About Anwar

I go where products need to change how people work — not just what tools they use.

16+ years spanning industrial operations, enterprise consulting, and platform product work — applied as a single integrated operating philosophy, not three separate careers.

Washington, DC  ·  Open to Nationwide Roles  ·  16+ Years Across Three Industries

Anwar Stephens — Product and Operations Transformation Leader
Certification
CSPO® — Scrum Alliance
Certification
Lean Six Sigma Black Belt®
Education
M.S. Engineering Management, Northwestern
Education
B.S. Chemical Engineering, University of Michigan
Career path

Most product leaders have strategy or operations. I've built both from the inside out.

Each role represents a distinct set of challenges, stakeholders, and operating constraints — and each one added a layer to how I think about product, operations, and transformation.

Oct 2019 – Present
Management Consultant
Accenture · Washington, DC
  • Architected and deployed SAP-ServiceNow procurement integration, eliminating bottlenecks and improving experiences for enterprise users serving millions of beneficiaries
  • Delivered analytical frameworks that transformed healthcare operating model, generating $400M in projected savings through process optimization and operational restructuring
  • Led product integration team migrating $8.8B+ in payments, cutting data errors 30%, and raising user task efficiency 99%
  • Redesigned employee-facing ServiceNow workflows with Finance, HR, and Digital Technology teams — improving self-service adoption and case handling
  • Mentored analysts and developers on process documentation and change management to sustain continuous improvement culture
Jan 2017 – Sep 2019
Consumer Goods Strategy Consultant
Precise Portions · Chicago, IL Consumer packaged goods · B2C
  • Redesigned supply chain strategy for a direct-to-consumer food brand — reducing unit cost 20%, cutting procurement cycle time 80%, and lowering warehousing costs 25%
  • Demonstrated ability to apply operational strategy to consumer-facing products with direct end-user and profitability impact
Jun 2007 – Sep 2019
Senior Operations Analyst · Product Manager
ArcelorMittal USA · East Chicago, IN
  • Designed and launched 9 internal operational applications delivering $50M+ in savings through process automation, waste elimination, and workflow standardization — elevating facility from bottom to top quartile globally
  • Led Lean Six Sigma process improvement initiatives earning two performance awards and driving department to highest production volume in a decade
  • Expanded sales by 10% for high-complexity orders through data-driven process optimization and bottleneck elimination
  • Coached junior engineers on DMAIC and Kaizen — securing management buy-in for process transformation projects
Impact at a glance
Certifications
PO
Certified Scrum Product Owner®
Scrum Alliance · Expires March 2027
Awarded March 2025
Lean Six Sigma Black Belt®
Simplilearn
Awarded July 2018
FDR
Foundry Aware Certification
Palantir Technologies
Awarded December 2025
Education
M.S. Engineering Management
Northwestern University
Evanston, IL · 2013 – 2016
B.S. Chemical Engineering
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI · 2003 – 2007
What sets me apart

Curiosity, empathy, and intelligence — working together, not separately.

Most people who do this work are strong in one or two dimensions. Strong analytical thinkers who struggle with the human dynamics of change. Strong relationship builders who lose rigor under uncertainty. Strong executors who skip the discovery work and wonder why adoption falls short.

What I bring is a genuine fusion of these capabilities. I am data-driven and statistically literate — with a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, Palantir Foundry certification, and years of applied hypothesis testing, process mining, and analytics work across platforms including ServiceNow, Celonis, and Power BI. I am deeply user-centered — I have conducted UX research, facilitated design thinking workshops, built journey maps, and shaped products around real human behavior under real operating conditions. And I have the strategic judgment to navigate ambiguity, align stakeholders across organizational layers, and make product tradeoffs that hold up under scrutiny.

The result is an operating profile that is rare: someone who can sit in a leadership room, understand the business problem clearly, go deep into user reality, and then come back and build something that bridges those two worlds — with enough operational discipline to get it across the finish line and enough follow-through to make sure the value actually appears.

User empathy

UX research, journey mapping, design thinking, and user interview methods applied to real products.

Data analytics

SQL, Power BI, Tableau, Celonis, Palantir Foundry, Minitab — applied to operational and product performance contexts.

Agile delivery

CSPO-certified product ownership with hands-on experience in backlog management, sprint planning, and iterative delivery.

Process excellence

Lean Six Sigma Black Belt with applied experience in hypothesis testing, process design, and continuous improvement.

Stakeholder leadership

Proven record aligning operators, engineers, managers, and executive sponsors across complex, competing interests.

Platform & workflow modernization

ServiceNow integrations, SAP-to-ServiceNow procurement flows, and employee-facing workflow redesign across federal and enterprise environments.

Where I create impact

I do my best work at the intersection of ambiguity and accountability.

The roles where I can add the most value are ones that sit at the hard edge between strategy and execution — where someone needs to take an unclear operating problem, build the product and operating logic around it, align the humans required to make it real, and stay in the room until it delivers. I'm drawn to complex environments, high-stakes problems, and organizations that want measurable transformation, not just thoughtful analysis.

Product management

Full-cycle product ownership in healthcare, technology, operations transformation, and enterprise platforms — particularly where the product has to change how people work, not just what tools they use.

Operations strategy

Roles that require defining an operating model, redesigning a core process, or translating a strategic vision into a functioning system — with the analytical rigor and human-centered discipline to make it stick.

Digital transformation leadership

Leading cross-functional programs that modernize legacy systems, migrate critical operations to new platforms, or build new digital capabilities from the ground up in constrained, high-stakes environments.

Business advisory & consumer goods

Experience shaping product strategy and operating models for growth-stage companies — including consumer goods supply chain strategy for Precise Portions, delivering 20% unit cost reduction, 80% procurement cycle time improvement, and 25% warehousing cost reduction.

Mentorship and community

Active in DEI panels, mentorship networks, and professional communities focused on expanding access to product and technology leadership roles for underrepresented practitioners.

Sectors of interest

Healthcare technology, federal digital modernization (including Palantir Foundry-enabled programs), industrial and manufacturing technology, ServiceNow platform modernization, fintech and payments infrastructure, and enterprise SaaS.

Beyond the work

Curious by nature. Committed to growth.

The same curiosity that drives my professional work extends across everything I engage with. I believe people who are genuinely interested in the world bring something different to hard problems — and I try to be one of them.

Technology & Innovation Management Consulting Personal Finance Health & Wellness Real Estate Cooking Mentoring Continuous Learning Building New Ideas Inclusive Leadership
Let's connect

Ready to work on something hard together?

I'm open to product management, operations strategy, and transformation leadership opportunities across healthcare, technology, and enterprise sectors. Let's talk.