Omni Circle Annual Gala

Alaia Martin

Master of Ceremonies (MC)

Alaia Martin brings more than a decade of institutional finance experience to her work reshaping how capital reaches small businesses. She spent ten years at Citigroup as Vice President of Asset Sales Forecasting & Analytics and founded tinyGuru, a financial education venture. She holds an MBA in Financial Analysis and a bachelor's in Finance and Economics, and a certificate in AI Ethics, Regulation and Compliance from Oxford.

Today, Alaia is Co-Founder and COO of Cyphr, an AI-native fintech platform that serves as the translation layer between small businesses and capital providers. Powered by Cyphr's proprietary Financial Language Model, the platform translates fragmented financial signals into structured capital readiness profiles that lenders, government agencies, and entrepreneur support organizations can trust and act on. Alaia serves as Executive Director of the nonprofit Cyphr Impact Center, where she leads the development of the Capital Mobility Index - a flagship publication measuring how capital moves, and fails to move, toward America's small businesses.

Alaia also teaches personal finance as an instructor at UMKC's Henry W. Bloch School of Management and serves on the boards of Band of Angels and Next Paige Foundation.

MICHAEL ODUPITAN

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

Michael is the founder and CEO of Omni Circle Group, the Topeka, Kansas nonprofit and collaborative workspace he launched in 2019 to expand opportunity for minority entrepreneurs and underserved communities.

A Washburn University graduate in Criminal Justice, he spent roughly fifteen years working in juvenile detention, corrections, and foster care before turning full-time to community economic development.

Under his leadership, Omni Circle secured a $360,000 Heartland Challenge grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and opened its 15,000-square-foot headquarters on SW Topeka Boulevard in 2023. He is a graduate of Leadership Greater Topeka\u2019s Class of 2024 and is currently writing a memoir titled Hard But Fair.