Aug 2023 – May 2025 · 1 yr 9 mos · Lagos, Lagos State, Nigeria

• Responsibilities spanning across fundraising, scaling programs and revenue and expanding product suite to deepen impact across the Nigerian, pan-African and Global diaspora student base.
• Launched the Pathway Career Accelerators as Afara's first revenue-generating intervention, supporting students with over 75% internship placements and 95% job transition rate, leading to a 9x income uplift for participants
• Led new initiatives including Nigeria’s first scholarship-backed global exchange program in partnership with UNC and Morehead Cain, and a public sector leadership track
• Co-led Afara’s first external fundraising campaign, raising $1m+ from HNIs and philanthropic foundations supporting program expansion and long-term sustainability

Apr 2022 – Jul 2023 · 1 yr 3 mos

• Led the product team to build the largest network of digital financial services distribution for India's next ~1BN consumers
• Scaled Jai Kisan’s BNPL product line and our retailer network product (Bharat Khata) to 120K+ rural individual customers with over 10K+ retailers and $30m+ annualized disbursements
• Developed and implemented bets focused on organic growth of both merchant and borrower network through a suite of product touch points. Acquired a farmer-focused utility product to diversify acquisition channels, reducing CAC and developing value-added services
• Developed a first-of-its-kind rural-focused geospatial mapping/ routing tool to personalize discovery of merchants by customers

Aug 2021 – Mar 2022 · 7 mos

• On secondment from the CEO's office, worked as a product lead focusing on building out Jai Kisan's BNPL product line
• Launched rural India’s 1st Offline Buy Now, Pay later solution to enable distribution of sachetized financial services for less digitally confident users in Bharat leveraging hyperlocal market dynamics between local retailers and farmers (high trust barrier)
• Achieved product-market fit for the solution and drove growth of monthly credit transactions with a skew towards organic demand of 90%. Expanded to 50 districts across 6 states while building for hyperlocal variations
• Built Jai Kisan’s product team and set up infrastructure around analytics, marketing, etc. and led product strategy

Jun 2020 – Jul 2021 · 1 yr 1 mo

• Worked closely with the founders as their chief of staff across functions and strategic initiatives
• Closed Jai Kisan’s Series A fundraise of $30m and Pre-Series A fundraise of $3.9m from domestic and global investors. Led debt raising efforts by closing the 1st venture debt and wholesale debt raise from marquee lenders
• Executed product strategy for Bharat Khata – A digital ledger solution for rural MSMEs to manage transactions and inventory
• Led the pivot out of SaaS to financial services distribution building out the product strategy, GTM and growth levers

Jun 2019 – Jun 2020 · 1 yr · Mumbai, London and Singapore

• Corporate Strategy team for Nomura’s International businesses across Global markets, Investment banking, Wealth and Alternatives
• Worked on strategic investments for Nomura’s Inorganic expansion in key focus areas including ESG structuring, India structured debt, Cross-border transaction banking and digital FX
• Restructured the Asia Wealth Management business leading to an integrated Wholesale division impacting structuring capabilities and sales synergies for the Asia business
• Worked on strategic initiatives launched on Nomura’s Investor Day across Wholesale KPI benchmarking and goal setting, Merchant banking and Alternatives and Firm-wide digitization leading to our medium-term goal of 8-10% ROE
• Other Key Projects: India NBFC Growth Plan, Asia Retail Growth Plan, EM/FX Restructuring, India Wealth Management

May 2018 – Jul 2018 · 2 mos · Mumbai Area, India

• Offered a Returning Job Offer (PPO) for exceptional performance at the firm
• Collaborated with Oliver Wyman UK to benchmark and restructure Wholesale compensation plans (PE/Rev benchmarking)
• Analysed and presented growth initiatives for Nomura’s FX retail/ structured product offerings and for the growth of Nomura Live - Wholesale FX e-trading platform. Synergies with cross-border M&A were implemented as part of Nomura CFS (DC FX)

Apr 2018 – Mar 2019 · 11 mos · Chennai Area, India

• Led a 4 tier team of 65 members to organize 4 flagship initiatives (Evolve) - Relaunch, Sports Tech Summit, Law Tech Summit and the Spotlight Lecture Series. Managed a budget of INR 1,500,000 and part of the Core Team. Conceptualized and launched the Relaunch Initiative - A platform for Women in Technology who have taken a break from their careers to upskill, get mentored and return to the workforce. Partnered with Goldman Sachs, Paypal, Barclays and Lean In (Sheryl Sandberg).

May 2017 – Jun 2017 · 1 mo · Chennai Area, India

• Worked with the Engineering division of Chennai Metro Rail Ltd. on improving construction management
• Designed a temporary foot bridge at Chennai Central to ease traffic flow during construction. Implemented on site for 1 year (At Chennai central train station)
• Increased efficiency of station construction timelines by 30% by analysing workstreams across 5 major metro sites in the Phase 2 buildout of the Chennai Metro network

Dec 2015 – Jan 2016 · 1 mo · Hualien County, Taiwan

• Analysed gene expression data from micro array image processing of 600 RNAs in 6 different experimental set-ups
• Created and automated a method to detect erroneous data points retrieved from image processing implemented across the lab