Samhith Padala.

I'm a rising junior at UC Berkeley, studying EECS and Economics, set to graduate in May 2028. I started shooting paid photoshoots at 11, and once that turned into steady income, I built it into Sync Visual Media, starting as a photography company and growing into a full design studio serving clients across media, retail, and events. Watching how those clients ran their own businesses is what first pointed me toward product management: I liked the software as much as the shoots.

That included a product management internship at Adobe this past summer, shipping agentic AI features into enterprise accounts. Right now it's Noor Café, alongside the rest of what's below. Wherever I'm working, I care most about products with real reach, the kind that touch a lot of people at once. Inside that, I gravitate toward the moments where a product decision comes down to judgment: what a model should be trusted to do on its own, what a customer actually needs versus what they asked for, and where the data stops being useful and a call has to be made.

Outside of work, I've usually got a camera, a pair of good speakers, or a pickleball paddle within reach.