After a career in high-stakes finance, Tinashe Noel Tafira found his true calling through profound personal tragedy.
Following the loss of his wife and uncle, Tafira (NT) pivoted to tackle a global crisis: the inability to objectively measure mental health.
His Canada-based startup, CortiOS, aims to become the “Android” of the brain-computer interface world, providing an operating system for wearable EEG devices.
By bridging the gap between psychoneuroimmunology and everyday technology, Tafira is making the invisible visible.
In this exclusive interview with Alpha Media Holdings chairman Trevor Ncube (TN), the visionary entrepreneur discusses the power of early detection, AI therapy, and the mind’s final frontier. Below are excerpts from the interview.
TN: Welcome to In Conversation with Trevor, brought to you by Heart and Soul Broadcasting Services. I go beyond the headlines and the sensation. Today, I am in conversation with Tinashe Noel Tafira, the founder of CortiOS Mental Health Technologies based in Canada.
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Let’s get down to work. The state of our minds is directly linked to the strength of our immune systems. Statistics show that one in five to seven people across the world are living with some form of mental health disorder.
That equates to over one billion people globally. For the first time, we can now measure and categorise your mental health state. Noel Tafira, welcome to In Conversation with Trevor.
NT: Thank you, Trevor, for having me. I’m excited. We first met at the Trevor Associates Think Tank ‘26.
TN: What did you make of that?
NT: It was a lot to take in—quite an insightful platform for ideas and networking. I learned a great deal and made valuable contacts; my social capital really received a boost.
TN: Fantastic. That is what we do. Next year, it takes place around February 27. Hopefully, we will see you there.
But that’s not why we brought you here. We are here to talk about CortiOS Mental Health Technologies and the beautiful work you are doing.
Before we get there, Tinashe, you trained as a banker and studied banking and finance. How does a finance graduate end up building a mental health system? What happened there?
NT: Thank you for that, Trevor. I get that question a lot. I don’t have an answer that many would immediately understand, but I have a firm conviction.
Growing up, I was always inquisitive and excited about what technology could solve. Because of peer pressure after high school, I thought that working in a bank was where life was, simply because you would be dealing with money every day. I ignored a true passion and a calling that I only discovered years later.
TN: That’s fascinating. So, your decision to study finance was influenced by your friends. Who specifically influenced you?
NT: It was friends from high school. We used to discuss where we would go and what sectors were paying the most. Banking and finance came up as a sector for prestige. If you worked in a bank, people were impressed. I was just following the crowd; it wasn't who I really was.
TN: What did that cost you?
NT: Fortunately, it hasn't cost me anything. The principles I learned in banking and finance are now being applied to this new passion. It paid the bills at the time, and I learned valuable lessons that I still apply today.
TN: When did you realise that finance wasn't for you?
NT: It was in 2012. My brother was working for Investec Bank in South Africa, and we decided to start a capital-raising consulting firm together.
We left our corporate jobs to build a company called Genja’s Investments. Our strategy was to organise investment forums across different African countries and provide advisory services and structured deals for companies wanting to set up in those jurisdictions.
We did those forums for years leading up to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Because most of our work was across Africa, we couldn't do much during that time. Also, a few personal incidents occurred that made me start asking certain questions.
TN: We will get to those. I want to touch on something you mentioned: as a teenager, you would write down technological or creative ideas, and then years later, you’d see someone else had built a business around them. Tell me about that.
NT: I have always been a person who asks "what if". I would write a concept from A to Z, detailing how it would function and what problem it would solve. I got satisfaction from that, though no one told me I could create a business out of it.
For example, before Dropbox existed, I watched my father go to work every day with a briefcase — the kind with a combination lock. I asked myself: what if everyone could own a briefcase in the cloud to keep their documents safe in case they lost their laptop or phone? I called my concept The Briefcase. Dropbox came out two years later.
TN: How did that feel?
NT: It felt like I was too early. I didn't know it was possible to create something like that from Africa. I started questioning if these were ideas I was meant to build businesses around.
I decided I had to be intentional. As I was researching, CortiOS Mental Health Technologies was born.
TN: You mentioned your experience during Covid-19. Walk us through that period of spiritual and personal work.
NT: Covid-19 took a toll on everyone, but for me, it was a time for self-introspection. I started zooming in on my technology concepts and researching healthcare issues because of an unfortunate personal incident.
TN: Let me stop you there, as this is a sensitive subject. That incident was the loss of your wife and your uncle, Joe. Your wife passed away from an autoimmune disease, and shortly after, you lost your uncle to a stroke. That grief propelled you into what you are building now. Would you like to talk about that?
*Read full interview on www.standard.co.zw
*In Conversation With Trevor is a weekly show brought to you by Heart and Soul Broadcasting Services.