Ian Smith

After graduating Cum Laude from the University of North Carolina, I moved to Asia where I broadened my linguistic skills and practical business experience in operations and people management. With nearly five years experience in the world's most dynamic economy, I returned to the United States to help re-tool a New York real estate brokerage. Navigating through a difficult economy by focusing on extensive talent development and specialization in a heavily saturated marketplace; my partners and I built an incredible team. After many years building a real estate business (growing from 5 to 178 employees) and wanting to give back, I joined a team of superheroes to assist in operationalizing the financial and operational capabilities of one of NYC's fastest growing non-profit organizations, growing support by 340%. Following my fearless leader from the charity, I jumped at the chance to work for Insight Catastrophe Group. At ICG/SageSure where I streamlined HR, IT and Real Estate/Facilities verticals, spearheaded critical cross departmental projects, drove cost savings through adept negotiations (Averaging a 23% price reduction from initial to final quote for all vendor contracts). At SageSure I was provided the opportunity to co-manage the company's Business Continuity Program as well as manage its COVID-19 response, experimenting in various RTO strategies as the company adopted a hybrid workplace strategy. In late 2022, I moved from a part-time consulting role to a full-time one as two of my friends asked me to assist the creation of an online marketplace. Through a thrilling 12-month period we were able to successfully ideate, source and execute a product from Beta to Alpha and the final product debut in July as it went live in the app-store and Google marketplace. With another project completed on-time and under-budget I now look to pursuing new challenges.