About Us
Our Story
Alex Beene built Wisely Optimize because he had been on both sides of the decision.
Alex spent time inside NBA front offices — learning how professional organizations evaluate talent, manage roster construction, and make decisions that hold up when the money is real and the margin for error is small. As a head coach in Mexico, he put that knowledge to work firsthand. Then, as an Assistant Coach of Analytics in the G-League, he deepened his understanding of how professional organizations use data to gain an edge. But it was during four years of providing analytical consulting to college programs that the gap became clear — coaches were making million-dollar decisions with a fraction of the tools their professional counterparts had.
The gap was undeniable. Professional front offices had a system. And now that NIL has made roster construction a financial decision as much as a basketball one, that gap has never been more costly.
College coaches are now managing real budgets. A miss isn't just a roster hole — it's money spent on the wrong player and a program set back. The stakes are professional. The tools most coaches are using are not.
We don't talk about how it works. We let the results speak. What we built is a system developed from inside professional basketball — and it exists for one reason: to help you spend your NIL budget on the right players and limit the misses that cost programs everything.
Matthew 11:28-30
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
Proverbs 9:10
"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding."
Proverbs 16:11
"Honest scales and balances belong to the Lord; all the weights in the bag are of his making."
Proverbs 24:6
"Surely you need guidance to wage war, and victory is won through many advisers."
Our Philosophy
We believe the two most important things in achieving at the highest levels of basketball are simple:
1. Get the best players possible.
2. Play the best players.
We believe we've built out a system to help you do both at the highest level.
Our Team
Meet the Team
Alex built Wisely Optimize from the inside out. As a head coach in Mexico and an assistant coach in analytics at the G-League level, he worked in rooms where roster decisions carried real financial consequence — and where the difference between a right decision and a wrong one was the system behind it. He built Wisely Optimize so college coaches could have access to that same advantage. Your NIL budget deserves more than a gut feeling. Alex built a system to back it up.
Alex Beene, the founder of Wisely Optimize, is an Instructor of Analytics at Lipscomb University.
Alex has spent almost a decade combining basketball analytics with coaching & front office insights to help teams achieve greatness. From serving as a Head Coach in the CIBACOPA in Mexico and winning the first playoff series in franchise history, to interning in NBA front offices for the Indiana Pacers and Sacramento Kings, Alex has always sought to bridge the gap between data and impactful decision-making.
His journey began as a high school coach and evolved through roles in professional basketball, including serving as an Assistant Coach, Analytics, for the Raptors 905 and volunteering on-site with the Memphis Tigers during their NIT Championship run. Alex began his professional basketball career in the business office of the Oklahoma City Thunder, spent four seasons providing analytical consulting for college coaches, and now combines his passion for teaching and basketball to create tools that empower coaches with actionable insights.
Alex brings this definition of success to every team he helps: "Peace of mind, having been fully surrendered to Jesus and present with people, giving 100% 100% of the time".
Akachi Okugo joins Wisely Optimize as our Global Consultant, bringing 11 years of experience in the NBA, FIBA, and grassroots basketball both domestically and internationally.
His coaching and player development background includes the Sacramento Kings, the Egypt Men's National Team, the Nigerian Men's National Team, the Jordan Men's National Team, the BAL, and the Nike Hoop Summit, along with running clinics and player camps all over the world.
That global footprint made Akachi a natural fit as Wisely Optimize's Global Consultant. Since joining, he's brought a pipeline of talent and resources that gives coaching staffs a direct line into international basketball at every level.
Co-Founder & Advisor
Dan O'Connor
Dan co-founded Wisely Optimize and built the company's product from the ground up, laying the technical foundation that our engineering team continues to build on today.
Before Wisely Optimize, Dan was an Engineer at Apple and Meta, then went on to serve as a VP and technology leader across several companies. After co-founding Wisely Optimize, he moved on to his current role as a Staff Engineer at Shopify, while remaining involved with the company as a founding advisor.
Dan holds a degree in Engineering Sciences from Dartmouth College, where he was a D1 basketball player.
Senior Basketball Software Engineer
David Simmerman
David brings over a decade of software engineering experience and a lifelong love of the game to the Wisely Optimize team — and the platform coaches use every day is better for it.
He started programming at 12 years old, building game servers with friends and teaching himself new languages along the way. That self-driven curiosity carried him into a nearly five-year run at XGen AI, an AI startup powering product recommendation and search engines for enterprise e-commerce brands. There, David grew from Integrations Developer all the way to Director of Frontend Development — leading the team that transformed a complex AI engine into a platform that non-technical users could configure, train, and deploy without sacrificing capability. Along the way, he partnered with globally recognized brands including Gucci, Sonos, Valentino, and Coach.
But basketball was always in the background. Rooted in a tradition of watching every March Madness game with his dad, David's passion for the sport eventually became a technical pursuit — independently building analytics tools that proved his instincts long before Wisely Optimize came calling.
That intersection of elite engineering and genuine basketball obsession made Wisely Optimize a natural fit. Since joining, David has helped turn complex data into something coaches can actually use — making the platform faster, smarter, and more intuitive at every level.
Basketball Data Engineer
Aaron Gesmer
Aaron has been a software developer for close to a decade, working across both startups and enterprise companies. He's also been a basketball fan for a lot longer than that, and the two things have never really been separate for him.
He grew up in Rockford, Illinois, where some of his earliest memories are watching Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. Over time that fandom got more analytical. The deeper he got into advanced stats, the more he wanted to understand how those insights actually get built, and that's what pushed him toward computer science.
Aaron earned his undergraduate degree in Computer Sciences from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he met his wife and got to watch the Badgers make back-to-back Final Four runs. He's now pursuing a Master's degree in Artificial Intelligence at the University of St. Thomas, where he also gets to cheer on the Tommies as they chase their first bid to March Madness.
His career has taken him through QA automation, frontend, full stack, and DevOps, and these days he's focused on AI development, building AI agents, harnesses, and workflows. That mix lines up well with what Wisely Optimize is doing: turning a lot of complicated data into something coaches can actually use.
When he's not building things, he's usually watching basketball. Wisconsin Badgers, St. Thomas Tommies, Minnesota Timberwolves, and the Chicago Bulls.
Basketball Growth Operations Analyst
Nathan Beene
Nathan brings a rare combination of competitive basketball experience and data-driven expertise to the Wisely Optimize team.
A lifelong student of the game, Nathan won a Class A Oklahoma state basketball championship as a senior in high school before going on to earn a Bachelor of Science in Computer Information Systems. He later returned to the hardwood as a head coach at the high school level in Oklahoma, leading two programs over 6 seasons and deepening his understanding of what it takes to build and sustain a culture.
That on-court foundation informs everything Nathan does in his professional role. With 3 years of analyst experience, he now leads email marketing, outreach, client analytics, and marketing and sales analytics at Wisely Optimize — leveraging Tableau, SQL, and Python to turn complex data into clear, actionable insights that drive the company's marketing, sales, and outreach strategies.
Nathan understands both sides of the equation: the human side of coaching and outreach, and the analytics side of prioritizing and optimizing growth. That perspective makes him an invaluable part of Wisely Optimize's operations, growth, marketing, and sales efforts.