About
Built by people who kept running into the same problem.
We kept discovering the same thing. Problems almost never started with bad people. They started because different people quietly believed different things, and nobody realised until it became expensive. Groundwork exists so leaders don't discover misalignment months after it starts.
We built Groundwork after repeatedly discovering problems months after they started. We hired too late. We missed disagreements that had quietly grown. We watched decisions get made from incomplete pictures, not because anyone was dishonest, but because there was no safe way to compare what everyone actually believed. Groundwork is the product we wanted.
The problem was never the people. It was that there was no way to find out without a meeting, without confrontation, without someone having to say it to someone else's face.
Groundwork is that place. You say what you need done. Your team says what they understood. You see where those two things match and where they do not. No meeting required.
The team
Groundwork grew out of our own experience building and leading teams, and conversations with founders in the Google for Startups community facing many of the same problems.
Hafsah Jumare | Founding partner, product and strategy
Behavioral economist trained at the University of Cape Town who has spent the last 10 years building companies and leading teams across some of the world's toughest operating environments. A Google for Startups founder, Hafsah built Groundwork from firsthand experience of how hard it is to know what's really happening across a growing organization.
Sahar Jamal | Partner, coach and setup
ICF-certified growth coach, founder and CEO of Maziwa, MBA from Kellogg. A decade in maternal and newborn health across East Africa, through Jacaranda Health, Johnson & Johnson and the Aga Khan Development Network.
She decides who coaches a session, matching the coach to the situation: the scenario, the seniority, the language, the industry. In the room it means somebody reads the report with your team and turns what it found into a decision somebody owns. She coaches entrepreneurs, start-up teams and emerging leaders, and has been performance coach on the McGowan Fund Fellowship Program and a mentor for Villgro Africa and the Stanford Biodesign Program.
Nathanial Peterson | Partner, behavioural science
Behavioral scientist, venture builder, and co-founder of Peterson & Gill, a venture studio building investable companies out of complex public-sector problems. Nathanial holds a PhD in Behavioral Decision Research from Carnegie Mellon and brings deep expertise in decision-making, incentives, risk, and human behavior in complex systems.
Adam Grunewald | Partner, client success
Entrepreneur and technology executive who founded and led Lynk and previously worked at Google. Adam brings firsthand experience building companies, leading teams, and navigating the operational challenges that emerge as organizations grow.
Abubakar Sambo | Partner, engineering
Engineer and technical lead behind Groundwork, with an engineering background from McGill University. Abubakar builds the systems that turn Groundwork's behavioral and organizational principles into a simple, secure product teams can use every day.
Our headquarters
Groundwork
9 Wendy Court, David Osieli Road
Westlands, Nairobi, Kenya
Questions or feedback
hello@myground.work