Anchored by his North Stars—impact and access—Olaseni Bello has always sought to serve a larger purpose through his work and to elevate those around him.
After Bello left the U.S. Army, where he’d earned a Bronze Star and served as a judge advocate general, he worked on a foreign exchange trading floor. But he longed for the sense of purpose he’d felt in the military. He’d seen other veterans use business school to springboard to the next stage, so he began applying, and Haas stood out. “There was a level of authenticity combined with humility from the people I was meeting,” he says.
While at Haas, Bello co-launched CarpeMed, an app that leveraged supervised machine learning to offer telehealth services to people in Africa. The idea was sparked by his grandmother, who struggled to access health care in Nigeria. Although he couldn’t raise the capital he needed, the process of pitching, developing, and launching CarpeMed in the App Store helped Bello assimilate the lessons of business school—and to be an impactful product counsel.
Now, as Intuit’s associate general counsel for product, Bello continues to look to his North Stars while partnering closely with product, engineering, business development, marketing, operations, and compliance managers on matters ranging from generative AI product features to data privacy to regulatory and cross-border issues.
Bello credits his mother for shaping his philosophies. “I’ve had to pivot; I’ve had to reinvent myself. I know how to survive because I’ve seen my mom persevere.”