Kwesi Selassie

Investor-operator with experience across financial infrastructure, AI, and enterprise software. Solves ambiguous, cross-functional problems spanning trading-adjacent infrastructure, technology, finance, and operations. Experienced in the operational and risk mechanics of financial infrastructure—payments, liquidity, settlement, reconciliation, counterparty risk, and regulatory controls—with a track record of translating ambiguous business problems into data-driven product and operating decisions.

Invests personal capital in private companies and holds public positions across AI infrastructure, semiconductors, and data center power and cooling. Currently building a client intelligence MVP to reduce operational work in capital matching and counterparty management. Evaluated 200+ companies; structured $68M in partnership pipeline; built an LLM-powered platform from zero to 20 enterprise clients and $10K MRR.

AWS Certified Solutions Architect with technical fluency across the AI stack.

Founder & Principal - Selomadio Advisory - New York, NY

(2025-08)

Run a two-sided investment and advisory practice serving both companies seeking capital and allocators seeking opportunities across public and private markets.

• Private side: Source and evaluate companies across AI infrastructure, data centers, semiconductors, Physical AI & Robotics, Deeptech, Enterprise AI, and fintech; route opportunities to capital partners based on stage, sector, check size, and capital structure fit.
• Public side: Cover equities, ETFs, and thematic baskets across AI infrastructure, semiconductors, memory, and data center power and cooling, including CoreWeave, Micron, and Vertiv, alongside peers and supply chain adjacents.
• Invest personal capital in select private deals across AI infrastructure, semiconductors, and fintech; hold public positions in AI infrastructure, memory, and data center power and cooling.
• Lead diligence on Fintech, Enterprise, AI-native, and DeepTech opportunities—assessing moat, competitive landscape, ecosystem value-add, technical architecture, market sizing, and unit economics—and author investment memos for investors and allocators ahead of submission.
• Connect companies to the right financing source across equity, venture debt, private credit, and growth capital; identify and match allocators, engage co-investors, and provide post-funding support.

Client Intelligence MVP (In Development) - Selomadio Advisory

• Building an LLM-powered MVP that unifies relationship data, deal logs, and diligence memos with external funding and public market data; applies retrieval, embeddings, and agentic workflows to surface ranked allocator matches, generate draft investment memos for analyst review, and track relationship history—reducing manual operational drag in counterparty tracking and deal routing.

Founder-Operator Engagement: LLM-Powered Payments Orchestration Platform

• Entered enterprise treasury and payments orchestration without prior domain ownership; conducted 30+ practitioner interviews, mapped authorization and settlement failure modes, and translated findings into a production MVP adopted by 20 enterprise clients.
• Built an LLM-powered payments orchestration platform from concept to $10K MRR; engineered agentic workflows that replaced rigid rules-based logic and reduced authorization failures by 25%.
• Led seed fundraising with 50+ investors; pivoted from B2C to B2B after CAC/LTV analysis showed 3x higher enterprise lifetime value.

Representative Engagements

• Semiconductors & Photonics (Early Stage): Diligenced an early-stage photonics foundry opportunity and identified the right allocator to deploy capital into the deal; evaluated technical architecture, fabrication scalability, capital intensity, and customer demand across AI compute and optical interconnect applications.
• Data Centers: Worked with developers and intermediaries to understand their capital asks and position them effectively in front of investors; identified and matched allocators to deploy capital into data center development deals.
• Energy — Brazil (Cross-Border Private Credit): Used lender relationships to identify the right private credit counterparties to close energy deals in Brazil, matching each deal to the appropriate financing source.

Vice President, Strategic Technology Partnerships - TD Securities - New York, NY

(2024-08 - 2025-07)

• Built a decision model evaluating external data and AI infrastructure vendors across data lineage, update cadence, coverage, maintenance burden, integration risk, and total cost of ownership; recommendation informed the firm's build-buy-partner strategy across 200+ workflows.
• Sourced and evaluated 200+ fintech, AI, SaaS, and infrastructure companies; led technical diligence on LLM applications, agentic automation, and AI infrastructure.
• Structured and negotiated 15+ strategic partnerships generating a $68M pipeline; built joint business plans with partners and internal stakeholders to align growth priorities, milestones, and ownership.
• Advised founders on financing paths across VC, growth capital, venture debt, and private credit, supporting up to $40M in financing pathways.
• Led cross-functional teams across Legal, Risk, Procurement, Sales, and Product to move initiatives from evaluation to execution.
• Surfaced 7 hidden dependencies and 3 data gaps, reducing evaluation time by 30% and preventing $2M in rework.
• Maintained long-cycle relationships with founders, executives, and capital allocators to stay ahead of market movements and future growth-stage opportunities.

SVP, Product Risk and Governance - Citi Private Bank - New York, NY

(2021-06 - 2024-05)

• Led post-merger integration carving out Retail Bank and Private Wealth Bank; mapped regulatory controls and capital event workflows including NAV reconciliation, drawdown tracking, and waterfall distributions.
• Managed Day 1 readiness across Retail, Private Wealth, and TTS; identified interdependencies and mitigation plans ensuring business continuity for 50+ operational workflows.
• Designed build-buy-partner frameworks enabling leadership to prioritize initiatives by strategic impact; built decision frameworks for investment diligence, capital prioritization, and operating risk assessment.
• Streamlined client onboarding, reducing execution time by 20% and accelerating time-to-revenue for new clients.
• Prepared executive and risk committee materials translating complex issues into decision-ready recommendations.

Vice President, Global Product Manager - Citi - New York, NY

(2019-08 - 2021-06)

• Owned global P&L for a payments, liquidity, trade, and connectivity portfolio across 3 business lines; analyzed revenue, cost-to-serve, and workflow utilization to prioritize product investments and drive $50M in identified operational savings.
• Developed a strong operating view of enterprise financial infrastructure, product economics, and workflow automation.
• Planned and communicated release schedules across 3 engineering squads; delivered 8 major releases on time with zero critical defects.
• Led global steering committee and product governance forums, summarizing outcomes and next steps for 20+ stakeholders.

Senior Associate, Product Solutions and Infrastructure Governance - Morgan Stanley - New York, NY

(2017-09 - 2019-05)

• Led vendor evaluations, proof-of-concepts, and integrations across endpoint, SaaS, and cloud-native environments.
• Created a vendor governance framework improving vendor ROI by 15% while reducing operational risk exposure by 20%.
• Designed and launched a centralized demand platform capturing cross-business requirements, delivering in 3 months.
• Built an intake framework from scratch across 5 business units, gaining cross-functional alignment within 6 weeks.

Technical Project Manager - American Express

(2016-07 - 2017-04)

Investor Relations Associate - Africa Empowerment Fund

(2017-04 - 2017-10)

Financial Advisor - Primerica Financial Services

(2014-06 - 2016-07)

Co-Lead - Citi Private Bank Black Heritage Diversity Group

• Co-led diversity and inclusion initiatives across the Private Bank, coordinating programming and engagement across business lines.

Founder - Sankofa Program

• Built a career development network connecting 500+ college students of color with professionals across the U.S. and Canada; maintain the network today for introductions and talent sourcing.

Master of Science - Global Business - New York University (2019)

Bachelor of Arts - French, Economics & Political Science - University of Ghana