About
I spent over a decade in financial markets — running fixed income and money market trading desks at NIC Bank (now NCBA), UBA Kenya, and Equity Bank in Nairobi, Kenya — then founded and profitably exited a multi-venture company before moving to the US, where I worked in risk management at Mascoma Bank. That path shaped how I work: I understand compliance, regulators, and balance sheets from the inside, and I write the code with that context in mind.
Today I'm the founder of Bahari Advisory, a cloud and identity consulting practice serving community banks, credit unions, and regulated financial institutions in the Pacific Northwest. Our flagship product is DeskIQ, an AI-powered, compliance-aware member support platform built on AWS Bedrock with a security-first architecture — private VPC deployment, guardrails, and a full DevSecOps pipeline.
My work sits at the intersection of cloud engineering, identity & access management, and financial regulation. When I'm not shipping, I'm studying — working through an AWS and Okta certification roadmap, with a longer arc toward privacy law and AI governance.
Away from the keyboard you'll find me on twice-daily walks, in the gym, on the golf course with my older son, playing soccer with my younger son or deep in an article about technology in regulated institutions.
Experience
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2024 — Present
Founder & Principal Consultant · Bahari Advisory ↗
Building a cloud and identity practice for regulated financial institutions. Architect and develop DeskIQ, an AI member-support platform on AWS Bedrock with RAG, guardrails, and SQS-backed escalation. Design vendor-agnostic IAM solutions across Entra ID, Okta, and Authentik. Full DevSecOps ownership: pre-commit scanning, CI security gates, OIDC deployments, GuardDuty and Security Hub runtime monitoring.
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Prior · US
Risk Management · Mascoma Bank
Managed enterprise and operational risk for a US community bank — the same category of institution Bahari now serves. Built the regulatory fluency and examiner-facing perspective that informs every architecture decision I make today.
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Prior · Kenya
Founder · Long Term View Capital Limited
Founded and operated a multi-venture company spanning restaurant, automotive repair, and auto-gas station businesses. Built each from the ground up, then liquidated the portfolio at a $1.2M profit before relocating to the US — a full founding-to-exit cycle across three operating businesses.
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Prior · Kenya
Trading Desk — Fixed Income & Money Markets · Equity Bank, UBA Kenya, NIC Bank (now NCBA)
Over a decade across the trading desks of three of Kenya's banks, managing fixed income and money market portfolios. Deep, working familiarity with Central Bank of Kenya regulation — the foundation for Bahari's planned East Africa market entry.
Projects
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Flagship
DeskIQ ↗
Compliance-aware, AI-powered member support platform for community banks and credit unions. Retrieval-augmented answers via Bedrock Knowledge Bases, model-agnostic routing, private VPC deployment, and guaranteed-delivery escalation through SQS FIFO — built so client data never leaves their control.
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In Development
KYC Desk
Compliance onboarding automation for regulated institutions — streamlining know-your-customer workflows without cutting regulatory corners.
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In Development
FinScan
Document extraction and expense tracking with OAuth account linking, event-driven reminders, and overdraft prediction.
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Open Source
PowerShell IAM Portfolio ↗
A suite of identity lifecycle automation scripts: onboarding, offboarding, stale account detection, access certification exports, privileged account audits, and Okta–Active Directory reconciliation.
Credentials
- 2026AWS Certified Cloud PractitionerCertified
- 2026AWS Cloud Institute — Cloud Application DeveloperGraduate
- 2026Okta Certified ProfessionalIn Progress
- 2026AWS Solutions Architect AssociateUp Next
- —MBA, University of OxfordDegree
- —MSc Business Analytics, Merrimack CollegeGPA 3.90
- —CFA Level IComplete