Executive Director, Entrepreneurial Capital · Alberta Innovates
Twenty years designing the machinery by which capital reaches its destination: investment processes, governance frameworks, credit guarantee architecture, and wrap-around ecosystems, built across the corridor between Nigerian capital markets and Canadian multilateral practice. An institutional operator for a moment that demands institutional operators.
Most senior finance executives can point to one. Some can point to two. A handful can point to three. What makes the work I do useful at institutional scale is the overlap: the four together.
Designs end-to-end investment machinery: origination, IC governance, credit appraisal, guarantee structures, portfolio monitoring, impact reporting. The system that lets capital deploy at scale and hold up under audit.
Nigerian institutional roots (NGX, Stanbic IBTC, Kedari, Santrust) paired with Canadian and multilateral fluency (Alberta Innovates, Canada Revenue Agency). A permanent optionality engine for LPs, deals, and partnerships that others must build from scratch.
Founder of three institutions, board chair of one of Canada's fastest-growing accelerators for underserved tech founders, committee-level board governance across multiple organizations. Understands the view from both sides of the term sheet.
Designer of AI-era capital programs for government innovation agencies, DFIs, and corporate innovation funds. Fluent in the FinOps discipline applied to AI portfolios: cloud cost governance, AI workload economics, and the program logic that funds the AI-native SME. McGill-trained design thinker, Lean Stack-certified innovation mentor, co-founder of an award-winning AI platform. Innovation-native, on the capital side of the table.
Retained by funds, government innovation agencies, DFIs, and ambitious founders to design the machinery, structure the capital, build the paths that let institutional money move, and redesign capital programs and operations for the AI-native decade.
Build the end-to-end operating system of a fund or investment program: origination funnel, IC governance, credit appraisal, portfolio monitoring, impact reporting.
Emerging fund managers · DFI program leads · corporate venture arms · family offices
Thesis, vehicle structuring, LP narrative, and operational design for Fund I and beyond, including cross-border structures.
First-time GPs · corporates spinning out captive funds · diaspora-oriented vehicles
Structure and place capital (equity, debt, mezzanine, blended) or review the deals coming at you, end-to-end or as a selective IC-side reviewer.
Growth companies raising · corporates shaping capital strategy · funds outsourcing capacity
Architect credit guarantee programs, SME loan facilities, and DFI-backed lending windows where risk-sharing is the instrument.
DFIs · innovation agencies · commercial banks launching sector facilities
Business model validation, go-to-market strategy, and capital strategy for founders preparing to raise, scale, or enter new markets.
Early-stage founders · scaleup CEOs · accelerator cohorts
Design catalytic capital programs, accelerators, and public-private platforms that deploy real money at institutional scale.
Provincial and state innovation agencies · foundations · corporate impact programs
A specialist practice for funding agencies, DFIs, and institutions deploying AI at scale.
Most government innovation agencies and DFIs were designed to fund a pre-AI economy. Their evaluation logic, capital instruments, and deployment cycles are built for hardware-era SMEs, not for AI-native companies that iterate weekly, cross sectors, and need cost discipline as much as capital. This practice redesigns the program for the AI economy and, in parallel, builds the AI operating capability inside the institution itself.
Two engagements run from one practice. The first redesigns capital programs for the AI-era SME: portfolio diagnostic, pathway architecture, capital instrument redesign, evaluation overhaul. The second embeds AI inside the institution: literacy, training, workflow automation, and FinOps-aligned cost governance over the cloud and AI spend that programs and portfolio companies now run on.
Funding agencies, DFIs, sovereign innovation authorities, multilaterals, and the funds, banks, and corporates building AI into origination, portfolio operations, and customer workflows.
Portfolio diagnostic, pathway architecture, capital instrument redesign, and evaluation overhaul for AI-era SME programs inside government innovation agencies and DFIs.
Executive and team AI fluency grounded in how current systems actually work, where they create leverage, and where they fail. Role-specific programs for analysts, program officers, and leadership.
Process mapping, agentic system design, and measurable deployment into real operations, from origination to portfolio to back office.
FinOps discipline applied to AI workloads: cost allocation, anomaly detection, forecasting, and AI investment governance, so AI deployment scales without the spend running ahead of value.
Operational partnership as models, tooling, and governance evolve, so capability hardens into a durable institutional advantage.
From structuring cross-border M&A in Lagos to designing a $100M+ annual innovation-capital platform in Alberta. A single, deliberate arc of building the institutional infrastructure that capital moves through.
The work doesn't end at the deal desk. Founding institutions, chairing boards, and building the talent pipelines that future capital will move through.
Engaged as a retained advisor on AI capital program redesign, FinOps governance, and fund and facility design, or recruited into senior executive mandates where the capability sits inside the institution. Currently active across Canadian and African capital, innovation, and executive circles. Open to DFI and multilateral leadership, fund partnerships, senior C-suite mandates, and Pan-African innovation ecosystem roles where the mandate meets the scope of the capability.
Active across Canada, the USA, the UK, the Middle East, and Sub-Saharan Africa