AI product leader · Wharton MBA

Lapo Odunjo

I take AI from pilot to daily use inside banks, hospitals, and lenders, where trust is the hard part.

I lead AI product work at Kinage. At KOVA, I'm Head of Product & Technology, building financial infrastructure that connects collections, payments, savings, and access to credit across organisations and communities.

From Lagos to Bradford to New York. Still asking how things actually work.

See the work →Get in touch

22% → 50% precision · top-10 U.S. bank · ~$600K estimated annual savings · Kinage
$500M+ enterprise data platform · 13-person team · 15 business units · TD Bank
5K+ KOVA testers · first two months

Experience & education

Kinage
Amazon
TD Bank
Capital One
Wharton MBA
Columbia M.S.

Selected work

From product calls to working systems.

All 11 case studies · 13 builds →

Head of Product & Technology2025Pilot

Kova

Financial operations and credit infrastructure. Connects collections, payments, savings, and financing across web, WhatsApp, and partner integrations.

Built Kova from a WhatsApp finance tool into an integrated financial operations platform spanning onboarding, collections, reconciliation, household accounts, AI assistance, savings, and financing workflows. A shared business engine connects the dashboard, conversations, payment integrations, and financial history.

AI Product2026Production

GTM Intelligence Platform

Signal-to-outreach system for Kinage: a Python pipeline ranks market signals, a Next.js layer turns them into enriched, ICP-classified contacts in HubSpot.

Replaced the analysts' daily manual news trawl with a ranked feed refreshed every two weeks, wired through to outreach-ready HubSpot contacts. ~$215K annual GTM stack cost reduction for Kinage.

Forward Deployed2026Built

Deployment Agent

A first-pass deployment agent that turns a customer's messy transcripts, Slack threads, and policy memos into a spend-platform configuration, plus an audit log that says exactly what a rep can trust.

All five customer scenarios completed, including both stretch cases. Every config validates with zero errors, 105 eval assertions pass, and cold rebuilds from raw sources reproduced the original structure.

Right now

What I'm building.

Kinage

Forward Deployed PM · AI Strategy

Forward-deployed production AI for regulated healthcare and fintech clients. Embedded with operators, shipping agentic workflows, and turning analyst overrides into production quality gates.

Kinage work →

KOVA

Head of Product & Technology

Financial operations and credit infrastructure: collections, reconciliation, savings, and financing workflows connected across web, WhatsApp, and partner integrations.

Case study →

Leadership

Leading beyond the product.

Full experience →

President2024 – 2026

Wharton Graduate Association

$6M annual budget · 1,700+ MBA students

Governance Strategy Lead2025

Goldman Sachs Community Builder Fellow

Board governance framework for Philadelphia nonprofit College Together

Wharton MBA · 50% merit2024 – 2026

Trailblazer Fellowship

Merit scholarship, The Wharton School

VP, Conferences2024 – 2026

Wharton Tech Club

Programming for Wharton's largest student-run tech community

The person

Besides the work.

Committed Man United fan in difficult times. Lagos to Bradford to New York, with a few cities in between. 36 countries, strong opinions about airport lounges, and still the guy who reads manga past bedtime.

A little more about me →

Lapo holding Wharton nameplates for Onaolapo and Michael Odunjo — Two nameplates, one person

Lapo laughing on a rooftop in a suit with Wharton WGA Executive Board stole — WGA board · Class of 2026

Lapo on a tennis court checking his watch between points, racket in hand — Between sets · court time

The longer version: football, books, and life lately

I'm a committed Man United fan in difficult times and a France supporter who thinks Mbappé, Dembélé, and Olise together is the most exciting forward line in football, with a soft spot for Cherki. I've lived in Lagos, Bradford, New York, Atlanta, and Philadelphia, and I'm still not sure which one actually counts as home. I've been to 36 countries and have strong, unsolicited opinions about airport lounges. I'm already planning a Brazil trip for Carnival 2027, which is either excellent foresight or a sign I have too many group chats, alongside a family trip to Mauritius that's somehow easier to plan than either.

Chemical engineer who became a PM because I kept asking why the system failed after the math was right
Leading product and technology at KOVA because I'd seen how credit actually works in Lagos, not how banks pretend it works
Still the kid who reads systems before reading the room
Will show up to a basketball game in an Ichigo Kurosaki shirt and mean it
Believes the best product feedback sounds like your friends laughing at you in a library lounge

Lapo laughing with a friend on a sunny city street — Sunny block · couldn't stop laughing

Lapo huddled with close friends, laughing — The people who keep you honest

Lapo and a friend smiling in a brick wall selfie — Brick wall · wrong angle, right vibe

Lapo with a partner on a sunny afternoon in front of a brick building — Summer afternoon · no agenda

Lapo at a party wearing a captain's hat with drinks — Captain's hat · boat drinks

Lapo walking barefoot by a pool in tropical greenery — Off the grid for a minute

Reading lately

Berlin · Bea Setton

A novel about arriving somewhere unfamiliar and figuring out who you are in rooms that don't quite fit yet. I keep returning to books about that feeling.

Team of Teams · Stanley McChrystal

The most useful management book I've read for thinking about AI systems that need human judgment in the loop.

On rotation

Man United matchdays

Committed fan in difficult times. Still watching every week.

Bleach · manga past bedtime

Still the guy who reads past lights-out, Ichigo shirt optional.

Full reading list on Goodreads ↗

Lagos1990s–2014

Reading systems before I had words for it.

Bradford2015–2020

First time being the only one in the room who looked like me.

Philadelphia2024–2026

Shipped Kinage in production while writing papers. Did not sleep enough.

New York2026–present

Back. Building now.

“The bottleneck is trust, not accuracy. Designing for adoption under scrutiny is harder than improving benchmark numbers, and it is the one that actually matters.”
How I think about regulated AI

How I build