Los Angeles · Open to 2027 opportunities

I go bySandy.

MBA candidate at USC Marshall, May 2027
Computer scientist by training, Arizona State 2021, with a business minor
Four years of strategy and product at American Express
Strategy for Hong Kong Disneyland, Cinelytic, and USC Athletics
Produced an indie short. Acted in it too.

See the work Résumé (PDF, opens in a new tab)

Where I've studied, worked, and built

Studied

USC MarshallMBA '27
Arizona StateB.S. CS · Business minor

Worked & built

American ExpressCybersecurity
McKessonEngineering
Hong Kong DisneylandFranchise Strategy
Carbon Silicon LabsAI Advisory
FlickCreative Partner
Crossroads MediaProduct Strategy
USC AthleticsFan Engagement
Dog Days CollectiveFilm
CinelyticAI Strategy
Velocity RedesignCo-Founder

About

I work at the seam between what's technically possible and what's worth building.

I started as an engineer. A CS degree from Arizona State, a security internship at McKesson, then four years at American Express, where I learned that the hardest problems in a 10,000-person company are rarely technical. They're questions of priority, incentive, and story.

So I went to USC Marshall for the MBA, and now I spend my time on the other side of that question: what to build, who it's for, and how it reaches them. In the last year that's meant a HK$135M franchise investment model for Duffy & Friends at Hong Kong Disneyland, a repositioning strategy for an AI film-analytics platform, and a commercial plan to grow USC Athletics sponsorship by 65% against a $242M base. Different industries, same question underneath.

The through-line is storytelling. I produced and co-wrote a short film. I trained in acting at Anupam Kher's Actor Prepares. I've hosted 50+ episodes of my own show. Strategy and storytelling are the same discipline wearing different clothes: figure out what matters, then make someone else care about it too.

Currently
MBA Candidate (STEM)
USC Marshall, May 2027
Previously
B.S. Computer Science, magna cum laude
Minor in Business
Certificate in Applied Business Data Analytics
Arizona State, 2021
Honors
Dean's Scholarship
GMAT Focus 97th percentile
Research
NASA Psyche Mission publication app
AI Perceptions in India (thesis)
Luminosity Lab
Toolkit
Financial modeling · Python
SQL · Power BI · Excel
Leadership
VP Community, Business of Entertainment Assoc.
VP Partnerships, S. Asian Business Assoc.
Certifications
Acting Diploma, Actor Prepares
CompTIA Security+
Also
Host, Soda with Sandy (50+ eps)
Vegetarian cooking · Tennis
Résumé

Open the full PDF (opens in a new tab)

Where I'm From

Ongole
Andhra Pradesh, India
Born
Melbourne
Victoria, Australia
First birthday
Bangalore
Karnataka, India
Childhood
Phoenix
Arizona, United States
Adolescence
Los Angeles
California, United States
2025 onward, for the MBA

Sandy as a small child sitting at a desktop computer — Roughly two decades before the computer science degree.

Born in Ongole. Two continents before I could walk, a third before I could drive.

A small town in Andhra Pradesh, then Australia by my first birthday, then Bangalore for the years that actually stick, then to America as an adolescent, old enough to remember everything I'd left, young enough to have to start over anyway. What followed was a decade of running two operating systems at once: one culture at home, another the moment I walked out the door. Phoenix for that whole stretch, then Los Angeles in 2025 for the MBA.

That's not a hardship story. It's a professional instrument. It's why I notice when a product's positioning only makes sense to the people who wrote it, and why Duffy & Friends reads completely differently in Hong Kong than it does in Anaheim, a distinction worth real money to whoever catches it first.

Media is a global business staffed largely by people who have lived in one place. I've been the outsider in three. It shows up in how I read a room, how I build a pitch, and what I choose to make.

Experience

Filter by what you're hiring for.

Jun 2026 – Present
Product Strategy Consultant

Crossroads Media, Los Angeles
- Authored the four-phase go-to-market for an LA independent-film crew platform, sequencing launch activation, network seeding, and enterprise rollout.
- Hit under $2 customer acquisition cost by seeding through film schools and affinity filmmaker networks; the platform drew 100+ crew signups pre-launch with no paid spend.
- Led product-market-fit discovery with editors, line producers, and filmmakers to validate enterprise demand ahead of scaled outreach.
- AI
- GTM
- Pricing
Jun 2026 – Present
Strategy Consultant

Carbon Silicon Labs, Irvine
- Advise the founding team on positioning, segmentation, and pricing for a workflow product sold to local businesses.
- Mapped a route to buyers outside the enterprise sales motion, for a market that doesn't buy software the way enterprises do.
- AI
- SMB
- Advisory
Jun 2026 – Present
Creative Partner

Flick
- Partner at an AI-native production startup, running applied R&D on generative tooling and releasing short-form work under House of Babbepalli.
- Write, direct, and appear in the work: what used to take a crew, a schedule, and a budget, now run by one person.
- Every piece is an honest test of where AI creative tools hold up and where they still fall apart. Studios are betting on that answer. I'd rather find it by hand.
- AI
- Short Form
- Content
Jan 2026 – Present
Strategy Consultant — three engagements: AI software, entertainment IP, collegiate sports

USC Marshall Consulting Projects, Los Angeles / Seoul / Hong Kong
- Repositioned an AI film-analytics platform toward top film schools including USC, UCLA, and Chapman, synthesizing 20+ executive interviews into segment-level go-to-market recommendations.
- Modeled a HK$135M (US$17M) five-year investment in Hong Kong Disneyland's Duffy & Friends IP, projecting HK$185M revenue uplift at ~37% return — funded within 1% of annual park revenue.
- Built a four-part commercial strategy to lift USC Athletics sponsorship from 8% to 13.2% of a $242M revenue base by 2028, a 65% increase benchmarked against Big Ten peers.
- IP Strategy
- Research
Jan 2022 – Jun 2024
Strategy & Product Development, Cybersecurity

American Express, Phoenix
- Eliminated 500,000+ unnecessary user permissions across the enterprise by mining access-usage and session-monitoring data to surface dormant entitlements, then standing up a recurring review cycle.
- Cut delivery timelines ~15% across multiple engineering teams by redesigning project intake and rebuilding the cross-functional planning cadence.
- Drove adoption of an AI-powered access recommendation engine across 12 engineering teams by partnering with each team's leadership through rollout.
- Security
- Fintech
- AI
Jun 2023 – May 2024
Producer & Co-Writer

DDC Productions, Tempe
- Led a 15-person crew and a $6K budget from development through release on an independent short film, Something About Him.
- Film
- Production
May 2020 – Aug 2021
Cybersecurity & Platform Engineering Intern

McKesson Corporation, Scottsdale
- Cut manual effort ~20% by automating infrastructure and onboarding workflows across platform teams.
- Selected as McKesson's ASU Campus Ambassador, leading campus recruiting and employer branding.
- Security
- Automation
2018 – 2020
Co-Founder

Velocity Redesign, Tempe
- Started my first company as an ASU freshman with my best friend from high school, building web presence for 5 local businesses that didn't have one.
- Clients included family-run restaurants, a small sushi shop, and an independent yoga practitioner. The kind of operators for whom a working website is the difference between being found and not.
- Founder
- Web

Selected Projects

Franchise Strategy

Hong Kong Disneyland

Modeled a HK$135M five-year investment in the Duffy & Friends IP, projecting HK$185M revenue uplift at roughly 37% return.
AI Commercialization

Cinelytic

Repositioned an AI film-analytics platform toward USC, UCLA, and Chapman, from 20+ executive interviews.
Fan Engagement

USC Athletics

A four-part plan to lift sponsorship from 8% to 13.2% of a $242M revenue base by 2028, benchmarked against Big Ten peers.
Enterprise Security

Access Optimization at Amex

500K+ permissions eliminated; an AI recommendation engine adopted across 12 engineering teams.
AI Advisory

Carbon Silicon Labs

Positioning, segmentation, and pricing for a workflow product sold outside the enterprise sales motion.
Founder & Host

Soda With Sandy

50+ episodes on life, love, existential stuff, and movies. Founded, hosted, and produced independently.
- Spotify (opens in a new tab)

Film & Acting

Something About Him

Producer · Co-Writer · Starring as Sid · 2024

An original short shot in the Arizona desert. I produced it, co-wrote it, and played Sid, which meant raising the money, hiring the crew, and then trying to forget all of it the moment the camera rolled.

Directed and written with Rajvir Singh and Jack Salowitz. Shot by Max Boissiere.

15
Person crew
$6K
Budget
2024
Release

Watch the film (on YouTube, opens in a new tab) Acting reel (on YouTube, opens in a new tab) Acting résumé (PDF, opens in a new tab)

Short Form: Flick

I grew up on animation. In June 2026 I joined Flick to find out what happens when you hand that love a new set of tools.

Flick is a Figma for creatives, an AI-native workspace where the whole pipeline lives in one place. Under House of Babbepalli I write, direct, and appear in the work. Odyssey, Tales from the Ramayana: the stories I was raised on, made the way I could only imagine as a kid.

Every piece doubles as R&D: an honest test of where these tools hold up and where they still fall apart. That answer is worth a great deal to a lot of people. But the reason I keep making them is simpler than that. It's fun.