Izhan Ansari IZHAN

[noun]

an operator and product builder — equal parts brand, ops, and code

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01 About

I strive to challenge the way we think.

It all started in elementary school…

I drew a picture of a flying car in elementary school. I was determined to invent it. While flying cars will not require bridges, flying cars and bridges are not that different. When bridges were first thought of, it was a crazy, novel idea. Think about it — a structure that connects two far away lands that can sustain the weight of multiple cars. Imagine the fear of the people who first drove over it! But we don’t have the same fear when we drive over bridges today. They have become embedded into our society. We consider them a norm.

A flying car is no different than a bridge. It is a new invention that will challenge our current way of life and become the norm. Likewise, I hope to become a pioneer that develops innovation in the digital space. Although I am no longer in elementary school, my mission is the same: I aim to build the norms of tomorrow.

These days that looks less like drawing and more like shipping. I have founded and scaled a consumer brand, managed a restaurant turnaround, and built software across web and mobile — moving between brand strategy, growth marketing, workflow automation, and full-stack development depending on what the problem needs.

Izhan as a child, the boy who drew flying cars
The boy who drew flying cars.
02 Experience

I have had an impact in various roles.

  1. Sahara Delights

    Founder & Chief Operator

    Dec 2025 – Present · Cary, NC

    Small-batch Middle Eastern confectionery brand.

    • Launched in 6 weeks — a luxury stuffed-fruit gifting brand that scaled to $40K monthly revenue across e-commerce, corporate catering, and wholesale.
    • Cut fulfillment time ~40% by deploying a custom React fulfillment tool that replaced order-by-order production with a parallel, data-driven workflow — telling staff exactly how many of each item to make and which box sizes and labels to prep.
    • Developed full brand positioning, visual identity, and packaging for 6 product collections, including naming, copywriting, and a calm-luxury aesthetic that drove repeat gifting and corporate adoption.
  2. Hibachi Blue

    Operations & Technology Manager

    Nov 2023 – Present · Cary, NC

    Independent restaurant concept.

    • Took a declining restaurant through a full operational turnaround, reaching breakeven within 13 months despite renovation costs and a complete team rebuild.
    • Overhauled the technology stack from Square to Toast — configuring KDS, kiosk ordering, and standardized ticket workflows that cut order errors ~30% and average ticket time 25%.
    • Redesigned the menu, built an online ordering site, and unified pricing across DoorDash, Grubhub, and Uber Eats — repositioning the brand as a fresh build-your-own concept and growing online order volume 50%.
  3. CovClinic

    Growth & Operations Lead

    Nov 2020 – Jun 2021 · Las Vegas, NV

    Healthcare & COVID testing provider.

    • Scaled the operation to 14 sites across 5 states — closing corporate, event, and athletics accounts driving 1,400+ tests per week and securing venues through profit-sharing negotiations.
    • Built a patient registration web app that raised throughput 80%, automating exports into each lab's unique result format and back into branded PDFs delivered to customer portals.
    • Designed automated email workflows via Google Sheets to deliver personalized results to thousands of patients weekly, eliminating manual outreach entirely.
  4. MetLife

    Software Engineering Associate

    Jun – Aug 2019 · Cary, NC

    Global insurance provider.

    • Built a self-service VM provisioning web app in PowerShell and HTML/CSS — firewall-restricted and authenticated with company credentials — that removed a 3-day manual bottleneck, letting engineers provision their own machines in under 5 minutes.
  5. Perkbox

    Client Solutions Associate

    Jun – Aug 2018 · London, UK

    Employee benefits and recognition platform.

    • Built an Excel macro that automated client usage reporting across a 10-person team, eliminating 20+ labor hours of daily data formatting.
    • Joined a cross-functional product team to prototype a gamified perk discovery feature — wireframing UX flows and building a leaderboard concept from ideation to implementation for enterprise clients including Whole Foods and Levi's.
03 Projects

I am curious and love to build.

SHUKR

iOS prayer & habit tracker · 2024 – Present

A SwiftUI app shipped to TestFlight with 100 beta users. Consolidates prayer times, direction, and tracking into one view with color-coded progress, replacing the fragmented three-screen experience common in competing apps.

Engineered non-standard iOS features: an interactive home screen widget with live state changes, a Shortcuts-based alarm that bypasses native alarm restrictions, and a tiered reminder system that escalates at 50% and 25% of remaining prayer time. Built from scratch with no prior native iOS experience.

  • SwiftUI
  • Swift
  • WidgetKit
  • TestFlight

Sahara Fulfillment Tool

Internal ops software · Sahara Delights

A custom React tool that replaced order-by-order production with a parallel, data-driven workflow — computing exactly how many of each item to make and which box sizes and shipping labels to prep for a given batch.

Cut fulfillment time by roughly 40% and made peak gifting season staffable by people who had never packed an order before.

  • React
  • Shopify
  • ShipStation
  • Ops tooling

MOLD3D

Product Innovation Lab, NC State · 2025

Led product strategy for a rapid-tooling concept using 3D-printed molds for injection molding — running customer interviews, design thinking research, market sizing, and competitive analysis to evaluate product-market fit across manufacturing use cases.

Collaborated with industry sponsor Rapid Shape on CAD assets and prototypes to ground the solution in real additive manufacturing constraints, and built the pitch materials that translated it into a business case.

  • Product strategy
  • Customer research
  • Fusion 360

Patient Registration App

CovClinic · 2020 – 2021

A contactless registration web app that lifted testing throughput 80% at the height of demand. Automated the messy part: exporting patient data into each lab's own required result format, then pulling results back into branded PDFs delivered straight to customer portals.

  • Web app
  • Google Apps Script
  • Automation

VM Self-Service Portal

MetLife · 2019

An internal web app letting engineers provision their own virtual machines. Built in PowerShell and HTML/CSS, firewall-restricted and authenticated against company credentials. Turned a 3-day manual request queue into a 5-minute self-serve flow.

  • PowerShell
  • HTML/CSS
  • Active Directory

Tinkering

Side quests and rabbit holes. Mostly documented in Notion.

04 Toolkit

Trained for it, and still learning.

Education

Master of Engineering Management

North Carolina State University — Entrepreneurship Concentration

Dec 2025 · Raleigh, NC · GPA 3.90

Hi-Tech Product Launches · Managing New Product Creation · Practical Machine Learning · Operations Research · Applied Engineering Economics · Engineering Leadership & Strategic Change · Project Management · Experimental Statistics

BS Business Administration & BA Computer Science

UNC Chapel Hill — Kenan-Flagler Business School

May 2020 · Chapel Hill, NC · GPA 3.73

Data Structures · Web Programming · Robotics · Corporate Finance · Venture Capital · Advanced Spreadsheet Modeling · Entrepreneurship

Skills

Languages & Frameworks

  • JavaScript
  • React.js
  • Node.js
  • SwiftUI
  • Swift
  • Python
  • Java
  • C++
  • HTML/CSS
  • VBA
  • BASH
  • PowerShell
  • Google Apps Script

Tools & Platforms

  • Shopify
  • Liquid
  • Xcode
  • TestFlight
  • Vercel
  • Figma
  • Salesforce
  • Toast POS
  • ShipStation
  • Meta Ads Manager
  • Canva
  • Excel/Sheets
  • Cloudflare
  • WordPress
  • Fusion 360

AI Tools

  • Claude
  • ChatGPT
  • Cursor

Competencies

  • Product Operations
  • Brand Strategy
  • Workflow Automation
  • API Integration
  • Data Analysis
  • Agile/Sprint Management
  • Human-Centered Design
  • Wireframing
  • Consumer UX