Profile
A Kenyan AI, data & analytics leader working where applied AI systems, talent development, and AI governance meet — convinced that Africa's AI future depends as much on the people and institutions we build as the software we ship.
Loorem has spent 7+ years building analytics functions and modern data infrastructure across fintech, agritech, education, government, and global nonprofits — from Nairobi to London to the Wikimedia movement.
Trained as a software engineer (Kenyatta University) and information technologist (MSc, Carnegie Mellon University Africa), he works as an applied AI & analytics operator: framing ambiguous business problems, setting success measures, designing data and agent systems, and staying with the work through production and post-launch measurement.
He approaches every problem the same way: define the problem, define the outcome, identify the stakeholders, assess the data, iterate toward impact. Technology is never the end goal — measured business impact and lasting capability are.
Three pillars
Applied AI & analytics systems
Production AI agents and workflows, practical evaluation standards, analytics engineering, data infrastructure, and decision-support systems that solve real problems in financial inclusion and other high-impact sectors.
Talent development
Practical pathways into data and AI careers — through VelocityStack's enterprise training, and panels, talks, and mentorship at Phoenix KE Analytics, including mentoring young African women into a field that still skews male.
AI governance
Shaping how AI is governed and deployed across Africa — AI Talent & Skills Working Group member at the Africa AI Council Secretariat; trained in AI safety and governance (BlueDot curriculum, Securiti).
Selected work
Applied AI & Analytics Lead
Numida (YC W22) · Nairobi — fintech for African micro & small businesses
At Numida, Loorem's work sits inside a larger shift: from assessing a business at a single moment to becoming a partner that understands what an entrepreneur needs over time.
Nina made that idea tangible. Built for Numi Queens, the AI agent provides financial-literacy and relationship support to underserved women entrepreneurs — a customer experience designed to say, in effect, “Numida knows me.” The work helped secure a $150,000 Gates Foundation-backed GAIL grant.
Behind that experience is Golden ID, the identity layer within Golden Thread: connecting customer signals into one dependable view so products and AI can respond to the whole relationship, not isolated transactions. Loorem also owns the framework used to decide whether AI is reliable and useful enough to ship — evidence over enthusiasm. CRO Copilot follows that discipline, moving from a hackathon prototype toward a production assistant for field and collections teams.
The quieter work follows the same philosophy. Automation reduced manual intervention by roughly 40%. Self-service analytics and training helped teams across Kenya and Uganda answer more of their own questions. The aim is not to become the person every request depends on; it is to build systems and capability that keep working without him.
Product Data Analyst
The Stepstone Group · London (remote)
Drove product analysis for an AI interviewer (+35% user acceptance, +15% candidate offers), automated anomaly detection with Microsoft Fabric, and built self-serve data marts that cut ticket waiting time by 30%.
Data Analytics & AI Consultant
GradeFlow · USA (remote)
End-to-end ELT architecture in two weeks (Airbyte, dbt, PostgreSQL); LLM-powered grading and feedback; an Engagement & Trust Scoring Engine for student behaviour.
Global Data & Insights Fellow
The Wikimedia Foundation
Equity Landscape analysis, community-safety reporting pipelines, and analytics supporting content growth for underserved African languages.
Analytics Engineer
Apollo Agriculture · Nairobi / Amsterdam
ELT with Stitch/dbt/Postgres, a data-science-driven agent recruitment system (+35% agent productivity), and dashboard redesigns that lifted adoption 25%.
Earlier chapters
MediaPal · The ICT Authority · Carnegie Mellon
Built MediaPal's first data product; kept 700GB+ of government databases at 99% uptime; CMU projects spanning ML for energy-access data (Power for All), Rwanda's post-pandemic school siting (22,000+ classrooms), and accessible digital textbooks for children with intellectual disabilities.
Ventures & public-interest work
VelocityStack
Co-founder · Nairobi — KigaliAI discovery and delivery for businesses worldwide: a 10-minute assessment that maps practical AI opportunities, exact tools, costs, and time savings; production pilots; a 10-day team intensive; and fractional AI leadership. An Anthropic partner — among the first in Africa. From AI curiosity to a measurable, production-ready system.
Phoenix KE Analytics
Member, contributor & mentorPanels, talks, and mentorship across data analytics, data science, data engineering, and AI — with a standing commitment to mentoring young African women into the profession.
Africa Farmed Animals Directory
CreatorA continent-wide platform mapping organizations working on farmed-animal welfare across Africa — improving ecosystem visibility, coordination, and funding discovery. Built with React, Supabase, and AI-assisted development.
Africa AI Council Secretariat
Working group memberAI Talent & Skills Working Group — helping ensure Africa is an active participant in shaping how AI is developed, governed, and deployed, not merely a consumer of it.
Speaking & teaching
Knowledge sharingGSMA Roundtable, Accion Voice on technology for women's financial inclusion, and a steady run of AI and analytics talks and trainings — the kind that turn non-technical teams into self-serve analysts.
What he stands for
Evidence over instinct. Impact over optics. Capability over charity. And AI as a tide that raises all the boats.
Loorem is a Stoic first — the Daily Stoic in his ears on a morning run, a heavily annotated copy of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations on the shelf. He borrows from the effective-altruism toolkit where it serves — evidence, prioritization, doing the most good per shilling — while keeping his own counsel on the rest. The common thread: take ideas seriously, measure what matters, and act where it counts most.
Beneath it all sits faith and a deliberate practice of hope. Every year he builds a vision board — financial freedom, service, summits, music, the people he loves — and writes letters to himself from Future Loorem, vision board attached.
AI safety & governance
Making sure the Global South — and Kenya in particular — has a voice in how transformative AI is governed.
Animal welfare
Animal Advocacy Africa trainee (1 of 19 selected from 406 applicants); policy work on farmed-animal welfare standards.
Education & women's empowerment
Putting his work where the cause is: building “Nina,” an AI financial-literacy and relationship-management agent for underserved women entrepreneurs — the Numi Queens initiative secured a $150K Gates Foundation-backed GAIL grant — mentoring young African women into data careers, speaking on technology for women's financial inclusion, and analytics that put 22,000+ classrooms where Rwanda's children needed them.
Climate & energy
ML for energy-access data; a long-standing soft spot for wind turbines and renewable futures.
The SDGs he works toward
The inner work
Before the dashboards wake up, there is a ritual: a prayer, a run at first light, stillness on Insight Timer, and a page in the notebook.
The morning, in order of operations
What my ideal life looks like:
I am a friend to myself and have the freedom to pursue the things I love. I want to be a source of light in the world — to always leave people better & happier than I found them.
From the notebook — vision pagesNorth Star values
1. Relationships — nurture high-quality relationships with those I care about.
2. Excellence — do fewer things better. Put in the work consistently.
What can I do now to move toward what I say matters?
Cultivate focus. Cultivate discipline. Cultivate integrity — do what's right even when no one is looking.
From the notebook — meaning & purpose2026 — Witnesses of Hope
A life of faith despite hardship. Neither linger nostalgically in the past, nor rush anxiously into the future — but entrust what lies ahead to God.
From the notebook — annual vision setting“Hope does not disappoint.” Romans 5:5 — the vision board, every year
Beyond the work
“Perpetually longing to be humbled in the face of a greater opponent.” Sometimes that opponent is a frontier model. Usually it's a mountain, or kilometre 61.
The ultra log — Dusk 2 Dawn, 12 hours, overnight
“The body should be treated rigorously, that it may not be disobedient to the mind.” — Seneca · the late-kilometre mantra
Ultramarathoner
We Run Nairobi. City marathons, 12-hour overnight ultras, Kilimanjaro Marathon on the calendar. Pacing by spreadsheet, fuelled on schedule. Strava
Mountain summits
Mount Kenya, summited. The Aberdares and Mount Elgon, repeatedly. Next opponent: Kilimanjaro. The greatest opponent: Everest, soon — it doesn't know yet.
F1 Sundays
Lights out and away he goes — a loyal Red Bull Racing fan, Max Verstappen above all. Also: football, rugby, boxing, athletics.
Plant dad
Self-described, with the taxonomy to back it — he'll identify a species across the room. At home: Eve, Lazarus, and company. Candie and Charlotte, RIP. The balcony reached capacity long ago; acquisitions continue.
Maker of quiet things
Cooking from whole, farm-sourced ingredients. Writing. Colouring. Jigsaw puzzles. Guitar, aspiring. East African road trips — Nairobi to Nakuru to Kampala to Arusha.
Dance floors
A Westlands night out, properly done. Dance music in its deeper, esoteric forms — raves, underground sets, the occasional sunrise finish. Technically also endurance training.
The pursuit, as happiness
Avid reader, print and digital. The shelf right now: Empire of AI, AI Snake Oil, Unmasking AI, The Worlds I See, Britain's Gulag, some Murakami. Knowledge isn't the route to the reward; it is the reward.
83 podcasts, one diet
Stoicism and mastery (Daily Stoic, Finding Mastery, Huberman Lab), AI kept honest (Tech Won't Save Us, Accountable AI), systems and product (Decoder, Lenny's, The Knowledge Project), curiosity for its own sake (Radiolab, No Such Thing As A Fish) — and one Marathon Running Podcast for the long Sundays.
Letters from Future Loorem
Every morning, the first email in his inbox is from a sender called Future Loorem. Vision board attached. “Hey bro — you are well. Whatever the situation right now, you got it. Keep your head held up high and remember your vision.” He writes them himself.
“I mourned all the years I had spent sitting still.” From the notebook margins, in red ink
08 — Say hello