Hello, I’m Tumelo Fani.
With an extensive background across marketing and strategy, I help teams understand how customers discover, trust, adopt, and keep using products.
Whether it’s working with startups or major tech teams, my goal is to connect product decisions with customer needs.
Projects across product, behavior, and growth.
A few projects spanning digital products, public-sector systems, product adoption, and go-to-market strategy.
Marketplace strategy · Amazon
Deal prioritization for Prime Day, Black Friday, Cyber-Monday and Spring day
Designed guardrails and a playbook for selecting and evaluating manual deal placements during major retail events, helping teams prioritize limited merchandising space across 400+ campaigns.
Digital acceleration · Meta Accelerator
Product scaling through Meta Accelerator
Worked with Meta Accelerator mentors on product experimentation, user-centered design, and data analysis for feature-phone products. The work informed the launch of two new SMS verticals for a local mobile network operator in Botswana.
Growth strategy · Stanford Seed
Strategic transformation through Stanford Seed
Developed the product vision for SMS, USSD, and IVR services serving 800K monthly users, working with senior executives to map the business model and analyze sales funnel gaps.
National polling platform · UNICEF U-Report
Youth SMS polling platform
Helped launch UNICEF U-Report, a national SMS polling platform for youth voice in Botswana. I worked across GTM strategy, primary research, field activations, and stakeholder reporting to onboard 20,000+ users.
Public health product · BeSafe
Covid-19 contact tracing app for Botswana government
Supported the launch of a QR-code contact tracing and permit application system for Botswana’s national COVID-19 response, defining product requirements and improving accessibility for 1.4M users.
Agentic AI application · Northbridge AI
Volunteer support assistant
Built an AI assistant for volunteer teams at a local NGO in Rochester, New York, helping them access information faster and support community work more effectively.
Agentic AI product · Lobelo AI
AI-supported coaching platform
Built an agentic AI-supported coaching platform for visually impaired Paralympic athletes in under-resourced communities, helping coaches in Botswana turn fragmented paper records into athlete development tracking and performance insights.
Systems across products, proposals, and commercial growth.
Additional work across low-connectivity products, energy product management, bid strategy, branding, pricing, and earlier product launches.
SMS, USSD, IVR & lifecycle analytics
Managed product and lifecycle analytics for services built around limited internet access, using subscription, billing, retention, and cohort data to understand adoption.
Energy infrastructure products
Managed product and service workflows across solar, UPS, generators, batteries, pricing, field operations, customer support, and service-quality checks.
Proposal, branding & pricing strategy
Worked across proposal and bid strategy, brand systems, pricing inputs, customer communication, and field marketing execution for commercial product lines.
Earlier products that were launched and discontinued.
Earlier product launches and pilots that shaped my work across go-to-market planning, product testing, usability research, segmentation, targeting, and customer activation.
Blaza
Blaza was a local e-commerce marketplace built to help merchants sell online and reach customers through digital ordering. I worked across go-to-market strategy, product testing with engineers, usability feedback, merchant onboarding, customer activation, segmentation, and launch readiness.
Vuka
Vuka was a social messaging tool for USSD product communities, exploring how users on low-connectivity channels could move from basic USSD interactions into a chat-based experience. I worked across primary research, segmentation, targeting, usability testing, product design, and go-to-market planning.
Mpitsa
Mpitsa was a local real-time service product similar to Uber, focused on connecting customers with nearby service providers. I worked across product testing, usability feedback, segmentation, targeting, customer behavior, launch planning, and go-to-market strategy.
About me.
I’m a marketing and strategy professional with 6+ years of experience across digital products, commercial growth, public-sector platforms, and customer adoption. Throughout my career, I’ve worked on projects that sit between product decisions and market realities: how people discover a product, why they trust it, what slows adoption, and how teams position it for growth.
I studied Marketing as an undergraduate and started my career in sales, so my first training was close to the customer. I learned to read buying behavior, listen for hesitation, and understand what makes a product feel worth trying. That foundation now carries through my MBA in Marketing and Product Strategy, and it still shapes how I approach strategy, proposals, branding, and product work.
What I bring to the table.
Structuring ambiguity
Turning messy business, product, or market problems into clear priorities, decision paths, and next steps.
Connecting customer behavior to strategy
Understanding how people discover, trust, adopt, and keep using products, then translating that into product, marketing, or growth decisions.
Commercial strategy and proposals
Building proposal narratives, pricing logic, bid materials, and go-to-market arguments that help teams compete for revenue opportunities.
Brand and market storytelling
Developing 360-degree brand, campaign, and messaging systems that make products easier to understand, trust, and remember.
Experience.
Amazon
Senior Marketing Manager InternWorked on deal merchandising, campaign performance, and automation guardrails for high-traffic retail events within North America Stores Marketing.
Grant Thornton
Proposal and business developmentWorked across bid development, commercial response materials, client opportunity assessment, pricing follow-up, and proposal strategy.
Odita Energy
Marketing and commercial strategyBuilt marketing systems, 360 branding, customer support workflows, product/service positioning, pricing support, and field-service coordination across energy infrastructure products.
Brastorne Enterprises
Product marketing and growth strategyManaged product performance and lifecycle analytics across SMS, USSD, IVR, and mobile-first digital products, using retention, segmentation, acquisition, and engagement data to improve adoption in low-connectivity markets.
Education.
Simon Business School
MBA, Marketing & Strategy
University of Rochester
University of Botswana
Bachelor’s Degree, Marketing