Lagos, Nigeria · Head of People & Culture, Mainhedge Inc.
An operator who understands people, process, and product.
Head of People & Culture at Mainhedge Inc., across both operating companies — Bitnob, built on crypto and stablecoin rails, and Brails, a fiat payments infrastructure business. When we needed a people platform, I built one rather than waiting in an engineering queue. The rest of the job is whatever operational gap needs closing: controls and audit evidence, cap table and option administration, programs and delivery.
Where I do this work — Mainhedge Inc.
These are the group's numbers, not mine — the business belongs to the founding team. My job is the people function and the operational work that collects around it: hiring and onboarding, performance systems, policy, equity administration, and the evidence trail that keeps two regulated entities auditable while they move at speed.
How I got here
2018 — now
I trained as a physicist. First class, top one percent of my year, five years of thinking about systems and what happens when you measure them properly. Then I went into operations, which sounds like a swerve and isn't. Both jobs are the same job: find the real mechanism underneath the noise, and stop guessing.
The work has taken an unusual shape. I started as an executive assistant in oil and gas procurement, sitting next to a Managing Director and watching how decisions actually got made, then moved into project delivery where a missed schedule has a dollar figure attached. Agile delivery for a software firm after that. Then fintech, building a people function from nothing — and, because early-stage companies don't respect org charts, also running investor reporting, cap table administration, stock option management, and the control evidence that two security audits ran on.
What connects them is the layer underneath the product. Somebody has to own the question of whether this company can actually do the thing it says it will do — whether the hires, the programs, the equity, and the operating rhythm are in a state that makes the plan survivable. That's the job I'm good at.
Lately that has meant building as well as running. When we needed a people platform, I built one — nineteen modules, AI-assisted, live in Slack — rather than waiting in an engineering queue or paying for software that didn't fit. The physics degree and the AI tools turn out to point in the same direction: stop guessing, build the instrument, read what it tells you.
When people find meaning in their work, excellence follows naturally.
What I do
People and culture is the core of the role. Everything below it is operational work I picked up because it needed owning and nobody else was going to.
Build the function from zero
Org design, workforce planning, hiring, policy, and the performance systems underneath them — KPI and OKR frameworks teams actually use, plus the review cadence and reward logic that keep them honest. The infrastructure that decides whether a company hires its 50th person as well as it hired its fifth.
Ship the tool instead of requesting it
I built our internal people platform myself with AI-assisted development — directory, org chart, onboarding and offboarding, leave, performance, payroll, recruiting, devices and metrics, wired into Slack with MFA. No engineering time spent. When the thing I need doesn't exist, I'd rather build it than write a business case for it.
Make the company auditable
Policy, onboarding and offboarding controls, training records, and the people-side evidence that security and compliance audits run on. I've supplied that evidence through ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II certification — the work nobody wants to own until an auditor asks for it.
Keep the cap table honest
Investor relations and reporting, cap table administration, and stock option management on Carta, including the cleanup a 409A valuation demands. The back-office work founders discover they need at exactly the moment they have no time for it.
Own the operating layer
Program and project delivery from kickoff to closure, vendor and contract management, and the cross-functional execution that turns a strategy deck into something a team can run on Monday. PMP-certified, and trained as a Scrum Master before I ever held the title.
Experience
Present
Head, People & Culture / Mainhedge Inc.
Group-wide across both operating companies — Bitnob and Brails. Joined a fintech that was about to grow very fast, with no operating function of any kind. Built it, and kept widening the remit as the gaps appeared. Around 200 people have passed through onboarding on my watch; roughly 70 are here today.
- Designed and built the company's internal people platform from scratch using AI-assisted development — 19 modules spanning directory, org chart, onboarding, leave, performance, payroll and metrics — integrated with Slack and secured with MFA.
- Day-to-day operating partner to the CEO through the scaling years, and partner to the executive team on org design, workforce planning, and operating cadence.
- Built the people function from the ground up — hiring, onboarding, policy, performance. Took roughly 200 people through end-to-end onboarding across four years, held turnover at 15%, moved eNPS from +27 to +83, and lifted engagement from 83.5% to 92.9%.
- Rebuilt the Carta record ahead of a 409A valuation, closed out investor documentation, and supplied the people-side control evidence for ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II certification.
- Stood up the statutory backbone — tax registration, PAYE and pension remittance, compliance filings — and the graduate trainee and internship pipelines behind the team's growth.
Jan 2021
People Manager / Scrum Master / Vcorp Systems
Six months inside a software delivery org, running sprints and owning whether things shipped.
- Drove project delivery from kickoff to closure, coordinating schedules, reporting, risk, and cross-team execution.
- Ran agile ceremonies and coached teams on Scrum practice to improve sprint discipline and clear blockers.
- Supported product owners and engineering teams in shipping higher-quality increments through better prioritisation.
Jul 2020
Executive Assistant → People Ops / The Nucleous3 Limited
Where it started. Executive assistant in oil and gas procurement, working directly to the Managing Director, then running people operations and project delivery. Operations here has a dollar figure attached and a late delivery is a line item.
- Led team operations supporting procurement and delivery of construction materials, oil engineering equipment, and manufacturing spare parts.
- Managed vendors, project activity, and delivery execution to keep client commitments on time and within quality expectations.
- Contributed to commercial growth through an HVAC contract valued at $1.9M and a structural materials joint venture valued at $2.0M.
Beyond the day job
Gradshift Circle
A community connecting undergraduates and early-career professionals to mentorship, opportunities, and career clarity — the guidance most people only get by accident. Live at gradshiftcircle.org.
Building Men Thoroughly
A leadership movement helping men work through identity, purpose, and conviction.
Credentials
Get in touch.
Hiring, performance, controls, equity administration, or the internal tooling underneath all of it — if any of that is the thing on your desk, grab a slot in my calendar.