Alumni Video Spotlight: Prakriti Rastogi MSBA 20

As a data science analyst at eBay, Prakriti Rastogi MSBA 20 shares about the challenges and rewards of working in the payments industry.

"I think the most important skill that anyone needs to learn is communication. Talk to your manager. Talk to your product manager. What are the problems that they face? How can you solve it? You cannot solve a problem in a vacuum. Always ask for help. People are always ready to help. You just have to ask for help."

Rastogi is benefiting from the UC Davis MSBA program having the highest 10-year return on investment (ROI) score for graduates among nearly 150 similar programs worldwide (2024 QS rankings). 

What are the highlights of your career the last few years?

The main highlight of my career has been helping improve reporting on a very key performance area for our company that affects our reputation a lot. How do sellers get their payouts? So, that affects our performance and reputation in the market a lot, and I have been able to affect the reporting to the leadership, and how the messaging goes out to sellers. So, on both sides, I think I've accomplished a lot in that area.

What does collaborative leadership mean to you?

I think leadership is mainly about communication. You need to listen to the people that you work with, that work for you or the ones that you work for. Listen to the problems that they face. Listen to the solutions that they come up with. Work on the solutions together. And, that would help you become a good leader by collaboration.

How do you collaborate at work to make an impact? 

I collaborate on a daily basis with engineering teams, with product managers, with the business teams in order to analyze the dumps of data that we get to make sense out of it, and help the product managers answer some questions, come up with hypotheses, test them, analyze those experiments, make decisions based on those experiments. So, I am involved in all of these stages, and ultimately this helps bring a better experience to our buyers and sellers, which is, to be honest, a very satisfactory part of my career that I have built here at eBay.

What are the biggest challenges in your industry?

In the payments industry, I think everyone has been not so satisfied with the way they get their payments. The time it takes to process technology that they've built around.  And that's the biggest challenge for us to communicate to the buyers and sellers, how and what time would it take for them to get their payments, to get their products. I think time is the main problem--main challenge--that we face and we're always solving for it. 

What are you seeing that future business graduates should know as they start their careers?

I think the most important skill that anyone needs to learn is communication. Talk to your manager. Talk to your product manager. What are the problems that they face? How can you solve it? Worked with your manager, worked with the product managers on solving the issues that they face. You cannot solve a problem in a vacuum. You always have to work with other people and communication is something that you cannot get away with doing poorly on.  Always ask for help. People are always ready to help. You just have to ask for help.