About
I'm an Associate Professor of Information Systems and Supply Chain Management at the Howard University School of Business. I care about optimization where it matters most — for mobile money agents in East Africa, for voters left out of American democracy, and for anyone trying to cross a street safely.
Over twenty years I've done strategic analytics for the World Food Programme, the American Red Cross, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, many political campaigns, and corporate clients as a consultant with the Boston Consulting Group.
Milestones
- 2007BS, Electrical Engineering & Economics, Duke University
- 2018DBA, Technology & Operations Management, Harvard Business School — dissertation on inventory optimization for mobile money agents in Tanzania, Kenya, and Zambia
- 2022Howard University School of Business Teaching Award — highest aggregate student evaluations in the school
- 2026–27On sabbatical in the Netherlands, studying financial-inclusion operations from the other side of the Atlantic
Why this site looks the way it does
I have Stargardt disease, a form of juvenile macular degeneration. Most of the web is set in type I can't comfortably read. Rather than treat accessibility as a compliance checkbox, this site treats legibility as its whole design language: highway-sign typography, eye-chart structure, and no text smaller than most sites' headlines. Louis Braille is on my heroes list for a reason — and the body face here, Atkinson Hyperlegible, was designed by the Braille Institute for readers like me.
Elsewhere
- balasubramanian.org — the short version of me
- Heroes — the people I measure myself against
- Newsletter — occasional writing
- Better Streets — why I care about safer roads
How I see
I have Stargardt disease — juvenile macular degeneration. The center of my visual field is gone; everything on this site is big and high-contrast because that's what I need to read it. Press H (or ) to borrow my eyes for a minute: the blur follows your pointer, because the scotoma follows my gaze. That's why this site looks like road signage.