About
From Port-au-Prince to Fintech
A journey through international development, compliance, and building financial infrastructure for the communities that need it most.
Haiti Origins
I grew up in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, surrounded by a culture that valued resilience, creativity, and community. As a teenager, I fell in love with technology in a cyber café — when a stranger in a Yahoo chatroom demonstrated the power of hacking by crashing my computer. I was hooked. I spent years tinkering with code, learning how computers and networks worked, and dreaming about what technology could do for communities like mine.
Education & Development Career
I studied telecommunications at Haiti-Tech, then international law at the Université des Sciences Économiques et Juridiques des Gonaïves before transferring to the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, where I earned a BA in International Studies and a Master’s in Nuclear Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies, specializing in anti-corruption, anti-money laundering, and terrorism financing.
My career took me through disaster response with the UN in Port-au-Prince, community development directing programs for 78,000 people in Pestel, and due diligence research investigating anti-bribery and corruption compliance for Fortune 500 clients. Along the way, I worked across more than a dozen organizations — from grassroots Haitian NGOs to the United Nations — always driven by the question: how do we build systems that actually serve the communities they’re meant to help?
The Centis Chapter
Seeing the tech divide firsthand — in Haiti and in underserved communities across California — I founded the Center for Tech Innovation and Sustainability (Centis). The mission was straightforward: create an environment where people from resource-limited communities could learn tech skills by doing real work. Volunteers gained hands-on experience by solving actual technology problems for local nonprofits, while earning certificates and building portfolios. We also refurbished and distributed low-cost computers and provided cybersecurity services to organizations that couldn’t afford them.
Elanö Corporate Compliance Consultants
In 2018, I launched Elanö Corporate Compliance Consultants — an advisory practice helping private and public institutions in developing countries achieve international anti-corruption and AML standards to access foreign capital. The experience of building a compliance consultancy from scratch directly informed how I later designed Trebanx’s regulatory infrastructure.
The Trebanx Chapter
That question led me to Trebanx. For generations, Haitian families and diaspora communities worldwide have relied on sou-sou — rotating savings circles built entirely on trust. I grew up watching these systems work. But they run on handshakes and paper, and the people who depend on them remain invisible to formal finance. In 2024, I decided to build the infrastructure to change that.
I taught myself full-stack development and built the entire Trebanx platform from the ground up: a Next.js and React Native frontend, PostgreSQL database with Prisma, and a Python/FastAPI ML microservice called Lakay Intelligence that scores trust across 156 variables and 9 data categories. I developed a 62-document BSA/AML compliance framework, completed FinCEN MSB registration, and structured the company as a Delaware C-Corp (Lanot Holdings) with operating subsidiaries. We’re pursuing the Florida FinTech Sandbox and launching our beta in Q2 2026.
Personal
I speak English, French, Haitian Creole, Spanish, and some Portuguese, and I’m currently learning German and Russian. I volunteer with BSidesSF (since 2020) and Al Otro Lado, where I translate for Haitian migrants seeking asylum. I’m an active Toastmasters member, a bullet chess player, and I wake up at 4 AM most days. I believe that if I’m part of any community, I have to leave it a little better than I found it.