About
A founder story, not a résumé.
KAY is the expression of a simple belief: the strongest brands are built where clarity, taste and execution meet.
I started with one question: why do brands run events that everyone forgets?
Around 2010, in Mashhad, Iran, I began my career in sales, website design, marketing, and advertising. I quickly realized that the challenge was not simply delivering a message. A brand comes alive when people understand it, feel it, and want to build a relationship with it.
In 2014, I registered my first company. By 2019, I had independently developed Banaye Bartar, where I was not simply a manager — I was the founder, CEO, and creative director. Real projects taught me that an idea only matters when it can leave the page and work in the marketplace, in a room, in a conversation, and in the way people experience it.
WINDOW was born from that conviction.
I did not want to create another trade show. I wanted to create a space where brands could do more than display their products — they could be truly seen. Attendees were carefully selected, spaces were designed to tell stories, and every element was created to build connection. For me, WINDOW was an experiment in turning an event into a platform — a place where attention, conversation, and commercial opportunity could meet.
Along the way, I built HAYAT as a space for connection and community within the building industry, and developed NAMA SHAHR in the real estate sector. Over the course of that journey, I worked with more than 500 brands and played a role in more than 50 events, conferences, exhibitions, and industry gatherings.
Those numbers are more than résumé lines. They are a collection of real-world tests in how trust is earned, how experiences stay with people, and how an idea becomes a system.
Then I moved to California — with fifteen years of experience, but almost no network I could rely on.
That was when I learned a simple but difficult truth: credibility does not travel with you. In every new market, every new room, and every new relationship, trust has to be earned again.
Starting over was not only a personal challenge. It was a test of everything I had been saying about brands, connection, and growth. If I was going to talk about clarity, experience, and differentiation, I had to build them again for myself.
So I went back to school and completed an MBA with a concentration in Business Analytics at International American University. That experience helped me connect intuition and creativity with data, analysis, and more precise decision-making. Today, I explore AI and BI not as technology for technology’s sake, but as tools for seeing problems more clearly, making better decisions, and building more human-centered growth.
KAY is the name for this way of seeing.
For me, the ancient Iranian tradition associated with “Kay” evokes vision, storytelling, and the responsibility that comes with leadership. The Simorgh — a legendary bird in Iranian mythology — appears in KAY’s visual story not as a symbol of power for its own sake, but as a symbol of recognizing potential, nurturing it, passing on knowledge, and restoring agency.
KAY is not about claiming a position. It is a commitment to building spaces where others can be seen more clearly and have room to grow.
Today, KAY is the intellectual identity behind my work, and NEWMAN is the operating platform for this path. At the intersection of brand strategy, experience design, business growth, and human-centered technology, I help founders and teams move from scattered efforts to clarity, turn activity into experience, and turn experience into growth that lasts.
Because to me, a successful brand is not simply seen; it stays — in people’s minds, in their relationships, and in the future they are building.
What clients get
A clear point of view, a practical plan, calm execution, and a partner who can connect the story, the system and the market.
If you want a strategic partner rather than a service provider, you are in the right place.
What I hold to
01
Build, don't just advise
Every recommendation comes from execution, not theory. 500+ brand projects is the qualification.
02
Human-centred technology
AI is a tool. People are the purpose. Technology should serve them, not replace them.
03
East meets West
Two markets, two cultures, one perspective that single-market experience cannot replicate.
04
Proof before promise
Numbers first, story second. That is how trust is built in a market where nobody knows you yet.
The journey
Pivotal moments.
2009
Mashhad, Iran
Banaye Bartar is founded
A small marketing company started on one belief: construction companies needed better stories. First clients. First lessons. First failures.
2011
Iran
The industry gets a publication
Banaye Bartar Magazine launched — the first specialised title connecting architects, engineers and material suppliers across Iran's building industry.
2009 — 2024
Tehran & Mashhad
Fifteen years of building
The group grew into one of Iran's leading marketing and event companies for the building industry.
- Brands
- 500+Brands
- Major events
- 50+Major events
- Professionals
- 50,000+Professionals
2020
Tehran, Iran
WINDOW is invented
A completely new event format — not an exhibition, an experience. It won the Innovation Award from Iran's building industry.
2020 — 2024
Tehran & Mashhad
Six editions, measured every time
The methodology held across every edition — and 79% of exhibitors acquired clients they could not have reached otherwise.
- Editions
- 6Editions
- Visitors per edition
- 2,100+Visitors per edition
- Satisfaction
- 88%Satisfaction
2024
Irvine, California
Starting again, on purpose
Relocated to California with fifteen years of proof and zero American connections. The lesson that followed became the most useful thing in the practice: credibility does not transfer. Trust has to be rebuilt in every new room.
2024 — 2026
Los Angeles & Orange County
Analytics, and the American room
MBA in Business Analytics from International American University, alongside hands-on work inside US corporate environments — including account work with Bank of America, Merrill Investment and GSI Environment — and deepening expertise in AI strategy.
2026
California, USA
The next chapter
Founder-led consulting across brand, growth, experience and AI. NEWMAN in registration. The KAY ecosystem takes its current shape.
The classroom
Then I went back to being a student
With fifteen years and five hundred brands behind me, I sat down in a lecture hall in Los Angeles and became a beginner again — in a second language, taking notes on regression models.
People assumed it was for the paper. It wasn't. I had built a career on instinct and taste, and instinct does not survive a room where nobody knows you. I needed the other half: the ability to prove a decision before asking anyone to fund it.
Business Analytics was the deliberate choice. Not marketing — I already had marketing in my hands. I wanted the numbers, because numbers are the only argument that crosses a border without a translator.
Everything on this page that says proof before promise was learned in that room.
Education & recognition
- MBA, Business Analytics — International American University, Los Angeles, 2026
- Executive MBA — Iran
- B.S. Software Engineering
- Innovation Award — Iran's building industry, for the WINDOW format
The mark
Three diagonals and a bird.
Three parallel diagonals form the K — momentum, direction, forward movement — anchored by a diamond at the base for stability and precision. The form takes its reference from the Simorgh of Sistan, a Persian symbol of wisdom, elevation and transformation. It is a mark that bridges an Eastern heritage with a Western market, which is precisely the job.
Field notes
I'm still reading America
Most weekends I am somewhere outside a city. Twenty national parks so far, thirty states, and a camera I am still learning to use properly.
The excuse is nature. The reason is that the National Park Service is quietly one of the best experience design organisations in the world, and almost nobody in my industry says so. Arrival. Wayfinding. The order in which you are allowed to see things. The pause held just before the view opens. These are the exact problems I solve for brands — solved here by people who had a century to get them right.
So I go, and I take notes. It is also, quietly, how I learn a market.
You do not understand a country from its conference rooms.
- national parks
- 20national parks
- U.S. states
- 30U.S. states
- camera, still learning
- 1camera, still learning
