📸 Event photos

October 1, 2026 · Design Zone 125, Olin Hall · Moderated by Grad Tech Club

Watch the Recording: https://youtu.be/qGx3OF6_ik0

📣 Opening and introductions

The Graduate Tech, Product Management, Design Thinking and Analytics clubs jointly hosted the panel to connect graduate students with practical industry experience and career opportunities. Nathanael announced that assigned mentorship circles would follow, with club representatives available for membership questions.

• Nathanael Lee — moderator, Graduate Tech Club: framed the discussion for a mixed audience of experienced technology professionals and students exploring the field.
• David Brickner — EBSCO, Principal Strategist, AI and Open Research: explores how changing information access and use intersect with EBSCO’s technical capabilities, content, partnerships and future products. His role gives him latitude to work across technology and business strategy.
• Rashi Gupta — Dark Horse Consulting: described supply-chain and commercial-launch consulting for life-sciences companies, including helping clinical-stage firms prepare for greater scale and complexity. Her central operating question: how to deliver the right treatment to the right patient, at the right time, place, quantity and conditions.
• Geeth Devara — Product Manager, Dassault Systèmes: works on AI strategy and product development in design/engineering software. His challenge is serving existing users while adapting to new interfaces: customers may want the software accessible through Claude or ChatGPT, rather than only within the vendor’s own ecosystem.
• Minh Phan — Revenue Operations, Flywire; previously Staples: uses data and customer insight to support growth and broaden understanding of Flywire beyond international student payments, including healthcare, travel and installment-payment use cases.

🧭 1. Start with the business problem and where the company creates value

Rashi’s distinction was strategic: Dark Horse is a consulting business adopting AI to deliver its expertise faster and better. It chose to improve the services it already provides, rather than redefine itself as an AI product company. Prioritization therefore starts with services that generate meaningful client value and revenue. Building an internal tool can support that strategy without changing the business’s identity.

Geeth described a build/integrate decision: as customer expectations shift, product teams must decide which capabilities to build themselves and where to connect to other AI environments. The test is customer value, cost, speed and trust—not simply whether an AI feature can be built.

David connected strategy to assets the organization already has: the opportunity is to combine emerging capabilities with existing strengths in information, relationships and technology to meet changing user needs. Minh grounded the same question in growth: analysis matters when it helps the business understand customers and solve a specific market problem.

“I’m not asking AI to give me answers.” — Rashi Gupta, on using AI as a thought partner