Shoaib Abbasi founded Strategic Systems International (SSI) in 1991 out of an incubator space at Northwestern University, building a company on a simple premise: helping clients solve business problems through mathematics. Before starting SSI, Abbasi served as director of applications development at General Optimization, Inc., where he built decision-support systems for healthcare, transportation, financial services, and manufacturing clients — grounding that would shape SSI’s identity as an advanced-analytics and software-engineering firm rather than a generalist consultancy.
Under Abbasi’s leadership, SSI grew from a Chicago-area startup into a global operation with offices across Europe, Asia, and Latin America, serving clients ranging from venture-backed tech startups to Fortune 100 companies. The firm’s work has spanned fintech, healthtech, big data, machine learning, and IoT, with Abbasi personally leading enterprise strategy and supply chain optimization engagements for organizations including U.S. Steel, Weyerhaeuser, Kraft, and Newsweek, along with human-capital optimization projects for several Chicago-area hospital systems.
After 32 years steering SSI’s daily operations, Abbasi transitioned to the role of Chairman in April 2023, handing day-to-day leadership to Humayun Latif and Shahab while retaining his position at the helm of three additional companies he founded: Quantis International, The Optimé Group, and Optimé Supply Chain. Reflecting publicly on the handoff, Abbasi credited SSI’s endurance to the difficulty smaller technology companies face in building teams capable of meeting the demands of large enterprise clients.
Abbasi holds a master’s degree in business administration and has built a career profile as a serial technology entrepreneur and investor, with particular expertise in mathematical and analytical optimization applied to business strategy and operations. He remains active as an investor in early-stage technology companies, extending a three-decade pattern of building organizations at the intersection of quantitative rigor and enterprise software.
