Speaking · Waziri Garuba
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 at Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley, holds an MBA from Columbia Business School, and has advised owner-operators since 2013 on the systems that let a business run without its founder in every loop. He speaks as a practitioner: every talk is built from engagements that shipped.
“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.”
September 10, 2026 · 11:00 am CT · Online · Umbrex · Talk
How an independent consultant gets a bench back: AI systems that defend your time, follow through on projects, and maintain relationships.
September 10, 2026 · 6:00 pm CT · Lefty’s Day & Night, East 6th Street, Austin · n8n Austin · Build night
Bring one task you do every week. Leave with it automated. Twenty minutes of framing, fifty of hands-on building, fifteen of show-and-tell.
October 15, 2026 · 11:00 am CT · Online · Umbrex AI Showcase · Case study presentation
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
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.
An AI defense playbook for independent consultants. The bench defends your time, follows through on projects, and maintains relationships.
The five routes, compared on cost, time to first result, ownership, and dependency, with the Burnie Group case.
Everyone has the same model. The only part you own is what it read before it answered. The Briefing Stack in five layers.
Governance-first AI for owner-operated firms: secure and automate the operation before building revenue systems on top.
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.
Latest · August 31, 2026 · Unleashed, the Umbrex podcast with Will Bachman · Interview and screen-share
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.
Send the audience, the date, and the problem the room is carrying. Every talk is rebuilt for the operators in it.
waziri@harlemlabs.com