Birju Shah
Clinical Assistant Professor of Marketing
Currently Birju is a clinical assistant professor of Product Management and AI at Kellogg. Birju Shah is a seasoned product leader, entrepreneur, and educator with over 15 years of experience in building and scaling innovative AI and ML products for various industries and use cases. He is the CEO of Loam, an AI-powered land platform that helps purchase large swaths of farmland for generational purposes for family offices and land banks. He is also a Clinical Assistant Professor of Product and AI at Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management, where he teaches and mentors students and executives on how to design, develop, and deploy intelligent products including, but not exclusive to AI and ML products and platforms. He has been a CPO, CEO, and President, while an academic professor for the last decade.
Prior to Loam, Birju was the head of healthcare products at Uber and the head of product for ML/AI at Uber, where he managed large product, data, and engineering teams that built over 10 products used by 2 billion people worldwide with an attributed total market cap value of over $3 billion. He also has experience in starting his own ventures, working at large tech organizations in their early and mature stages, and transforming various commercial organizations via private equity buyouts. His approach to launching and evolving products is based on data-driven decision-making, digital transformation, and achieving large outcomes. Birju is passionate about using technology for long-term sustainability and equity up-leveling, and is actively seeking a mission-driven public board role that leverages his expertise in AI, ML, and sustainability governance.
Birju holds an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Business, where he was a McGovern Scholar and a Legatum Scholar. Birju is a graduate of Northwestern University with a BSE in Industrial Engineering.
- Research: Business Innovation
- Digital Marketing
- Enterprise Analytics
- Machine Learning
- Sensors
- AIProfessional: Product strategy
- Business Innovation
- Digital Marketing
- Product in AI
- Product ManagementProduct StrategyMachine LearningAISustainabilityFounder & StartupAlternative Asset Investment
-
-
-
B.S.E., 2005, Industrial Engineering, Northwestern University
MBA, 2012, MIT Sloan School of Business -
Emerging Leader fellow, Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 2025
EMBA: Leading into the Future
Elevate your leadership in a world transformed by digital innovation and generative AI. Designed for Kellogg Executive MBA alumni, EMBA: Leading into the Future offers a deep dive into how to strategically navigate today’s complex business landscape. With exclusive insights from Kellogg’s esteemed faculty, discover how to harness emerging technologies and lead at the highest levels with enhanced creativity and confidence.
Generative AI: Executive Strategies to Unlock Enterprise Value
The speed of adoption and the impact of generative AI presents massive opportunities as well as challenges, with early adopters – and early winners – coming from a variety of industries. Through a powerful mix of lectures, original frameworks, case studies and hands-on learning, leaders in different roles, industries and functions will gain a comprehensive understanding of the foundation of generative AI and its practical applications – with a focus on use cases across the enterprise value chain.
Unlocking Executive & Enterprise Value with Generative AI (STRTX-992-0)
Unlocking Executive & Enterprise Value with Generative AI
Unlocking Executive & Enterprise Value with Generative AI (STRTX-922-0)
Professionals who grasp AI concepts can make more informed decisions regarding the adoption, implementation & utilization of AI applications within their domains. They can recognize the potential of AI to drive innovation, identify new revenue streams, improve customer experience & operational efficiency...leading to competitive advantage. This course focuses on value capture & creation pedagogy for the AI executive to unlock value.
Global Initiatives in Management (GIM) (INTLX-473-0)
All FT GIM classes will hold a final, mandatory class session. Please refer to each class's syllabi for the date and time.
Global Initiatives in Management (GIM) is an international experiential learning course designed to provide students with an introduction to the unique business opportunities, management practices and market dynamics of a specific region or global industry. The course combines in-class lectures, reading discussions and case studies during the winter quarter with ten days of international field research over spring break. Immersed in the culture and language of their host countries, students will have the opportunity to meet with local business and government leaders, conduct interviews and collect data for their group research projects, and experience some of the unique social and cultural facets of the region. Final presentations and written research reports are due in spring quarter after completion of the overseas portion of the class. Each class section is taught by a faculty member with deep knowledge of the region or industry and supported by an advisor from the Kellogg staff who assists students in planning the field experience. Students are financially responsible for their travel costs, and financial aid is available to those who qualify.
Building and Scaling Intelligent Products: An Entrepreneurial And GenAI Perspective (ENTRX-960-0)
Field Study (MKTG-498-0)
Field Studies include those opportunities outside of the regular curriculum in which a student is working with an outside company or non-profit organization to address a real-world business challenge for course credit under the oversight of a faculty member.
Product Management for Technology Companies: An Entrepreneurial Perspective (MKTG-458-0)
Product Management for Technology Companies provides the conceptual frameworks, tools and hands-on experience to become successful product managers in technology companies. With a holistic and entrepreneurial perspective of product management, the course provides an end-to-end view of all major aspects of product management and product marketing. Topics include product opportunity analysis, product discovery, business model design, agile product development, go-to-market strategy, whole offer design, ecosystem management, product planning and managing products as an ongoing business. This comprehensive approach prepares students for various product-focused roles, including product management, product marketing, product planning and business development. The case studies and assignments in the course are all developed at Kellogg and designed specifically for the course. Assignments include a wireframing assignment, a SaaS economics quantitative assignment and a product roadmapping assignment. The case studies and course content reflect a balance between product management in large technology companies versus smaller technology startup companies.
Global Initiatives in Management (GIM) (INTL-473-0)
All FT GIM classes will hold a final, mandatory class session. Please refer to each class's syllabi for the date and time.
Global Initiatives in Management (GIM) is an international experiential learning course designed to provide students with an introduction to the unique business opportunities, management practices and market dynamics of a specific region or global industry. The course combines in-class lectures, reading discussions and case studies during the winter quarter with ten days of international field research over spring break. Immersed in the culture and language of their host countries, students will have the opportunity to meet with local business and government leaders, conduct interviews and collect data for their group research projects, and experience some of the unique social and cultural facets of the region. Final presentations and written research reports are due in spring quarter after completion of the overseas portion of the class. Each class section is taught by a faculty member with deep knowledge of the region or industry and supported by an advisor from the Kellogg staff who assists students in planning the field experience. Students are financially responsible for their travel costs, and financial aid is available to those who qualify.
Commercializing Innovations (ENTR-958-0)
Success for new technology is driven by the ability of a business to create and capture value through innovation - from product innovation to business model innovation. This experience-based course, conducted in partnership with the Querrey InQbation Lab, offers students a chance to put innovation to work by developing commercial opportunities for new, unique Northwestern University technologies, innovations and inventions. The course will be most beneficial to students with an interest in starting up a business, entrepreneurship, business design, business strategy consulting and commercialization. The objective of this course is to develop a business project (from business concept to business plan) to the point of potential commercial launch. More information on the projects for this quarter is available here. Entrance to this course is by application only. This application is available here.
Building Intelligent Products (ENTR-922-5)
Two defining characteristics of the technology industry are its dynamic nature and the inter-connected nature of customers with technology products and services. This results in a continuous need for new products - and for managing all of the aspects of discovering, designing, developing, supporting and making money from these products. The MBA course on building intelligent products focuses on a transformative journey of crafting intelligent products that scale globally. Beginning with early transformation success stories of industry giants like Uber and John Deere, participants will unearth the strategic intelligence that catalyzed their evolution into global technology powerhouses. Through a blend of case studies and interactive modules, will deep into strategies like Maslow's hierarchy of data science, strategic share of wallet, and developing machine learning and artificial intelligence outcome narratives in order to build repeatable experimental platforms to scale your products from one use case to multiple use cases, creating option value from day one. As we progress, you'll gain a foundational grasp of machine learning and AI that drives scaled decision making at the profile and loss of each organization. This knowledge serves as a launchpad to reimagine your organization's data use, emphasizing profitability and cost efficiency from the outset. This course has a heavier in practicum component as it is geared to students at the earliest stages of their projects hoping to build data intelligence into their launched products at the start-up phase, or new products and services within their organizations. Thus we will have a heavier example format for the class that focuses launching net new products & services and driving growth for early products and services with product and market fit. Even though this is the case, the start-up and large company examples told through the lectures still apply for the students.
Field Study (ENTR-498-0)
Field Studies include those opportunities outside of the regular curriculum in which a student is working with an outside company or non-profit organization to address a real-world business challenge for course credit under the oversight of a faculty member.
