Alumni Spotlight: Zainab Ghadiyali, Tech Founder

When Zainab Ghadiyali (MSIE ’12, MSCS ’12) arrived at UW–Madison, she didn’t plan to become a tech founder. She planned to fix healthcare.

But curiosity has a way of rewriting plans.

A chance encounter with systems engineering introduced her to a new kind of problem-solving, one that used data, design, and optimization to make life better at scale. That discovery set her on a path that would take her from Wisconsin research labs to Silicon Valley boardrooms, and eventually to the frontlines of AI innovation.

Today, Ghadiyali is the founder of Stackbirds, an AI infrastructure platform helping small businesses hire and manage digital agents in minutes. Her journey, from re-architecting Airbnb’s codebase to launching Facebook’s first healthcare product, embodies the same spirit she found in Madison: use technology to help people, and never stop learning.

Finding Her Academic Path at UW–Madison

When Ghadiyali came to Madison in 2010, it was to pursue a PhD in Health Economics. But early into her program, she met Kim Johnson, research lead at NIATx, a flagship initiative within the Center for Health Enhancement Systems Studies (CHESS) housed in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE).

That collaboration changed everything.

Working on healthcare-optimization projects exposed her to a new toolkit: systems thinking, process design, and a data-driven approach to human problems. She was hooked.

Despite not having an engineering background, she switched programs, determined to earn her master’s in industrial and systems engineering. It meant tackling prerequisites, long hours, and plenty of self-teaching, but she thrived on the challenge.

“UW–Madison was the most productive and formative period of my life,” she says. “That’s where I learned that I can teach myself anything I need to learn.”

It’s a trait that would define every chapter that followed.

A Launchpad into the Tech Industry

Near the end of her master’s program, Ghadiyali joined a campus hackathon on a whim, and left with a job offer. Her team’s prototype caught the attention of visiting Facebook executives, leading to an internship at the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters in 2011.

There, she joined the founding Ads Growth team, helping small businesses advertise on the platform. She didn’t have a computer-science degree, but she had grit, and she taught herself to code late into the night.

Her mentors noticed. They encouraged her to pursue a second master’s degree in computer science, adding another layer to her skill set.

Back at Facebook full-time, she went on to develop Facebook’s first public-health product, a blood-donation feature that connected millions of donors to hospitals. Within a year, 30 million people had registered. Today, that number exceeds 100 million.

Championing Innovation and Inclusion

In 2016, Ghadiyali joined Airbnb, where she led a company-wide re-architecture of its core technology stack, one of the company’s top six strategic priorities at the time. Around that same period, she co-founded Wogrammer, a media platform created to tell the stories of women in STEM.

Wogrammer quickly grew to more than 4 million readers and was later acquired by AnitaB.org, the leading organization supporting women in tech. For her efforts to expand representation in the industry, Ghadiyali was named one of Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers.

From 2022 to 2024, she brought her expertise to Canva, where she helped lead major infrastructure and enterprise-enablement initiatives used by millions worldwide. Working across time zones from Austin to Sydney, she often spent her mornings leading product reviews, and her afternoons building her next startup.

Building Startups with Purpose

Ghadiyali’s first venture, Eat Cook Joy, was born from a simple idea: local chefs should have the same tech tools as global restaurant chains. The platform connects home chefs with customers looking for healthy, affordable meals.

It wasn’t all smooth sailing with a cyberattack hit early on, but the team bounced back. Within seven months, the company hit $1 million in annual revenue with only one full-time employee. Not bad for a bootstrapped kitchen-table startup.

With a new CEO now leading Eat Cook Joy’s expansion, Ghadiyali turned her attention to her next big mission: Stackbirds.

The company is building the infrastructure for small businesses to adopt AI without needing to code, train models, or hire data scientists. “Equitable access to technology is what drives me,” she says. “AI shouldn’t replace people. It should amplify them.”

A Commitment to Mentorship and Community

Even with two startups running, Ghadiyali hasn’t lost her connection to Madison. She recently served on the Industrial Advisory Board for the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering and mentors early-career professionals each month.

Her advice for students is simple, and very her:

“Don’t just chase grades. The relationships you build will matter just as much, maybe more.”

Looking Ahead

With both Eat Cook Joy and Stackbirds gaining traction, Ghadiyali shows no signs of slowing down. She’s as energized by what’s ahead as she was when she first walked into the NIATx lab in Madison more than a decade ago.

“I haven’t even gotten started,” she says. And given her track record, that’s not a cliché. It’s a promise.

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