Timeline
The thread, not the highlights
This page is the context I believe has formed my perspective to date.
I believe most conflict, from small family arguments to larger social breakdowns, begins somewhere in failed understanding. Sometimes it is unwillingness. Sometimes it is poor communication. Sometimes it is a failure to see the system the other person is operating inside.
That belief sits underneath my interest in design, business, behavioural economics, and systems. Words matter, but words alone are inefficient carriers of intent. The details around them often decide what is actually felt.
2002
Born in the UK
Born in the UK. The first part of the story begins here, before the move that would shape most of my early understanding of culture, belonging, and communication.
December 2003
Moved back to Nigeria
My family moved back to Nigeria when I was still very young. I would spend the next fourteen years there. That period shaped my first understanding of people, language, status, adaptation, and the hidden rules that sit underneath everyday communication. It also showed me how heavily a society sets the ceiling on what feels possible. The range of lives you can imagine for yourself is largely defined by the ones you can see around you, and I did not have the words for it then, but I was absorbing a world model with real limits built into it.
December 2017
Returned to the UK
Coming back to the UK was not completely unfamiliar, but it still required assimilation. English was not the issue. The real adjustment was learning the cultural innuendos, social rhythms, humour, references, and invisible rules that make communication feel natural. I also arrived with a world model far more limited than I understood at the time. Recognising those limits, and deliberately widening them, became as much a part of the work of the following years as any accent or reference.
2018–2020
Learning how people receive you
That period made me pay closer attention to the difference between what someone means and how they are received. I started to see that communication is never just words. It is timing, tone, body language, context, history, assumptions, and what the other person is already prepared to believe.
2020
University and engineering
I studied engineering because I respected what humanity can build when it takes detail seriously. But over time, I started to feel that the degree itself was not giving me the wider lens I was looking for. I was interested in structures, but also in people, meaning, behaviour, and why systems work or fail.
2020–2022
Losing a friend, and the script
In 2020, during the difficulty of the lockdowns, a friend on my course took his own life. That, among other things, completely derailed me. Or so I thought at the time. Now I can see it set me on this path: honestly investigating where meaning truly existed for me, and ignoring the social pressure to already have the answers. Those two years became about discovering who I am and where I felt most drawn to contribute to humanity. None of it was easy. But I have always felt absolute disdain for living a life that did not fully feel mine.
2021–2023
The learning period
I started trying to understand what businesses actually value. Not in theory, but in practice. How they make money, how they lose trust, how they communicate, why customers hesitate, why perception matters, and why a good product is not always enough.
2022
First contact with a startup
My first experience with a startup came through an online forum of curious people like myself, where I met the founders of a company out in America. That experience was one of the catalysts for looking into how companies come into existence: what separates the successful ones from the not-so-successful, and why attention and customers flow to some and not others. I realised a lot of businesses are not fully conscious of the elements that influence their success. So I began to investigate even deeper, into the design, financial, and operational sides. I contemplated an MBA, and still do, but I do not believe learning is isolated to specific environments. A great amount of the information you need is out there if you are willing to look for it. That is exactly what I did.
2024–2025
Deals, projects, and reality
Trying to work on deals and business projects taught me that interest is not commitment, ideas are not execution, and commercial trust is built in details. Failed momentum still leaves data behind if you are willing to study it.
2025
A pre-seed round, and perceived value
I worked with another startup, a spinoff of a UK-based broadband company, helping with the design and communications for their pre-seed round. That experience was my foot in the door for a realisation that now shapes the work: value and perceived value are two completely different things. Bridging the gap between them is the search I am on.
2026
Alma Labs as the operating vehicle
Alma Labs became the vehicle for turning this perspective into work: helping businesses create clearer systems, stronger customer touchpoints, better perceived value, and more coherent stories.
Now
Coherence as the work
I tell stories for businesses that create meaningful connections with their intended audience, using systems. Essentially, matching value to how it is perceived — especially as it relates to staying relevant in today’s techsocial world.