Brian Onyino
Brian Onyino is a Kenyan financial-markets innovator who bridges high-finance expertise with conservation activism. A graduate of the University of Nairobi (BCom, Finance) and a CFA charterholder, he joined Equity Bank in 2015 and, three years later, launched and led the bank’s first derivatives desk, structuring currency, rate, and commodity risk-management products for East Africa’s corporates. The initiative earned the 2018 Refinitiv East Africa Excellence Award for Innovation and positioned Equity as a market maker on the Nairobi Securities Exchange derivatives market.
Now Head of Derivatives, Sales & Structuring, Onyino oversees a US $1.7 billion portfolio of hedging transactions and mentors a 12-person quant team building algorithmic pricing engines. To deepen his quantitative edge, he is completing an MSc in Financial Engineering with WorldQuant University, focusing on machine-learning approaches to frontier-market volatility.
Beyond trading floors, Onyino channels his analytical skills into wildlife protection. A trustee of the Mara Elephant Project, he fund-raises for anti-poaching patrols and has helped pilot a data-driven collaring programme that predicts human-elephant conflict zones. He also co-founded Ng’ombe Guardians, a social enterprise that supplies solar-powered predator-deterrent lights to Maasai herders.
Named to Business Daily’s Top 40 Under 40 Men list in 2019, Onyino exemplifies how financial ingenuity can power both economic growth and environmental stewardship.