Morné Wiggins

As head of product for a supplier of AI-based products for the financial services industry, I managed a distributed team of engineers, data scientists, and analysts. I also led the organization’s transition to a remote-working model.

As SVP of customer acquisition for a leading fintech company, I built a distributed research, marketing, and sales organization in Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas, achieving consistent 300% YOY ARR growth.

I founded and managed a remote-first management consulting firm. In a project for the AfDB, we executed a 36-month research and development project across 16 countries, raising $26 million to build a social network for African entrepreneurs.

After a successful fundraising round, Oradian was required to rapidly scale its operations to meet stated objectives.

I worked closely with the founders and shareholders, taking ownership of the company strategy and product positioning. Based on market research and product fit analysis, I developed the company’s expansion plans to Africa and Asia. I recruited, trained, and coached managing directors and in-country teams in five new markets, eventually leading the sales effort.

I implemented new Lean-Agile business processes across the organization, including sales, human resources, and finance departments, establishing new competencies and organizational units.

The Gates Foundation and IFC made strategic investments in several financial service providers (FSPs) across Africa to drive financial inclusion.

As part of my role, I:

• Participated from project inception, performing initial diagnostic of all investee processes, technology systems, and staff competency levels.
• Developed a single, integrated technology strategy for all FSPs.
• Led the CEO and CIO summit where we integrated teams, processes, and ratified the technology and business strategy across 16 countries, four economic zones, and three languages.
• Rolled out new cloud-based core banking systems and developed innovative mobile apps, enabling financial services without the need for heavy and expensive physical infrastructure.
• Built an agency banking framework, empowering field agents and further lowering the costs of financial services to underserved markets.
• Lobbied central banks and assisted with creating the digital banking policy frameworks across multiple countries.

Conceptualized, built, and launched a product family of AI-powered anti-money laundering solutions.
• Built the Project Management Office.
• Recruited, trained, and coached a team of project managers.
• Led the Agile transformation project, implementing Lean product management and Agile development practices.

Womenconnect.org was built to drive financial inclusion and provide mentorship and training for 50 million entrepreneurial African women.

I led the market research and validation project across 14 countries in four languages. Definition and prioritization of the product roadmap, technology architecture, business case development, and lobbying investors to raise $26 million in funding were also part of my achievements. I led a go-to-market product strategy for new market expansion.

Worked with the founding team to establish the product vision and develop, test, and refine the product hypothesis. I assisted in defining the key features and fleshing those out into user stories. I managed the research and user-centered design process, working closely with the UX team on product design. I selected the appropriate technology platforms, recruited the teams, and managed the development process until release. I then managed the release and launch process, using metrics and analytics to rapidly iterate the user interface and increase conversion and retention rates. I coached leadership and agile teams, hands-on, in establishing key agile ceremonies, such as planning sessions, daily stand-ups, and effective utilization of agile artifacts, such as product backlogs.

The armored vehicle incorporated automotive technology, low-voltage electronics, sensing, internal workflow management with interlocking security doors and drop-safes technology to cash in a highly secure and efficient manner. The fleet of vehicles would be remotely monitored and controlled from a centralized control room. For the centralized control room, I designed the monitoring systems (back-end systems), casebook and logging system, and emergency response protocols. This offered an end-to-end solution that was deployed in high-crime environments in the middle east and Africa.

Assisted the implementation of various processes and standards, to support a manufacturing companies ambitions of accessing foreign markets.
Implemented ISO 9000, secured an official accreditation from the standards authority. Re-vamped the supply chain and manufacturing processes. Led the sourcing department and establishing an integrated network of suppliers providing manufacturing inputs on a just-in-time basis.

The South African national companies and intellectual property platform delivers the following functions:
• Registration of companies, co-operatives, and intellectual property rights, including trademarks, patents, designs, and copyright.
• Disclosure of information on its business registers.

Built a platform that integrated data from multiple internal and external systems, including SAP, SharePoint, data warehouses, IT help desk, and security monitoring control rooms to remotely monitor Barclays Africa’s 4,000 buildings, branches, and ATM locations.

The platform used advanced analytics to preemptively detect problems and equipment failures, decrease the planning and costs of maintenance activities, and increase the security of the bank’s assets.

Google for Startups Accelerator is a global series of programs for growth-stage startups to get technical, product, and leadership training from experts, tailored to their business. These programs serve top, growth-stage startups with tailored technical, product, and leadership training from Google experts.

Tookitaki is an independent software company with offices in New York, Singapore, and India, developing artificial intelligence-based anti-money laundering software for financial institutions to help fight financial crime.

After a fundraising round, the company was required to scale rapidly to meet the shareholders’ new aggressive growth and delivery targets.

They were struggling with poor quality, unpredictable delivery, poor performance, low team morale, pervasive inefficiencies, and they were unable to adequately service their existing customer base.

I established a new product management discipline—recruited, onboarded, trained, and coached a team of product managers and project managers—to enable the company to increase visibility and take control of its end-to-end delivery process.

I then reorganized the research and engineering teams, creating a scalable team-based model, which could easily be replicated to support the rapidly growing engineering organization.

I joined the leadership team and implemented a new planning and execution process. I also coached the co-founders and worked closely with the sales, CS, HR, and finance teams to create a cohesive, high-functioning leadership organization.

After conquering the Philippines with their cloud-based core banking system, Oradian had to enter new markets to support their rapid growth and meet their company objectives.

The existing organizational structures were not scalable, and the command and control management structure was causing communication bottlenecks and inefficiencies, which constrained the company’s growth.

I built five regional offices, hiring local CEOs and establishing cross-functional teams in each country. I also standardized operational processes and implemented a training academy, knowledge management systems, and best practices.

As a result, the company met its required 300% ARR growth targets and tripled its headcount in 18 months while continuously improving operational efficiencies.

The African Development Bank’s Office of Gender Equality launched a project to build a social media and financial services platform to service Africa’s women entrepreneurs—targeting 50 million users.

I started with the project at the conception phase, validating the business model, building the MVP, and field-testing the concept. After passing the initial tests, I assisted with the fundraising and secured $26 million in donor funding for the startup venture.

Since there is a lack of infrastructure across Africa, the organizational design required regional operations in four languages to cover 54 African countries. In addition to building the UX, research, product, project, and engineering teams, there were also field operations in 14 countries, working with local partners to promote, uptake, and adopt the platform and services to end-users.

As a multi-sided marketplace, the organization also had to interface with financial institutions, investors, and donors, which required separate dedicated teams.

Led the implementation of a document management and workflow system for a large international financial services company. Worked closely with stakeholders to collect requirements and implemented the OpenText platform (leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant) solution. Continued providing support to the client for 10 years, including performing enhancements, upgrades, training, and high availability support.

I led a team of transformation consultants and coaches, working with executives and leaders across the enterprise to set transformation project goals. I also facilitated an executive training cohort and coached managers to lead the transformation project.

I worked with the co-founders and top leadership team on a 2-year project to implement Agile across the company, including engineering, research, product management, human resources, finance, sales, and the executive leadership team.

I assisted a software business, providing a cloud-based core banking platform to transform its operations through a hypergrowth phase. I implemented Agile in engineering, product management, customer success, human resources, and sales departments across nine geographical regions.

Participated in a global SAFe project of 2,500+ individuals across ten value streams to rapidly scale up the manufacturing capacity for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout.

We implemented innovative AR/VR technologies to accelerate the training of lab technicians. To meet tight schedules, we coordinated with civil engineering, electrical engineering, manufacturing systems, and warehouse automation.

Participated in centralized Lean Agile Centre of Excellence, coordinating all SAFe activities across 100 Scrum teams.

Worked on a large integrated security service for the Johannesburg CBD, one of the highest crime cities in the world. A centralized command center monitored 3,000+ security cameras, managed 10,000 guards, coordinated 250 armored vehicles, managing physical cash between bank branches and ATMs scattered across the city with 6 million inhabitants.

The CID service also managed cleaning, maintenance, armed response, fire, health, and safety services.

The service is supported by a network of data centers across multiple locations in South Africa.