Strategy & Operations — Miami, FL

I design the strategy
— then operationalize it.

Strategy and operations leader with 10+ years across management consulting, agency leadership, and corporate advisory. I take ambiguous problems, structure them into clear plans, and operationalize them into measurable outcomes.

Hiring for a strategy, operations, or Chief of Staff role — or exploring a consulting engagement? Either way, let's talk.

The Through-Line

Most people sit on one side of the line. I work across both.

Strategy professionals are often asked the same question: can they actually land it? My career has been built on answering yes. I've spent equal time defining the strategy and driving the execution — carrying the work from a sharpened plan through pilot and roll-out into a running operation. The value isn't in the deck or the diagnosis alone; it's in carrying the concept from idea to a working operating reality, and standing up the cadences, metrics, and governance that make it last.

The Strategy
  • Positioning
  • Conceptualization
  • Design
  • Development
The Execution
  • Piloting
  • Roadmapping
  • Roll-out
  • Operationalization
Selected Work

Where I've operated — from building something from zero to landing change across thousands of people.

01
AI-native workforce-intelligence startup

Building the transformation engine from zero

Situation

A pre-seed AI company needed to pivot from selling basic workforce intelligence to something sharper: identifying where and how to embed AI and agentic workflows to actually transform how a business operates. The product, the proof, and the path to customers all had to be defined more or less from scratch.

Approach

Operating as interim Head of Transformation, I shaped the MVP and personalized it toward real customer needs; defined the base set of OKRs and KPIs the product would track to initiate and measure AI transformation; and built out the process for developing the sales material used to engage prospective customers. In practice, I de-risked the product-and-proof side of the business so the founder could stay focused on outreach and the raise.

0 → 1
MVP sharpened for AI transformation
2
Target segments & value propositions defined
AI-NATIVE OKRs
Built to initiate & measure transformation
02
GLOBAL TECHNOLOGY AND DIGITAL-PAYMENTS LEADER

Turning a manual partner machine into an automated one

Situation

A global technology and digital-payments leader was bottlenecked onboarding and managing its B2B partners. Bespoke, non-translating processes ran in parallel across business development, product, partner operations, marketing, legal, and business operations — slow, manual, and impossible to scale.

Approach

I designed an intake process that automated business development's partner questionnaire and automated the hand-off gate from BD into partner operations using process automation and triggers — replacing manual coordination with a system that moved partners through the funnel on its own.

Outcome

Teams onboarded B2B partners at roughly 2.5× the prior rate within four months, while 48% of capacity was freed across the BD and partner-operations teams to focus on higher-value work. The engagement deepened a multi-year relationship with the client, expanding our scope there — and earned me a promotion from Senior Consultant to Manager.

4
Months to measurable impact
48%
Team capacity freed
2.5×
Partner-onboarding capacity
03
FORTUNE 100 TECHNOLOGY LEADER

Making a personalization investment actually pay off

Situation

A Fortune 100 technology leader had already invested heavily in a marketing tech stack for personalized campaigns — but couldn't achieve true personalization. The teams weren't structured for it, and the effort kept getting deprioritized because no one shared a clear vision of what they were building or why it mattered. The technology was in place; the operating model to use it wasn't.

Approach

Our charter was threefold: align the teams on one personalization strategy, determine what it would take to activate personalization on the existing tech investment, and design an operating model to harmonize the work. I built a product-centered pod structure that pulled together all seven relevant functions, defined the end-to-end process from persona identification to campaign delivery, and set clear roles and responsibilities across the flow.

Outcome

Piloted across two product teams, the new model drove a 24% lift in sales-qualified leads and tangible revenue attributable to the marketing organization. Beyond the numbers, it gave the org a working way to run personalized campaigns — and helped it avoid a planned round of layoffs.

7
Functions unified into product pods
2
Product teams stood up
24%
Lift in sales-qualified leads
04
S&P 400 HOSPITALITY & VACATION-OWNERSHIP LEADER

Landing a system change across 5,000 people

Situation

An S&P 400 hospitality and vacation-ownership leader was replacing its existing systems with a single Source-to-Pay platform spanning its entire procurement organization — accounts payable, corporate finance, purchasing organizations, and property teams. A new system only delivers if people actually adopt it.

Approach

I built a change-management strategy that meshed top-down sponsorship with bottom-up buy-in, using organizational change champions inside each affected group to grow support from within and maximize adoption. Alongside the strategy, I created the training timelines, training approach, and training materials so every party knew the system and exactly how they'd use it day to day.

Outcome

At the adoption levels we achieved, the business was positioned to realize 16% procurement savings — over $45M across a two-year horizon — with the change landing across more than 5,000 employees.

5,000+
Employees impacted
16%
Procurement efficiency
$45M+
Projected savings, 2-yr
How I Can Help

Three problems I'm built to solve.

Operating Model Transformation & Optimization

Redesign how teams, processes, and hand-offs actually work — from operating-model design to the cadences, roles, and reporting that make it stick. Most of the work above lives here.

GTM Strategy & Operationalization

Translate growth strategy into the structures, processes, and metrics that move pipeline and revenue — then operationalize it across the functions that own it.

Where I'm focused now

AI Transformation Strategy & Execution

Apply the same operating-model and go-to-market discipline to AI — finding where agentic workflows create real leverage, then optimizing the processes, cadences, and roles that make adoption actually stick.

Track Record

A fuller picture, beyond the flagship engagements.

Deloitte — continued

Deepened a multi-year client relationship into a portfolio of engagements — identifying whitespace, expanding into 5 business units, and driving $1M+ in recurring annual revenue, including work that lifted operational efficiency for 500+ customer-facing agents. Championed a $25M+ pipeline initiative for the Customer Strategy practice — defining KPIs, building tracking frameworks, and driving accountability across the Technology service line.

Born Group — PE-backed e-commerce agency, NY

Owned ~80% of the domestic client portfolio with 90% retention and $400K in managed annual revenue; won 3 new clients / $1.1M ARR through scoped, profitability-aligned proposals; and led a cross-functional team of 10 to ship 8 websites under budget and ahead of schedule. On the marketing side, grew client online sales by up to 45% and daily sales by up to 67% over six months through integrated omni-channel strategy.

About

I'm Ishan Gulati, a strategy and operations leader based in Miami. I spent five years in Deloitte's Technology, Media & Telecom practice serving Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 clients on commercial strategy, customer experience, and operational excellence — and before that led teams and client portfolios at a private-equity-backed digital agency in New York. Across 10+ years and 6+ years of direct people management, I've worked at the seam between strategy and execution: structuring ambiguous problems into clear plans, then operationalizing them into outcomes. I'm currently focused on AI transformation — helping leadership teams scale their organizations with AI tooling and agentic workflows.

Education
  • MBA, Vanderbilt University (Owen) — concentrations in Strategy & Operations. Student President & Board Member, Strategy & Consulting Club.
  • BA, Economics (minor: Business), Brandeis University.
Toolkit

SQL · Tableau · Looker · Salesforce CRM · Excel · PowerPoint · JIRA · Microsoft Project · Claude · ChatGPT · Lovable · Gamma · AI-augmented analytics & reporting

Contact

Let's talk.

Whether you're hiring or scoping a project, the fastest way to reach me is right here.

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