New York · AI · Data · Leadership · Communication

Emmanuel
Olimi Kasigazi

I build AI & data systems that reach people the internet usually leaves behind — and I lead the teams, brands, and conversations that get them adopted. Fourteen years turning data and ideas into outcomes across fintech, branding & communications, health, media & print production, government, and education.

LLM / RAG / Agentic AI Data analytics Leadership & comms Founder
See the work ↗ Let's talk
Portrait of Emmanuel Olimi Kasigazi
✦
Data & People
Data Analytics, AI/LLM & Agentic AI Engineering, communications & strategy, Media & Design and leadership.
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01 — About

A data-savvy builder and leader who is just as comfortable shipping products as standing in front of a room to make the case for them.

I'm a M.S. Data Analytics & Visualization Graduate from Yeshiva University's Katz School, and the founder of AXAM — an offline-first AI learning platform built for places where the internet isn't a given. My work sits where machine learning, clean data, and human communication meet.

Across 14+ years I've co-founded a B2B tech firm, Wazi Group , serving 4,000+ clients across East Africa, migrated millions of government records, co-hosted a Massachusetts Institute of Technology OpenCourseWare Podcast reaching 6M+ people, and led a national Presidential campaign during a lockdown. I'm also a VC Lab-trained Venture Institute Fellow, so I can talk fundraising from the founder's side and the investor's. I care about work that travels the last mile — technically and socially.

Download CV ↓
Emmanuel Olimi Kasigazi in graduation regalia in Times Square, New York
Katz School of Science & Health ·Manhattan. New York
02 — Trajectory

Where I've been.

From a defense-ministry records migration in Kampala to AI products in New York — a through-line of data, systems, and people.

2024 — Present · New York

Founder — AXAM (Offline AI Educational Platform)

National Science Foundation I-Corps Fellow

Built and deployed a fully offline RAG AI chatbot from the ground up, designed to work on old computers, No GPU and No internet. Conducted 200+ stakeholder-discovery interviews across New York City schools as I-Corps Entrepreneurial Lead, and presented at the State University of New York (SUNY) AI Symposium and Won Outstanding Impact in Science & Technology at the Katz School Symposium.

Jul 2025 — Feb 2026 · New York

Data Analyst — Sy Syms School of Business

Yeshiva University

Managed alumni data from Marketing, the Career Center, and Academic Affairs to support social media, outreach, reporting, and strategic decision-making while ensuring data integrity and cross-departmental accessibility. Built automated ETL pipelines (Python, Pandas, SQL) consolidating 100s of Excel sources. Built an internal offline secure chatbot on top all consolidated data for general staff easy acess.

Jan 2025 — May 2026 · New York

Graduate Assistant, Brand Communications, Marketing & Strategy

Katz School of Science & Health, Yeshiva University

I worked with a 12-person Communications team to develop and design visual assets and promotional materials, including event flyers, screen graphics, digital signage, social media graphics, digital content, visual identity, and event materials. I also founded and launched the Voice of Katz amplifying student stories and enhancing brand visibility across the Yeshiva University community.I also built a media outreach database of tri-state journalists and developed Python pipelines to clean and transform ERP and social records into a RAG-ready dataset. Additionally, I optimized messaging across social media, newsletters, blogs, and websites to support student engagement and enrollment.

2025 · Remote

Venture Institute Fellow — Cohort 5

VC Lab Certified

Selected from 2,500+ applicants (~120 completed) for a 3-month program on how venture funds operate: deal sourcing, due diligence, fund modeling & economics, LP relations, and portfolio strategy — capped with the Mensarius Oath on ethics in finance.

Mar 2024 — Jul 2024 · Toronto

Founder in Residence

Antler Canada · Cohort TOR5

Advanced an AI career-guidance platform for low-wage workers to the Pre-Investment Committee stage inside a sub-10%-acceptance accelerator.

2011 — 2024 · East Africa & UAE

Founder & CEO — Wazi Group Ltd.

Uganda · 6 East African countries + UAE

Founded and scaled a technology & branding firm from zero to 4,000+ enterprise clients (including UNICEF, Mastercard, and Right To Play) across six East African Countries, delivering over 15,709+ contracts; led cross-functional teams of 20+, ran nationwide Presidential brand campaigns for Uganda's only female 2021 presidential candidate). I got into the role of Managing Director in 2016, leading the expansion into branding, print production, Micro finance, digital marketing, and procurement services resulting in over 80% revenue growth over the first 2 years of my leadership. Handed over operational leadership in 2024.

2022 — Present · Cambridge, MA

Co-Creator & Co-Host — Open Learners Podcast

Massachusetts Institute of Technology OpenCourseWare

Co-created and host a podcast that has reached 6M+ global learners, coordinating guests across six continents and owning end-to-end production — guest sourcing, interview design, scripting, recording, and post-production — with the MIT OpenCourseWare team.

Feb 2014 — Oct 2015 · Juba, South Sudan

I.T. Trainer / Computer Administrator

Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (contract)

Provided computer software and hardware training to 900+ learners across 20 organizations — professionals, government workers, students, and children — in post-independence South Sudan.

May 2012 — Feb 2013 · Kampala, Uganda

Intern — Information Systems & Networks

Ministry of Defense and Veterans Affairs

Worked on the migration of 100,000+ soldier medical records to a digital platform, implementing Oracle data-security protocols and validation systems; assisted in network administration and data-warehouse maintenance in a high-standard operational environment.

03 — Selected work

Things I've shipped.

A few projects that show the range — from validated AI products to large-scale data work. The full catalogue of 90+ projects lives on its own page.

Featured · Founder Emmanuel presenting the AXAM research poster: 'When there is no internet, AI-powered learning for the last mile'

AXAM — offline-first AI learning

RAG · ChromaDB · BGE-M3 · Gemma 3 · National Science Foundation I-Corps validated

As Founder and Lead AI Data Engineer at AXAM, I designed and shipped an end-to-end AI data pipeline built around approximately 550 million character tokens of educational content sourced from over 7,600 MIT lectures and educational resources, with a three-tier LLM engine that auto-selects the right model for the device. Built for classrooms with no reliable internet and low-compute devices.

Outstanding Impact in Science & Technology Award — Katz School Symposium, Yeshiva University 2026
Presenter, SUNY AI Symposium 2026 — Stony Brook University
Presenter, OEGlobal 2026 — MIT, Cambridge, MA
Selected, National Science Foundation I-Corps NYC Regional
axamai.org ↗ Press ↗ Dataset ↗
Product · Live Kalshi prediction-market trading agent dashboard — Mission Control showing PnL, win rate and Sharpe ratio

KalshiBots — algorithmic trading marketplace

Continual learning · UCB bandits · Shipped to production

A continual-learning Kalshi prediction-market agent (dual-loop architecture, UCB bandits, 13 strategy variants) that grew into KalshiBots, a live marketplace of 15 algorithmic trading systems — plus a hybrid neuro-symbolic solver for the ARC-AGI-2 Prize on Kaggle, pairing LLM reasoning with evolutionary search on genuinely out-of-distribution tasks.

KalshiBots ↗ ARC Prize ↗
Data · Engineering Emmanuel presenting data work to an audience

Data at city scale

Pandas · PostgreSQL · Geospatial · ETL

An end-to-end pipeline over 300M+ New York City 311 records mapping the city's noise landscape across all five boroughs — plus an alumni data-quality engine that consolidated 30+ spreadsheets into 5,556 verified records.

NYC noise ↗ Read / listen ↗
Product · Founder Laba Party app — Choose Your Country screen showing African editions

Laba Party — African party game (charades & taboo)

PWA · Offline-first · Game design · ~31K MAU

An African-themed charades & taboo party game celebrating local culture, language, and entertainment — thousands of culturally authenticated cards, multiple country editions, and offline play as a Progressive Web App. Built and shipped end to end.

~31K
Monthly users
11M+
Cards
54
Countries
3,000
Languages
labaparty.com ↗ Nigeria ↗ Ethiopia ↗ Kenya ↗ Ghana ↗ Egypt ↗
Explore all 90+ projects ↗
20+
Combined Years building and creating
6M+
Audience reach
300M+
Records processed in pipelines
4K+
Clients across 6 East African countries — governments, companies, individuals to NGOs
15,709+
Contracts, Shipped projects & works handled in all my combined fields of expertise,
04 — Leadership, building & community

Leading in the room.

Technical work is only half of it. The other half is people — leading teams, building businesses, and helping others see what's possible.

Emmanuel with the Katz African Students Association executive team
KASA executive leadership team
President · KASA

Katz African Students Association

Led an executive team of 7 serving 1,700+ STEM graduate students — organizing the Global Journeys leadership panel, a United Nations visit, a diaspora interface with Zimbabwean ministers, museum and conference trips, and 20+ workshops, panels, and professional-development programs across the year.

Instagram ↗ Event photos ↗ Katz clubs ↗
Namilyango College football team, proudly sponsored by Wazi Group Limited
Namilyango College football team, proudly sponsored by Wazi Group Limited
Co-founder · Wazi Group

14 years building Wazi Group

Co-founded and scaled a B2B tech, branding & supply-chain firm serving 4,000+ clients across six countries — from apps like SafeBoda and payment platforms like DusuPay, to a 3M+ record migration for Uganda's Registration Services Bureau, to the national brand campaign for Uganda's only female presidential candidate, during a nation wide covid lockdown

wazigrouplimited.com ↗ DusuPay ↗ URSB ↗ Campaign ↗
Emmanuel speaking at a podium
Speaking

On the stage & the mic

From the Massachusetts Institute of Technology OpenCourseWare podcast to symposium keynotes — translating complex AI and data work into stories audiences remember.

Emmanuel in a roundtable discussion
Stakeholders

In the boardroom

VC Lab-certified Venture Institute Fellow (Cohort 5, selected from 2,500+ applicants): deal sourcing, due diligence, fund modeling, LP relations, and portfolio strategy. National Science Foundation-trained in customer discovery. I've pitched as a founder and evaluated deals like an investor — fluent on both sides of the table.

Beyond Wazi Group — co-founded & led ventures
2018 · Founder
Big Bear Investment Club
Founded with my high-school classmates — an investment group that still thrives to this day.
2021 · Co-founder
Do Buy Dubai
A shipping business that seamlessly brings goods from Dubai to East Africa.
2019 · Co-founder & marketing
Festa Iqela
An annual festival celebrating Ugandan independence on the River Nile.
2019 · Partnership lead
Social Gamers Initiative
A Wazi Group × Makerere University School of Psychology partnership addressing adolescent mental health in schools.
2023 · Co-host
Open Learners Podcast
Co-hosting the Massachusetts Institute of Technology OpenCourseWare podcast, showcasing learners worldwide.
Listen ↗
05 — Recognition

In the news, seen, cited & awarded.

Featured by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, funded by the National Science Foundation, and recognized by my school and the wider innovation community.

Still from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology documentary 'The Courage to Be Open' featuring Emmanuel
Featured

MIT documentary & podcast

Co-host of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology OpenCourseWare podcast Chalk Radio Presents: Open Learners, and featured in the documentary "The Courage to Be Open" — a global story about open education.

Watch the documentary ↗
Emmanuel with fellow founders at a National Science Foundation SBIR/STTR workshop
National Science Foundation

National Science Foundation I-Corps Fellow

Entrepreneurial Lead for the National Science Foundation's New York I-Corps Hub. Ran 200+ stakeholder interviews with New York State education leaders and secured competitive federal funding for AXAM's customer discovery.

Read the story ↗
Emmanuel receiving the Outstanding Impact in Science & Tech recognition with Katz School deans Outstanding Impact in Science & Tech · Katz School
Award · 2025

Outstanding Impact in Science & Tech

Recognized at the Katz School symposium for the AXAM project — "AI-powered learning for the last mile."

Symposium write-up ↗
Award · 2016

Resilient Africa Network Innovation Grant

Winner for E-musawo, a telemedicine platform — one of 8 ventures selected from 200+ applicants for last-mile healthcare delivery. Also winner of the OutBox Hackathon (2014).

Grant report ↗
Press & media
Featured in

News articles, university press, and stories that have covered my work.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MIT News
A whole new world of learning via OpenCourseWare videos ↗
Yeshiva University · Katz
Student entrepreneurs expand access to quality education with offline AI ↗
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MIT OpenCourseWare
Emmanuel Kasigazi — an open learner's story ↗
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MIT Global
A whole new world of learning via OpenCourseWare videos ↗
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MIT Open Learning
Podcast highlights how anyone in the world can benefit from open education ↗
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MIT Open Learning
Ten inspiring learner stories from MIT Open Learning ↗
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MIT Open Matters
Looking back at the "Open Learners" podcast series ↗
Wikipedia
Emmanuel Olimi Kasigazi ↗
06 — Expertise

Many crafts,
one operator.

Most people are a builder or a communicator. The useful ones are both — they can model the data, design the brand, and then move the room. That overlap is where I work.

◆ AI / LLM / Agentic systems

Applied AI & LLMs

Production RAG pipelines, agentic AI systems, and edge/on-device inference — quantized models that run fully offline on zero-GPU hardware, built to run reliably, not just demo well. All of it shipped from Linux, my daily-driver OS for 16+ years.

RAGAgentic AIEdge AIQuantizationBGE-M3Gemma 3llama.cppMCPLinux · 16 yrs
◆ Data analytics & science

Data Analytics, Science & ML

It's literally my master's. Analytics, visualization, classification, regression, and explainable models with real-world stakes — from ICU survival to household financial risk — communicated for decision-makers.

PythonRTableauPower BIXGBoostSHAPStatistics
◆ Data engineering

Data Engineering

ETL, dimensional modeling, and data-quality pipelines that turn messy reality into trustworthy tables — 30+ files into a clean source of truth, 300M+ records at scale.

PostgreSQLPandasStar schemaSCD2MS FabricSQL
◆ Leadership & comms

Leadership & Story

Stakeholder discovery, executive communication, podcasting, and team leadership — leading teams of 7, 200+ National Science Foundation customer interviews, and audiences in the millions. Data that lands. VC Lab-certified through the Venture Institute — deal sourcing, due diligence, fund modeling, LP relations, and portfolio strategy — so I can hold my own on either side of the fundraising table.

StrategyPublic speakingPodcastGTMProductStakeholdersVC Lab certified
◆ Design, branding & print

Design, Branding & Print Production

A self-taught graphic designer — it was the very first thing that ever got me paid. That craft grew into Wazi Group's branding, print-production, and procurement arm, building brand identities for companies, NGOs, and a national presidential campaign across East Africa.

From logo inception and visual identity to large-format print, signage, and supply chain — I've shipped brand systems end to end for 4,000+ clients. Design isn't a side skill for me; it's where the storytelling and the systems thinking first met.

Brand identityLogo & visual systemsPrint productionAdobe SuiteInkscapeCanvaFigmaProcurement
07 — Services

Work with me.

Open to full-time roles — and to focused freelance and consulting engagements. Four things I'm regularly hired to deliver:

  1. 01

    Data analytics

    Messy, raw data turned into clear, decision-ready answers — cleaning, statistical analysis, and explainable models, delivered as recommendations a stakeholder can act on, not a pile of numbers.

    Analytics
  2. 02

    Business intelligence — Power BI & Tableau

    Dashboards and reporting that make your numbers make sense — in Power BI, Tableau, and Microsoft Fabric — accelerated with the latest AI for natural-language querying and automated insight.

    BI & dashboards
  3. 03

    A chatbot on your data — custom, on-prem, secure

    A custom AI assistant trained on your documents — on-premise or on-device, fully private so nothing leaves your infrastructure, RAG-built and tuned for the hardware you already have. The same architecture I proved in AXAM.

    Custom RAG
  4. 04

    Graphic design & branding

    20+ years shaping how brands look — identity and logo systems, UI/UX, and end-to-end print and large-format production — for clients from a national presidential campaign to global NGOs (USAID, UNHCR, War Child).

    Design
Emmanuel Olimi Kasigazi
Open to roles & collaboration

Let's build something
that reaches people.

I'm looking for roles where AI, data, and leadership meet — and I'm always happy to talk about the last mile. Based in New York, working everywhere.

Book a call
08 — FAQ

Quick answers.

The short version — for people and the AI assistants that increasingly do the first round of research.

Who is Emmanuel Olimi Kasigazi?

Emmanuel Olimi Kasigazi — also known as Emmanuel Kasigazi, Olimi Kasigazi, or olimiemma online — is a New York–based AI and data professional, founder of AXAM, and a National Science Foundation I-Corps Fellow. He holds a M.S. in Data Analytics & Visualization from Yeshiva University's Katz School and has 14+ years building production systems across fintech, health, and education.

What does he do?

He builds AI and data systems — RAG pipelines, agentic AI, machine-learning models, and data engineering — and leads the teams and communication that get them adopted. His work spans applied AI and LLMs, data analytics and science, data engineering, leadership and communication, and design and branding. He also takes on focused client engagements: data analytics, business intelligence in Power BI & Tableau, building custom, on-prem, secure RAG chatbots on your own data, and graphic design, branding & print production (20+ years).

What is AXAM?

AXAM is Emmanuel's offline-first, AI-powered learning platform for places without reliable internet. It encodes 7,617 MIT OpenCourseWare lectures into 121,000+ vectors with a three-tier LLM engine, and was validated through the National Science Foundation I-Corps program.

Is he available for hire?

Yes. He is open to roles in AI/ML, data science, data engineering, and product or leadership, plus collaborations. The fastest way to reach him is the "Email me directly" button below or by booking a call via Calendly. He is based in New York and works remotely.

What makes his background distinctive?

He pairs deep technical build skill with leadership and communication — co-hosting an MIT OpenCourseWare podcast that reached 6M+ people, leading teams, and running 200+ NSF customer interviews — plus a self-taught design and branding craft that served 4,000+ clients across six East African countries.