Sir Kenneth Olisa
The Architect
Structured and legacy-driven; builds the systems and institutions that last.
Sir Kenneth Aphunezi Olisa OBE, born 13 October 1951 in Nottingham to a Nigerian father and a British mother, is a British businessman, technology investor and philanthropist. He is the first mixed-heritage Lord-Lieutenant of Greater London, appointed by Her Majesty The Queen on 29 May 2015, and the first British-born Black man to serve on the board of a major UK public company (Reuters). He was knighted in the 2018 New Year Honours for services to business and philanthropy. Educated at Nottingham High Pavement Grammar School and Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, on an IBM scholarship, Olisa’s technology career began at IBM in 1974 and moved through Wang Laboratories, where he served as Senior Vice President and General Manager for Europe, Africa and the Middle East based in Brussels, restoring the EAME operation to profitability. He founded Interregnum in 1992, an AIM-listed technology merchant bank that he led through IPO in 2000, and now runs Restoration Partners. He was Chairman of Thebes Group (2012, ) and of Interswitch (from 2017), served on the board of Huawei UK (2018, 2022), and in January 2023 succeeded Paul Drechsler as Chairman of BusinessLDN (formerly London First). Olisa’s philanthropic portfolio is exceptional in its breadth and seniority: Patron of School-Home Support, Patron of Fore, President of London Youth, former President of Thames Reach, former Chair of Shaw Trust, Trustee of the King Charles III Charitable Fund, Founder and Chairman of the Aleto Foundation (formerly Powerlist Foundation), and Founder of the Olisa Foundation, which identifies young people with talent and builds social capital through structured mentoring and career support. In 2016 he was voted number one in The Powerlist’s Top 10 Most Influential British Black People. His other current and recent appointments include High Bailiff and Searcher of the Sanctuary at Westminster Abbey (2021,, participating in the 2023 Coronation), Commissioner and Vice-Chair of the National Preparedness Commission (2024, ), Committee Member of the Windrush Commemoration Committee (March 2025, ), and Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (2025). He holds honorary doctorates from Kingston, Nottingham Trent, Worcester and Westminster universities. Sir Kenneth appeared on Off The Agenda in Season 1 (2021) in a two-part interview with Sir Charles Bowman, recorded at the Brigade and Beyond Food Foundation during COVID lockdown. The interview is one of the longest and most substantive in the corpus. This profile is an analyst-rated Leadership Index draft produced under the methodology introduced in Version 4.0 of the AI Future-Proofing Strategy. It is prepared as a draft for subject validation and as a priority Tier 2 founding-cohort candidate for The Fifty 2026 calibration.
“Football says, 'We need people that can score goals or stop goals happening,' so they send out scouts to find people with the potential, and they bring those with potential in and then they groom them to make them superstars. Why doesn't business do that?”
“The Olisa Foundation identifies talented individuals, gives them intensive development, mentoring, and career support. The aim is to create leaders who will reshape society.”
“I've set up three councils focusing on those: heritage, occupation, and faith. For example, my Faith Council works with the Faith & Belief Forum to create an annual award recognising small faith-based charities that help others.”
Off The Agenda Season 1, two-part interview (2021)
THE RECORD IS CHECKABLE