AI Product Designer · Design Engineer · Product lead

I find the structural failures others overlook—then design and build the systems to fix them.

AI Product Designer & Design Engineer. Currently building Tarié, an AI-powered governance intelligence platform for Africa. Seven years scaling products for 15M+ users across fintech, crypto, automotive, e-commerce, and AI.

Portrait of Karen Iyakoregha

15M+

users reached

3 regions

West Africa · Middle East · North America

2 ventures

Tarié & Comms

7 years

across tech ecosystems

Portrait of Karen Iyakoregha

Hi, I'm Karenane, call me Karen

Scaling products for 15M+ users—now reimagining governance systems for Africa.

My background is in scaling tech products across West Africa, the Middle East, and North America: financial institutions, crypto, automotive, e-commerce, and AI.

I'm from a small town in the Niger Delta, building for Africa, currently based in United Kingdom. I'm open to product, strategy, and design roles.

Career Arc

How the systems thinker got here.

Chapter 01

Work Life

I build products at the intersection of systems thinking, strategy, product, and design. My background is in scaling tech products for over 15 million users across West Africa, the Middle East, and North America: financial institutions, crypto, automotive, e-commerce, and AI.

From 2020 onward, I layered that with continuous product and design training in UX research, interaction design, design thinking, product strategy, AI/ML, building the practice alongside the career.

  • Master Digital Product Design: UX Research & UI Design2020
  • Product Masterclass: How to Build Digital Products2020
  • IDF User Experience: The Beginner's Guide2021
  • Google Professional UX Certificate2022
  • Google Cloud: Introduction to Generative AI & ML2024

Chapter 02

Education

B.Sc. Political Science, University of Ibadan. The foundation, understanding how systems fail before learning how to build better ones.

In late 2025, I went through the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School joint degree application process. The research it demanded (stress-testing ideas about governance, political economy, and institutional design) became the intellectual foundation for Tarié. The application didn't produce a degree. It produced a company.

Chapter 03 · Now

Current

Founder & CEO, Tarié — Africa's first AI-powered governance intelligence infrastructure.

I started it after asking a question nobody in Nigeria had answered yet: what would governance look like if it was actually designed for the people inside it? That question became a two-sided platform: a citizen-facing app and an AI-powered government intelligence dashboard, built from zero.

Building Tarié is, by definition, changemaking. Nigeria's governance architecture is over 70 years old: inherited, colonial, and never redesigned. Tarié is the first serious attempt to change that at a systems level. That's not a vision statement. That's the actual work.

Learn more about Tarié

Outside of work

Fun facts about me.

Music & discovery

On repeat

Nigerian Bangers

  • 1

    Commas

    Ayra Starr

  • 2

    La La

    Davido, CKay

  • 3

    Stamina

    Tiwa Savage, Ayra Starr

  • 4

    Kolomental

    Victony

Listen on Spotify
A waterfront promenade lined with palm trees at sunset, city skyline in the distance

Taking a walk is therapeutic. IYKYK.

A fluffy white maltipoo puppy

Future dog

A maltipoo. Obviously.

A tennis player's shadow on a sunlit court, racket and ball mid-rally

On court

I play tennis.

Book cover of Sky Full of Elephants by Cebo Campbell

Current read

A Sky Full of Elephants

Cebo Campbell

Poster for The Fragrant Flower Blooms with Dignity

Currently binging

The Fragrant Flower Blooms with Dignity