The Firm
Most advisers enter after the question has been established.
IHSAN enters earlier.
Strategy begins with a decision about what deserves to be pursued. But that decision does not emerge from nowhere. It develops inside an environment shaped by assumptions, evidence, incentives, constraints, alternatives, objectives, precedent, uncertainty and the people permitted to influence the question.
IHSAN examines that environment.
Structure
Before strategy, there is structure.
A consequential decision can be carefully analyzed and still begin from the wrong premise. A sophisticated strategy can answer the wrong question. An institution can execute exceptionally well against a decision that deserved greater examination before commitment.
Our work exists before those activities. We examine how the decision became intelligible in its present form—and what becomes visible when its underlying structure is exposed.
Independence
Independence by design.
Our economic interest is the examination, and any further engagement you choose to commission.
The discipline
One firm. One discipline.
IHSAN exists for consequential decisions: decisions capable of materially affecting capital, institutions, enterprises, governments, families, reputation, or long-term direction.
We work directly with principals and those entrusted with consequential judgment. Engagements are confidential and deliberately limited.
The founder
Ihsan Beezer.
IHSAN Advisory was founded by Ihsan Beezer to establish an independent form of counsel before strategy begins. His work examines how decisions take shape: the assumptions that define a situation, the incentives that influence advice, and the institutional conditions that make some alternatives visible while others remain outside the frame.
The path.
Ihsan was born in Brooklyn and raised largely in Maryland, the son of Jamaican immigrants. His mother served as an officer and nurse in the United States Air Force.
He began his career in New York as an investment banking analyst at Credit Suisse First Boston, in the Financial Institutions Group. He then spent about a year in China, teaching English at Shanghai University, before returning to financial services: two years training financial professionals on Thomson Financial software, then work as a consultant inside the Investment Banking Division at Goldman Sachs.
For the next decade he founded and led 7Wmedia, a strategy and marketing firm serving small businesses, before turning to doctoral study.
Scholarship.
Ihsan is a doctoral candidate in strategy and entrepreneurship at Rutgers Business School, now completing his doctorate. His research examines entrepreneurship, framing, and how emerging ventures are evaluated. He is affiliated with Rutgers’ RAISED institute, received a Kauffman Foundation Knowledge Challenge grant for his research, and has published in Social Forces.
For four years he was a Princeton University Administrative Fellow, hosted by the Keller Center, where he helped lead the Black Entrepreneurship History Workshop series. He has taught at Rutgers University–Newark and, as an adjunct professor at Morehouse College, taught the history of Black entrepreneurship in the United States.
Education.
He began his undergraduate studies at New York University and completed a B.A. in Economics at the University of Maryland, College Park. He holds an M.S. in Management from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, where he also began his doctoral studies before continuing them at Rutgers.
The work now.
His work combines independent advisory, research, and writing on consequential decisions. He divides his time between the Washington, DC area and Barcelona.