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Abhimanyu Gupta

Leadership

Running programs before I ran classrooms — and still running both

My leadership experience spans technology organizations, large distributed teams, client-facing delivery programs, and academic initiatives — including the One-Year MBA Practicum Projects at the Chaifetz School of Business.

17Years

Technology industry experience

150+

Professionals led across delivery organizations

$7M

QA portfolio responsibility for a global bank

Ph.D.+ M.Stat.

Information systems and statistics foundation

IT consulting leadership

Clients I led delivery for

Enterprise programs delivered during my consulting leadership career, prior to academia.

  • Citibank
  • MetLife
  • MassMutual
  • Medco
  • Wells Fargo
  • Equifax

One-Year MBA Practicum

Project sponsors

Organizations that sponsor live consulting projects for MBA student teams I direct.

  • Equifax
  • Nestlé Purina
  • Together Credit Union
  • Bayer
  • Technology Partners

Founder

Ideate Forward Consulting

AI consulting and capability-building for growing businesses

Ideate Forward helps small businesses adopt AI confidently with expert strategy, hands-on team training, and student-powered innovation. Rather than delivering pre-packaged tools, the practice builds internal capability: teams learn to spot AI opportunities, redesign workflows, and sustain innovation from within.

Visit Ideate Forward

Leadership areas

Six kinds of responsibility, one operating instinct

Make the risk visible early, give people the authority to act, and keep the stakeholder in the room.

Program & Project Leadership

  • Program governance
  • Delivery management
  • Multi-team coordination
  • Risk & dependencies
  • Prioritization
  • Stakeholder communication

People Leadership

  • Large distributed teams
  • Coaching & development
  • Staffing & delegation
  • Performance management
  • Building accountability

Client & Stakeholder Leadership

  • Senior stakeholder communication
  • Expectation management
  • Translating business needs
  • Recommendation delivery
  • Cross-functional coordination

Technology & Analytics Leadership

  • Technology delivery
  • Quality engineering
  • Information systems
  • Analytics & data
  • Process improvement
  • Applied AI

Innovation Leadership

  • Problem discovery
  • Experimentation
  • Prototyping
  • Implementation
  • Behavioral design

Academic Program Leadership

  • Practicum administration
  • Experiential education
  • Co-curricular design
  • Sponsor relationships
  • Curricular partnership

Selected career stories

Five situations, and what they actually required

Expand any of these for the situation, the scale, what I did, and what it taught me.

Trajectory

Not a ladder. An accumulation.

Each phase kept the capabilities from the last one and added a new context to apply them in.

  1. 1995 – 2000

    Quantitative foundation

    B.Sc. in Statistics and Mathematics, University of Calcutta. M.Stat. in Biostatistics and Data Analysis, Indian Statistical Institute.

  2. 2000 – 2015

    Technology delivery and leadership

    Cognizant, Tata Consultancy Services, and Infosys — from analyst to Senior Project Manager and Lead Consultant, culminating in large-scale QA portfolio ownership.

  3. 2015 – 2017

    Independent practice and enterprise strategy

    Co-founded Testing Algorithms; quality assurance strategy at Equifax and business test analysis at Wells Fargo Advisors.

  4. 2017 – 2023

    Doctoral research

    Ph.D. in Information Systems, Ghent University — conceptual modeling and requirements engineering, alongside a research scientist appointment.

  5. 2018 – Present

    Teaching at Chaifetz School of Business

    Instructor, then Assistant Professor in Operations and IT Management. Statistics, analytics, machine learning, and data management across BS, MS, and MBA programs.

  6. 2023 – Present

    AI, pedagogy, and building

    Director of the One-Year MBA Practicum Projects at the Chaifetz School of Business, founder of Ideate Forward Consulting, and a growing body of educational applications built, piloted, and revised in live courses.

Featured conversation

Modeling Truly Human Leadership in the Classroom

Barry-Wehmiller | Truly Human Leadership Podcast

A conversation on leadership, human connection, and how leadership principles can shape the student experience.

Listen to the podcast

Next

The same delivery discipline, applied to student teams and real sponsors.

See the practicum courses