01
Foundations
Nazrawi Ghebreselasie, commonly called Naz, is a mathematician, entrepreneur, and strategist whose work spans media, technology, education, marketing, finance, and the sciences. Trained in physics and holding a master’s degree in mathematics from the University of Toronto, his intellectual and professional pursuits are driven by a fascination with how complex systems work, how human beings make decisions, and how knowledge from seemingly unrelated disciplines can produce new ways of understanding the world.
02
Building
He is the co-founder and CEO of Kana Television, one of Ethiopia’s most influential media companies, and the founder of STRATIX STUDIO, a strategic consulting firm, and PRISM, a media and creative enterprise. He serves as an advisor to Sand Technologies and PFL Africa, and chairs the Marketing Committee of the Board of African Leadership University (ALU). His work has involved building businesses, developing institutional strategies, advising leadership teams, and navigating the intersection of technology, commerce, media, and human behaviour.
03
Scientific thinking
A significant part of his professional inquiry concerns the application of scientific reasoning to business and marketing. He is particularly interested in advancing marketing as an engineering discipline, grounded in probability, mathematics, empirical evidence, and the systematic study of consumer behaviour. His work explores how organisations can move beyond intuition and conventional marketing practices towards more rigorous models of growth, decision-making, and resource allocation. This interest reflects a broader conviction that many disciplines traditionally treated as creative or managerial can benefit enormously from scientific methods without losing their human dimensions.
04
Beyond business
His intellectual interests extend into complexity science, behavioural psychology, anthropology, philosophy, history, economics, and decision theory. He is especially drawn to questions about how individual behaviour produces collective outcomes, why institutions function as they do, and how apparently simple phenomena conceal complex underlying mechanisms.
Music has also been a lifelong pursuit. A guitarist since childhood, Nazrawi previously worked as a session and performing musician in Toronto. Despite an increasingly demanding professional schedule, he occasionally returns to the studio to contribute guitar performances to recordings by other artists.
05
The studio
He founded Polymath Studio as a home for interdisciplinary inquiry, independent thought, and the practical application of ideas. His writing brings together mathematics, scientific reasoning, historical perspectives, business experience, and personal observation to explore questions across the sciences, society, technology, and the human condition.
Underlying his work is a simple and persistent curiosity: how do things actually work, and what becomes possible when we stop examining them through the boundaries of individual disciplines?