was boring.

“They said it out of love, but it broke me,” she said.

For about a week, she lost her motivation. What brought her back was a line from someone she no longer remembers: “Your audience will find you.”

The People Who Watered Her

“You know that thinking where you find people who are like water? They water you. My creative director, Sylvester, is one of those people. My mom even says he’s my muse,” she said.

A friend who is no longer in her life bought her first phone to record with and helped her financially at the start.

“That support mattered, and I won’t forget it,” she said.

More Than a Platform

Pearl volunteers with women’s programs and is quietly building more: a clothing brand, Pearl’s Aura, whose designs are drafted while she raises funds, and a foundation to help children stay in school, an idea that took shape after she raised money online for a child whose whole family had no money.

“Personally, if you know me, you know I genuinely believe that as a child, you have the right to education,” she said.

Her career, though, remains in technology.

“In five or ten years, I see myself as a cybersecurity expert,” she said. After her bachelor’s degree, she plans to pursue a master’s in cyber law.

Just Start

To the young woman with a talent and no audience yet, Pearl’s advice is the advice she once shrugged off.

“I would tell her to start. And don’t start with the intention that people should watch you,” she said.

The journey taught her, she said, that “you can just start, and the ideas will come along, the people will come along, the community will come along.”

“And get your why. Why are you doing this? That’s the thing that will hold you and ground you.”

She still does not know how far the platform will go.

“I’m not doing it because of how big it is. I’m doing it because of my why.”