Al Hadi Institute
Al Hadi Institute — 2024–2026 · In production
MY ROLE
Lead Engineer — architecture, full-stack build, i18n, automation
STACK
TIMELINE & STATUS
2024 – present, in daily production
OVERVIEW
Al Hadi Institute is a Minnesota-based education brand offering family and faith-based courses, coaching, books, and events to Somali audiences worldwide. I built their complete digital infrastructure — an LMS backbone serving 8,000+ students across 11 programs, and a fully bilingual English/Somali web platform wired into an end-to-end commerce and automation engine.
The result is one system where enrolment, course delivery, coaching calendars, book sales, and event registration all run without manual admin — in two languages, from a single CMS.
HIGHLIGHTS AT A GLANCE
Building a digital campus where Somali is a first-class language — and administration runs itself across 11 concurrent programs.
THE CHALLENGE
Al Hadi's audience is genuinely global and genuinely bilingual — a site in English alone excludes half the community; a translated afterthought insults them. And for an institution, platform stability is non-negotiable: enrolment, course delivery, and student progression across 11 concurrent programs cannot depend on manual admin.
Beyond language and scale, the business runs on multiple revenue streams — courses, tiered coaching, book sales, live events, community memberships — each needing its own payment, delivery, and follow-up flow. Off-the-shelf course platforms couldn't handle the bilingual experience or unify the streams.
MY APPROACH
I treated Somali as a first-class language, not a translation layer — full i18n architecture with every page, CTA, and flow authored in both languages, manageable from one CMS.
On the operations side, I designed the learning backend so administration, course delivery, and user progression run on autopilot, and consolidated commerce into a single automation platform so the client runs the entire business from one dashboard instead of six stitched-together tools.
WHAT I BUILT
0.1
Scalable learning infrastructure
A backend managing 8,000+ students across 11 distinct programs — enrolment, delivery, and progress tracking automated end-to-end.
0.2
Full English/Somali internationalisation
A native experience in both languages via Next.js i18n — every page and flow, not just the homepage.
0.3
Sanity CMS with embedded Studio
The client's team edits all content, in both languages, without touching code.
0.4
Complete commerce & automation layer
Coaching calendars with tiered packages, course sales, book fulfilment, event registration, and automated email/SMS nurture — one GoHighLevel engine behind all of it.
OUTCOMES
8,000+ students managed across 11 programs — administration that once took days each term is automated.
One unified system replacing what would otherwise be five or six separate tools.
Every revenue stream — coaching, courses, books, events — bookable and payable online, in two languages.