About us

Beforehand (formerly known as Airys) began at Stanford University as a research initiative examining the challenges businesses and local governments face in building a more resilient built environment. The team partners with ULI Greenprint to standardize how submarket risk is considered and contextualized in the acquisition process.

Our team

  • Sabrina Afroz

    Sabrina Afroz

    Co-founder

    Sabrina led research on extreme climate hazard risk to Ontario’s $700 billion public infrastructure portfolio as senior economist at the province’s Legislative Assembly. Her work identified where municipal assets were underfunded and created a pathway for data-driven funding. At Stanford, she specialized in using AI to convert fragmented local government data into an actionable picture of infrastructure gaps. She holds an MBA and an MS in Sustainability from Stanford University.

  • Charles Shi

    Charles Shi

    Co-founder

    Charles co-founded Airys, an AI-enabled advisory firm working on built-environment problems in cities. He has presented work on climate risk and local government finance at NYC Climate Week, the Association for Budgeting and Financial Management annual conference, the ULI Resilience Summit, and ENR FutureTech. He holds an MS in Management Science and Engineering and a BS in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University.

As seen in