The long version.

I arrived in the UK as a refugee and learned early that the story other people tell about you will fill any silence you leave. More than a decade building businesses. CEO of SMADE Group. Humanitarian work recognised by the UN.

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The real problem

Authority in culture should be earned, not bought.

The cultural strategy world is full of advisors who have never operated at scale.

You want to trust the person, not just the credentials.

Authority in culture should be earned in public, not bought.

Timeline

How I got here.

Asylum seeker, teenage trader, medical student, crisis organiser, chief executive. It reads like a detour until you notice every step was about the same thing: who gets believed, and why.

Childhood

Arrived in the UK as an asylum seeker

I came to Britain as a child seeking asylum. You learn very early that whatever story you do not tell about yourself, somebody else will tell for you, and theirs will be believed first.

2013

First business, at sixteen

I started trading while still at school, learning pricing, supply, customer service and cash flow the hard way. Nothing about it was theoretical.

2015

Six-figure sales

The business crossed six figures in sales before I finished my education. It taught me that distribution and narrative move product, not talent alone.

2020

Medical school

I went abroad to study medicine, expecting a clinical career. That decision put me in Ukraine, and eventually at the centre of an international crisis rather than a hospital ward.

2022

The Ukraine evacuation

When the war started I coordinated evacuation, safe passage and advocacy for thousands of international students, working with governments, embassies, airlines and global press under live deadline pressure. More than 2,000 students got out, over £300,000 was raised and disbursed, and 1,167 people were housed.

2023

Crisis instinct became a craft

I turned what I had learned under pressure into a discipline: cultural brand strategy for founders, brands and institutions who needed to be believed, not just seen. Clarity, credibility, connection, in that order.

2024

Culture and commerce

I began writing publicly about the economics of culture, advising founders and communities, and building the frameworks I now teach in rooms and workshops.

2025

CEO of SMADE Group, Editor-at-Large

I became CEO of SMADE Group, a live culture company with twenty-two years of operating history, and stepped into arenas, festivals, artists and the institutions around them, while representing talent directly as an agent. Alongside it, Editor-at-Large at The Southern African Times.

Proof

Check any of it.

The story is only worth as much as the proof behind it.

Momentum

CEO of SMADE Group.

I have led SMADE since 2025. The company itself carries twenty-two years of operating history, my job is to put that infrastructure to new work, and here is what the first year moved.