Site Lead, Google Ghana · Accra
Perry Nelson
I started at Goldman Sachs, spent a decade at Google, and now lead Google Ghana, where I work on AI research for African languages and mentor engineers. Nights and weekends, I build apps.
Engineer, manager,
serial side-project starter.
I started at Goldman Sachs in New York, then spent a decade at Google working across Wallet, Search, and Ads. Now I lead Google Ghana, where our teams work on AI research for problems like flood forecasting, maternal health, and speech data for African languages.
Outside of Google, I run Mina Logic, an app development studio. I'm the CTO of Otto Couture, the bespoke fashion house founded by my best friend Asafo-Adjei Amoakohene — when he asked me to build an app for his tailoring business, that project grew into Bespoke, a management platform now used by thousands of tailors. My current side project is Synapse, a social-memory app that helps you remember the people you meet by where and when you met them.
I'm also a dad. That's the job I take most seriously.
Ship it
Ideas are cheap. Bespoke, QuickMaths, and Synapse all started as side projects, and all made it to real users.
Build from Accra
The research we do in Ghana — flood forecasting, maternal health, language — starts with problems that matter here.
Pass it on
Mentoring engineers, volunteering with Citizen Schools and Code Nation, and funding the computer lab named for my father.
From Accra to Duke
to Google and back again
The résumé, in chronological order.
SOS Hermann Gmeiner International College
Tema, GhanaWhere it all started. A great foundation that shaped my curiosity and gave me a global perspective early on.
Duke University
BSE Electrical & Computer Engineering + Computer ScienceDouble-majored in Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science — half hardware, half software.
Goldman Sachs
Technology Associate · New YorkStarted my career on Wall Street, building technology at Goldman Sachs. Learned how to ship in high-stakes environments where the code you write really can't break.
Google Wallet
Software EngineerHelped build the systems that authenticate and secure financial transactions for millions of users. Co-authored a defensive publication on "Authenticating Financial Accounts" — solving real-world payment security challenges.
Google Search
Product / EngineeringWorked on the product people use every day without thinking about it. Information retrieval, user intent, and a lot of edge cases.
Google Ads
Product / EngineeringBuilt advertising technology that runs at global scale — the systems that keep most of Google free.
Google Research Africa — Site Lead, Ghana
Country Manager & Research LeadLeading Google's presence in Ghana. Overseeing AI research that addresses Africa's unique challenges — from maternal health to language preservation. Partnering with the Ministry of Education to integrate AI fluency into Ghana's national curriculum. Building a community of developers and researchers at the Accra AI Community Center.
AI for African languages
Speech AI mostly doesn't work in the languages a billion Africans speak. This work is about closing that gap.
WAXAL: A Large-Scale Multilingual African Language Speech Corpus
Co-authored an open-source speech corpus supporting 20+ Sub-Saharan African languages. What started as an open-source toolkit for crowdsourcing speech data — now used by organizations like Sunbird.AI to collect speech for East African languages — planted the seeds for WAXAL (pronounced "wa-haal"), which has grown into one of the largest multilingual African language datasets ever published.
Authenticating Financial Accounts
Co-invented a system for securely associating payment accounts with users for online and mobile transactions. The system uses authorization holds and credential verification to authenticate account ownership — foundational technology for Google Wallet/Payments.
Ventures & products
Side projects that made it to production. All live, all with real users.
Mina Logic
AI-powered app development studio. We build custom web apps, mobile apps, and SaaS platforms — from idea to live product in weeks, not months.
BeSpoke
A management platform for bespoke tailors, born from building an app for my best friend's tailoring business. Snap a photo of handwritten measurements and the app digitizes them; orders, payments, and customer updates live in one place.
Synapse
Your social memory. Synapse fuses the context already on your phone — location, time, photos, contacts — into a memory of each person you meet, so you can find "the woman from the rooftop in June" when the name is gone.
QuickMaths
AI-powered financial tools for UK accountants. Scan bank statements, auto-categorize transactions with HMRC categories, and export clean data for MTD-compatible software. Free forever.
Otto Couture
Bespoke African fashion house founded by my best friend Asafo-Adjei Amoakohene — handcrafted kaftans, agbadas, and modern menswear from Labadi, Accra. I run the technology side, which is where BeSpoke came from.
The Emmanuel Nii Azuma Nelson
Computer Lab
"If something must be done, it must be done well."— Emmanuel Nii Azuma Nelson, my father
When I was young, my dad gave me his work computer and went back to using a typewriter. That single act changed my life. It gave me access to a world of possibility that shaped everything I've built since.
The Emmanuel Nii Azuma Nelson Computer Lab at Liberty No. 2 High School in Adabraka, Accra, is my way of passing that gift forward. Dedicated in May 2026, the lab gives students access to computers and digital learning resources.
Volunteering
Volunteer mentor — teaching coding and STEM apprenticeships to middle school students
Volunteer — helping underserved students learn to code and build real-world technical skills
Talks, podcasts &
appearances
Places I've talked about the work.
How Google is Working with AI in Africa
YouTube · Google
Exploring how Google's research team in Accra is applying AI to address critical challenges across the continent — from flood forecasting and food security to maternal health innovations.
Google's WAXAL Project Wants AI to Understand Africa
The Cause Effect 4.0 · April 2026
Sat down with Celina Lee to talk about WAXAL — a dataset spanning 27 African languages and 100M+ speakers. We got into how you capture tonal subtleties in Wolof and Yoruba, and why African universities should be building AI rather than just supplying the data.
The AI Revolution in Africa: Why Ghana is Leading the Way
Voices of a Continent · March 2026
Weather forecasting for cocoa farmers, AI-powered ultrasound for maternal health, open-sourcing speech data in Twi, Ewe, and Dagbani through Project WAXAL. We covered a lot of ground.
Lead for Ghana
Lead for Ghana · 2025
Spoke with the Lead for Ghana cohort about building a career in tech, moving from Wall Street to Google to Accra, and why coming home matters.
AmCham Ghana AI Roundtables
American Chamber of Commerce Ghana · 2024–2026
Live demos of Gemini for Work and NotebookLM for business leaders. Conversations about what AI adoption actually looks like on the ground in Ghana.
Accra AI Community Center
Google Ghana · Ongoing
FlutterFlow workshops, digital banking tools, athlete performance tracking apps. Hands-on programs at the AICC training the next wave of builders in Accra.
Google Blog — AI in Africa
Google Blog · 2024–2026
Featured in coverage of the WAXAL dataset launch, maternal health work, and community programs at the Accra AI Center.
Life, family &
community
Mostly family. Occasionally Google.
Get in touch
The fastest way to reach me is LinkedIn. If you want to work with my team on an app, Mina Logic is the door to knock on.