Michael Akinwumi, PhD

Michael Akinwumi leads NFHA’s Tech Equity Initiative. The Tech Equity Initiative (TEI) is a multi-faceted effort launched by NFHA to make algorithmic systems in the housing and financial services industries responsible in their design and implementation. Conducting research to advance the AI fairness field is a cornerstone of the TEI. Dr. Akinwumi leads research and testing efforts on algorithmic fairness, privacy enhancing technologies, computer vision algorithms, generative AI and algorithmic auditing as they apply to housing and financial services. He is responsible for acquiring and managing data, and developing technical solutions for the initiative while managing cross-functional relationships to ensure that solutions that result from the initiative meet NFHA and stakeholders’ expectations. Previously, Dr. Akinwumi led governance engineering efforts at a FinTech by minimizing exposures to regulatory risks, managed a machine learning-powered recommender system that presents product and service offers to retail customers of a bank, and pioneered the use of machine learning solutions in auto and property insurance pricing of a P&C insurance company. Dr. Akinwumi lives his belief that “only a life lived for others is worth living.”