Although born in Nigeria, Kayode left the country when he was just 1yr old and spent most of his early childhood growing up in Zambia with some brief stints in Kenya and Tanzania. His father was a UK qualified barrister and had taken up an appointment as a senior legal advisor to the Zambian Government. This was the golden age of his family life with expatriate privileges and so much carefree fun and adventure and it was also during this period that Kayode discovered Marvel Comics and the superhero. 

At the age of seven, Kayode was sent, together with his siblings, to boarding school in England. Kayode and his older brother attended a prep school in Wiltshire called Prior Park where Kayode was introduced to a broad range of disciplines, one of which was music and the violin. Kayode took to the violin and played it right through to his late teens and up to grade eight. It was during this period that He also happened upon a fictional book in the library called Master of Kung Fu. Kayode did not proceed to the senior secondary school in Somerset like his brother did but attended a grammar school in London called St Marylebone which, being in the city, opened up different opportunities.

Kayode began to earnestly take up martial art studies side by side with his academic studies from the age of 11 inspired by the legendary Bruce Lee and the seventies Hong Kong cinema. He studied Wing Chun Kuen with Master Victor Kan, Muay Thai and Tae Kwon Do with Master Ken Wah and Wu style Tai Chi Chuan with Master Peter Chen Kayode also took up the viola from the age of 13 and played it side by side with the violin for about 5 years and researched and imbibed Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do concept in every aspect of his life. 

After sitting and passing his GCE O and A-levels, Kayode decided to study Mathematics at Imperial College, London University. When He left for University Kayode decided that he had become somewhat bored of classical music and really did not want to play the violin or the viola anymore despite the fact that his school music teacher had told him in earlier years that he would end up a musician. During his undergraduate college years, Kayode started listening to Modern Jazz and Jazz Fusion and discovered artists such as Earl Klugh, Pat Metheney and Bob James, Kayode also taught Wing Chun Kung Fu and Kick Boxing after lectures and became interested in weight training.

Kayode graduated from Imperial in 1986 with a B.Sc in Mathematics and a diploma from the Royal College of Science. Rather than do a Masters, He decided to join Arthur Andersen to gain some practical life and work experience and to start earning some money. Despite exposure to the Audit, Tax, Insolvency and Consulting divisions, Kayode found the work quite uninspiring and tedious and the long journeys (jobs) away from home (including the dojo and the gym,) quite unbearable. He left AA the following year to join Morgan Stanley as an associate in their derivatives division. This was his first exposure to the capital markets and to finance, as opposed to accounting, and Kayode really enjoyed the more dynamic environment and culture and especially took to the battlefield that was the financial markets taking place on the dealing room floors. 

After watching Wall St, which had just come out, starring Michael Douglas, Kayode realized that taking calculated risk was the best and quickest way for him to achieve financial independence and pursue his dreams; he decided at this point that he wanted to ‘Trade’. This would prove elusive at Morgan Stanley, which was a blue blood firm with a very competitive culture. The opportunity would present itself 4 years later at Goldman Sachs, which Kayode joined in March of 1990. Goldman was just entering the European space and presented an amazing culture of excellence layered with humility and very effective teamwork. His outstanding performance soon after joining caught the attention of one of the Chief dealers in the Fixed Income division and Kayode was offered a position on the money market trading desk and later given the sole desk mandate to take proprietary positions (i.e. take outright risk) on currencies and fixed income instruments up to 2 years. Additionally, after many years of listening to guitar music, Kayode decided to take up the guitar, first learning the steel string method, which included chords, pentatonic scales and soloing, and later, when Kayode met Spanish guitarist Fernando Briones Villar, the classical approach, which was a major turning point in his life. Kayode had a very successful career at Goldman Sachs executing some of the largest transactions at the firm at the time, including two one Billion US dollar trades, and was made an Executive Director in 1994 at the age of 29. During this time, Kayode was also asked to speak regularly to new entry level MBAs from schools such as Harvard, Stanford and Wharton on the Capital Markets and how to trade them and held quite a number of stretching, relaxation and fitness classes, after markets had closed, in the in-house gym to help traders to better manage their exposures.

Kayode was head hunted from Goldman Sachs by the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia in 1995 to set up a Hedge Fund based out in Jeddah to trade the international capital markets on a global macro basis. This was a Greenfield start-up that involved setting up the business architecture, including the IT and Operational platforms, as well as the middle office, including Risk Management and Financial Control. The final step was to hire a team of seasoned local and international proprietary traders. With the stress of building and running a business, including managing people, the guitar became an outlet to escape, forget and express his feelings; his teacher Fernando had returned to Spain so Kayode commenced private studies with the late Richard Hand, of the Hand / Dupre guitar duo, who Kayode was introduced to and started visiting once a month for lessons in London. 

Kayode would study with Richard for almost 14 years. Also during this period, he attended many leadership and people management training programs, workshops and seminars and ran many in-house and industry-wide capital market training courses. Kayode also taught mixed martial arts on weekends at a local sports club. This four year period in Saudi was the most challenging of his career, Kayode did not have the Goldman Sachs infrastructure, including tips from mentors and superiors to help support and guide him and very volatile financial markets tested his discipline and resolve, as well as his leadership and character, right to their core. It was an edifying period of immense personal, professional and spiritual growth.