Richard Pichardo

Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business

“Hands-on leader building community-driven experiences and scaling businesses making a social difference.”

Hometown: Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

Fun Fact About Yourself: I designed and sold jigsaw puzzles centered on Dominican heritage

Undergraduate School and Major: B.A. Economics at the University of Chicago

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: Product Consultant at Neuron Studios

Aside from your classmates, what was the key part of Carnegie Mellon’s MBA curriculum and programming that led you to choose this business school, and why was it so important to you? The Artificial Intelligence concentration was the biggest draw for me. As the #1 school in AI according to U.S. News, CMU offers the depth I need to prepare for what I see as the most transformative innovation of our century. I’m especially excited about the ability to take classes across schools, which will allow me to focus on machine learning, statistics, and technology from both a business and technical perspective. CMU’s cross-disciplinary approach will provide me with both the technical depth and strategic thinking necessary to bridge the gap between what’s technically possible, what’s commercially valuable, and what is socially impactful.

What course, club or activity excites you the most at Carnegie Mellon? The Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship’s startup programs, particularly the Connects Workshop, stand out. I want to support an AI startup — or build my own — and this program provides the opportunity to connect with CMU co-founders or early team members. From there, programs like Project Olympus and VentureBridge deliver the resources, mentorship, and network to take an early-stage concept to the next level while gaining real-world exposure.

The Tepper MBA is known for intensive one-on-one coaching and personal development. What area do you hope to strengthen during your two years in business school, and why? I want to strengthen my executive storytelling abilities. I’ve been successful at driving product results through data and execution, but I want to elevate my ability to craft compelling narratives that inspire teams and secure buy-in for transformational initiatives. In product management, the difference between a good idea and a green-lit initiative often comes down to how the story is told. Upleveling that skill will help me secure faster alignment on high-stakes and high-reward roadmap bets.

The Tepper MBA is also known for being highly data-driven. Why does the program’s focus on quantitative analysis and decision-making appeal to you? How have you been able to leverage this approach in your career so far? It is because decisions that are backed by data are highly correlated with success. However, leveraging data to make decisions is only as effective as understanding its provenance, limitations, and context. It is equally, if not more, essential to identify the right metrics and check bias before letting a dashboard steer strategy. That approach has de-risked my prioritization calls as a PM. For example, at ShiftMed, we focused on the appropriate features that moved the needle and increased shifts worked by ~30%; and at Neuron Studios, grounding the workflow data first is what let us build an AI chatbot that actually made an impact, cutting processing time by roughly 75%. That’s the mindset I’ll continue to sharpen at the Tepper School.

When you think of Carnegie Mellon University, what is the first word that comes to mind? Why? Empowering – Whether it is through knowledge, connections or hands-on resources, CMU is a one-stop shop for all the elements I need to reach my personal and professional ambitions. It’s a university that not only educates, but also enables.

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: At REEF, I launched over 130 delivery-only retail stores across three continents, creating a new and entirely distinct revenue stream that expanded the company’s market presence by 25%. The complexity wasn’t just operational – it required coordinating with over 100 stakeholders across legal, real estate, supply chain, and operations while developing localization frameworks for various markets. My decentralized supply chain strategy reduced new market entry costs by 75%, demonstrating that systematic thinking can transform logistical challenges into competitive advantages. This taught me how to build scalable business models, not just optimize existing operations.

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