From building partnerships across African markets to leading Opera’s AdTech expansion across EMEA and the Americas, this conversation explores growth, resilience, leadership, and what it really takes to build something from the ground up.

Q: You joined Opera nearly seven years ago as an individual contributor and today you lead one of the strongest AdTech teams across EMEA and the Americas. How did that journey begin?

A: Before Opera, I was working in sales across various industries. Opera reached out when the company was looking for someone to help grow advertising sales across French-speaking African markets, even though I had no background in advertising at all.

I interviewed with the VP of Sales at the time and told him upfront that I had no advertising experience, but my mindset is simple: learn, think, move fast, and deliver growth. I’ve always been someone who enjoys and embraces starting from scratch and building a path toward growth. We strongly connected on that, and shortly after, I signed with Opera.

By my second day at Opera, I was already in Cameroon, West Africa. After a fast onboarding, I started traveling across different African markets, meeting partners, building relationships, and opening doors market by market. It was intense,

Q: Looking back, how has your role evolved, and what helped you grow into leadership?

A: At some point, it became clear that my role leading the French-speaking countries in Africa had certain growth limitations. I had a very open conversation with the VP of Sales, and I knew we shared similar principles. I wanted to challenge myself in a different way and explore where else I could contribute to the company’s expansion.

That conversation led me to the AdTech department, which at the time was in a very different phase from where it is today. Over the past six years, we’ve built and expanded the business significantly, and for me personally, it opened an entirely new chapter of learning and growth, as I once again started with zero experience in AdTech and had to learn everything as quickly as possible.

I believe a lot of growth comes down to character and attitude, and subsequently to the behaviors shaped through actions and their outcomes. Character is crafted over time through how we respond to experiences, failures, choices, the relationships we build, and the environments we place ourselves in. I’ve always been attracted to things that were completely unfamiliar to me simply because there was always a new opportunity to be challenged and grow from them. For me, growth has never been only about work or titles. It’s personal too, and most of the time, it starts outside your comfort zone.

When I started building the team, the first hire came entirely through my own outreach. Skills mattered, of course, but mindset mattered more. Curiosity, motivation, energy, and the willingness to push further - those were the things I paid the most attention to. When people share that kind of drive, the dynamic becomes very different. It stops feeling like a group of individuals doing a job and starts feeling like people building something together.

Q: AdTech is a fast-moving, highly competitive space. What separates a good commercial strategy from a truly great one?

A: There are always different phases in business - where you started, where you are today, and where you want to go next.

When we first moved into AdTech, we began approaching companies at a time when our offering was still very early-stage. A lot of doors closed in the beginning. But instead of seeing that as failure, I became curious about why those conversations weren’t landing.

Very quickly, it became clear that success wasn’t only about the product itself. It was also about understanding the market, knowing how to position yourself, and speaking the language partners were already familiar with. We didn’t have a fully developed platform at the time, but we understood where the industry was heading. So we focused on building the right story around the assets and opportunities we already had.

Over time, we started building credibility with building new partnerships. And once that starts happening, another layer becomes just as important: people. Matching the right personalities internally with the right external partners makes a huge difference. Chemistry matters more than most people think.

Today, the business looks completely different from those early days. We have our own buying platform, as well as our own inventory platform both combined are today generating a large portion of our  company revenue.

Q: Outside of work you're deeply committed to endurance sports - Triathlon long distance competitions, nutrition, intense training routines. What motivates you to stay so disciplined?

A: For me, discipline is freedom. If you don’t constantly negotiate with yourself, you stay in control of your decisions. Once external distractions start dictating your actions, you lose part of that control.

For me, at the center of everything lies growth. We are the result of what we repeat every day - how we think, how we act, and how we learn. When you genuinely enjoy something and connect it with positive experiences, you naturally want to keep doing it. That desire to stay in the process is what keeps me motivated, far more than the outcome itself.

Endurance sports are far more mental than physical. The time you spend with yourself defines how you deal with external events. Whether it’s a long bike ride or a 30-kilometer run, there’s nowhere to hide from yourself.

At some point, it becomes less about performance and more about understanding how you react, think, and push through difficult moments. You learn a lot about yourself out there.

Q: Do you see parallels between preparing for sports competitions and leading a team under pressure?

A: Absolutely. Success is really about how you deal with challenges - internal or external - and how you turn those experiences into growth and action. Sports teach you exactly that.

Competitive sports are actually very similar to business. You don’t train for months to finish last, and you don’t build a business hoping to become the least trusted partner in the market. In both cases, consistency, resilience, and strategy matters. Everything connects eventually. The lessons you learn in one part of life almost always become useful somewhere else - whether in business, leadership, or personal relationships.

Q: For someone who wants to grow into a leadership role, what mindset or habits matter most?

A: There’s a big difference between being a manager and being a leader.

Personally, I never focused on becoming “a leader” as a goal. I think leadership happens naturally when you consistently work on becoming a better version of yourself and bring strong values, experience, and energy into the people around you.

When you genuinely care about people, you become more open, share empathy, sympathy even toward people who are very different from you.

I also don’t think great leaders actively chase leadership. People naturally choose to follow someone they trust, respect, and feel inspired by. That’s very different from simply wanting authority.

Leadership is also closely tied to mentorship. Coaching others should come from a genuine desire to share experience and help people grow and not from wanting to control or correct them.

And in the end, not everyone needs to become a leader. Some people are exceptional teammates and contributors, and that matters just as much. Leadership also comes with experience - it’s difficult to guide others through challenges you haven’t faced yourself. A lot of it is learned over time, through repetition, mistakes, and real-life situations.