Speaking · Waziri Garuba

Strategic AI for owner-operators, independent consultants, and boutique firms.

Waziri Garuba is the founder of Harlem Labs Advisory, a Strategic AI advisory firm in Austin, Texas, founded in 2013. He spent nearly a decade in finance, trading at Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs and then in carbon-market and renewable-energy banking, holds an MBA from Columbia Business School, where he was a Morgan Stanley Fellow, and has advised owner-operators since 2013. His work starts with data: he wrangles the numbers an operator cannot yet see into the signals the business runs on, breaks the work underneath those signals down to its smallest tasks, and automates what is deterministic before a model touches what is not. Every talk is built from engagements that shipped, on the same infrastructure he runs his own practice on.

What organizers say

“Scores like that out of 100 are excellent, and you have some of the highest scores of our facilitators. Your sessions clearly resonated with the EITs.”
Emily Fiagbedzi · AI Startup Program Director, MESTMEST AI Startup Program · Accra, Ghana · March 2026 · founders’ post-session feedback
MEST founders’ post-session feedback, out of 100: knowledgeability and clarity 96%, responsiveness to questions 96%, overall effectiveness 96%, engagement and support 93%, pace and structure 93%.Read what happened in the room→
“He helped us support business owners by providing them tailored advice and support to the projects our guests were interested in. People left energized and capable — exactly what we hoped for when we brought the workshop together with the Round Rock Chamber of Commerce.”
YJ Lin · Managing Partner, CMX VenturesVibeCoding 101 workshop · Round Rock Chamber Founders Forum · August 4, 2026

Upcoming

October 15, 2026 · 11:00 am CT · Online · Umbrex AI Showcase · Case study presentation

AI Inside a Consulting Practice: A Case Study

One engagement, end to end: how a boutique advisory built and now runs its own AI workflow.

November 14, 2026 · 10:00 am to 8:00 pm CT · Austin, venue to be announced · Universal Tech Movement · Co-host, welcome and closing, plus a workshop

ReThink Austin 2026

A day for leaders, innovators, creatives, and changemakers on the intersections of technology, innovation, and community in Central Texas. Waziri Garuba co-hosts with Michael Ward Jr. of Universal Tech Movement.

Talks and workshops

From Scattered Data to the Number You Run On

Most operators do not have an AI problem. Their data lives in spreadsheets nobody trusts. Wrangling it into one number the business runs on, then automating the work underneath it: deterministic first, model second.

The Atomic Unit of Work

Before anything is automated, the job is broken down to its smallest task, the way the people who do it would describe it. Why that decomposition, not the model, decides what a machine should touch.

Multiply Your Time

An AI defense playbook for independent consultants. The bench defends your time, follows through on projects, and maintains relationships.

How AI Gets Inside a Consulting Practice

The five routes, compared on cost, time to first result, ownership, and dependency, with the Burnie Group case.

Context Is the Product

Everyone has the same model. The only part you own is what it read before it answered. The Briefing Stack in five layers.

Defense Before Offense

Governance-first AI for owner-operated firms: secure and automate the operation before building revenue systems on top.

AEO and the Personal Brand

How answer engines describe you today, why they get it wrong, and the fixes that make you legible to them.

Formats: keynote, workshop, build night, podcast. Audiences: owner-operators, founders, independent consultants, boutique professional-services firms.

Past appearances

Latest · August 31, 2026 · Unleashed, the Umbrex podcast with Will Bachman · Interview and screen-share

Unleashed Episode 657 title card: Waziri Garuba, CEO of Harlem Labs, Introducing G.R.I.O.T

Episode 657: CEO of Harlem Labs, Introducing G.R.I.O.T

Forty-five minutes inside a working system, not a slide about one. Waziri Garuba shares his screen and walks Will Bachman through G.R.I.O.T, the agent layer he runs his own practice on: how a message gets classified and routed, how the email agent went from a crude auto-drafter to the quietest part of the day, and why the finance agents automate a decision rather than a task.

Listen to the episodeWatch the screen-share

Book a talk

Send the audience, the date, and the problem the room is carrying. Every talk is rebuilt for the operators in it.

waziri@harlemlabs.com