LEADERSHIP Conversations with the Captains of Industry
The Art of Scaling Up: How Aisya Aziz Balances Code, Clarity, and Culture
Aisya Aziz built her rst website, a simple guestbook, when she was seven years old. As a teen, she helped her friends jazz up their MySpace pages. Now, she’s chief technology of cer of LiquiDonate, helping to build the infrastructure that enables the company to transform excess inventory and returns into donations for communities in need. “I knew I wanted to do something good,” Aziz says of her career choice. This isn’t Aziz’s rst role with a startup. After graduating from the University of Maryland with a B.S. in computer science, Aziz joined her family’s business, Authentic Venture Sdn Bhd, which builds SaaS solutions. She started as a programmer and eventually led the software development team. “It was a true bootstrap environment,” she says, noting that she worked in customer service, sales and development, and handled government projects. Twice, she won a startup competition in Malaysia. Aziz joined LiquiDonate after receiving her M.S. in technology ventures at Carnegie Mellon University. Her education helped her learn how to balance engineering and technical excellence with a solution’s business impact. Now, Aziz is helping to steer LiquiDonate as it shifts from the startup phase to a growth stage company. She discusses her approach to leadership in a small, growing company. IL: What is your role with LiquiDonate? I lead our technology strategy and product development efforts, making sure that our technology supports our mission and vision. This means working closely with our engineering, operations, and partnership teams to build our solutions. I am hands-on in engineering, product decisions, and even coding, but I also think about our long-term vision and strategy. IL: At a high level, how does the LiquiDonate solution work? LiquiDonate quickly and easily matches and routes excess retail inventory to nearby nonpro ts. Retailers cut supply chain costs and reduce waste. We do this in two main ways. One is the easy-upload platform we offer for bulk warehouse excess. Second is a Shopify app integration that automatically routes individual returns from customers’ homes to local nonpro t organizations in need of those types of items. Customers of our retail partners have the same online returns experience they would with
Aisya Aziz, Chief Technology Of cer, LiquiDonate
Aisya Aziz, LiquiDonate’s CTO, started out customizing MySpace pages as a teenager. Today, she scales the smart technology that reroutes retail returns directly into the hands of families in need.
by Karen Kroll
10 Inbound Logistics • September 2026
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