Deployments spotlight: Sakshi’s journey from consulting to Persona
Can you tell us a little about your background and how you ended up at Persona?
I’ve spent the majority of my career working in management consulting at Bain & Company. I joined Bain right out of college at Yale and spent time working across their Boston, New Delhi, and Johannesburg offices. My projects covered all sorts of niches over my three years there, from pharmaceutical drug design to copper factory optimization to textiles and garments export strategy for South Asian countries.
After a short three-year break from work to attend graduate school (where I got a joint MPA and MBA from Harvard and MIT), I returned to Bain and started focusing on serving clients across the fintech and financial services industries. I’ve always been driven by my passion for solving foundational, unglamorous, behind-the-scenes infrastructure challenges — the hard work and ‘plumbing’ that goes on in the background to make our day-to-day lives easier. I’ve been pulling that thread over the course of my career, and it’s actually what brought me to Persona. Across my projects at Bain, issues like fraud and identity verification kept surfacing as critical bottlenecks — the kind of infrastructural challenges that can make or break trust in entire industries. Persona’s name came up again and again as a partner helping companies address those problems. As a result, I’ve been following Persona’s product and roadmap since at least 2022 (when Persona was only 4 years old!). When I learned there was an opportunity to join the team, it felt like the natural next step. I jumped in earlier this year, motivated by the chance to tackle these deep infrastructure challenges head on, and have never looked back!
What piqued your interest about deployments at Persona? Why that over any other role?
What really drew me to deployments at Persona was the chance to work directly with customers while also getting to work closely with each element of the overall business. I love being able to see how all the different pieces (product, operations, strategy) come together to deliver superior results for our customers. It felt like the perfect role to both build strong relationships externally, as well as develop a deeper understanding of how the cogs of a business really turn, which is something I really value.
What does a typical day as an engagement manager look like?
It’s really hard to describe a typical day because there are truly no two days that look alike! But if I had to try to put it into words, my days look something like:
Starting the day off with an hour or two of customer meetings. I check in with my customers almost weekly to monitor what their priorities and key challenges are and make sure we’re staying ahead of any emerging fraud threats to their environment.
Jumping into a working session with some of my colleagues. This includes working with product managers and product deployment strategists to brainstorm our approach to helping each customer understand how to better use Persona for their specific needs. We’ll also sometimes talk about how we need to modify product roadmaps (or even prioritize building new features) to account for the emerging needs of our customers.
Tuning into a product meeting. This is usually when the product team shares the latest updates on a new launch they’re working on.
Scheduling one-on-one catchups with my teammates. We align on our priorities for the week and just generally catch up (we often walk to get a coffee nearby).
Blocking off a few hours of heads-down work time. I usually use this time to address customer questions and think about ways I can help customers define their fraud strategy!
Can you describe the deployments team culture in three words?
Collaborative, high-performing, and fun!
What lasting impact do you hope to make within your role as an Engagement Manager?
The impact I want to make as an Engagement Manager comes down to two things:
With clients, I want to build genuine, trust-based relationships that position Persona as a strategic partner, not just a service provider. That means making sure every engagement touchpoint doesn’t just hit the immediate goals, but also sets them up for long-term success.
Internally, I want to help create a culture in which my teammates feel supported and encouraged to grow, whether that’s through mentoring, collaboration, or building processes that make their jobs easier. At the end of the day, I want to leave behind relationships and systems that continue to create value long after I’ve moved on from a project.
What do you wish that you could have told yourself on your first day 6 months ago?
I think I’d tell myself to continue to lean into my natural curiosity. When starting a new job, there can sometimes be a slight fear of asking questions that are seen as silly, or a fear of taking up people’s valuable time by asking them too many questions.
That’s certainly not the case at Persona; everyone here is really, really eager to see you succeed and encourages your curiosity. The more questions you ask and the more you pull the threads of things that interest you when you start, the better prepared you are for success down the line. Everyone is always happy to help. Use that to your advantage!
What is an area of improvement you have seen in yourself while in your role?
Coming from a fully non-technical background, one of my biggest areas of growth has been learning to trust myself with some of the more technical pieces of the work. For example, I spend a fair amount of time each week guiding our customers through our high-level technical integration processes, and that initially felt really daunting.
But over time, I’ve realized that coming from a non-technical background isn’t a barrier at all. It’s more about being willing to pick things up quickly, ask the right questions, and know where to go when you’re faced with a question you can’t answer. Over time, I’ve felt more and more comfortable leaning into more technical parts of the role, and that’s been a big step forward for me.
What excites you most about our future at Persona?
What excites me most is the impact we’re positioned to have. Fraud is quickly becoming one of the most critical challenges for companies everywhere, and with GenAI and deepfakes accelerating, the stakes are only getting higher. I genuinely believe Persona is the company best equipped to solve this problem at scale; not just keeping up with the threat, but truly partnering with customers to stay ahead of emerging threats. Being part of that journey and contributing to the growth that will define this space is what really energizes me.
Which company-wide event has been your favorite? Why?
This isn’t technically an event, but my favorite company-wide tradition is our weekly Last Week Out Loud meetings. Every Friday, the whole company comes together to share wins, updates, and progress from the week. It’s always such a fun time — there are tons of memes, laughs, and just really good vibes. For me, it’s a great way to wrap up the week and help me stay connected (even informally!) to the work that happens across our business.
Is there an inside joke or phrase that instantly makes everyone on the team laugh? An emoji?
On one of my teams, whenever one of us is waiting for an answer to a message or wants to bump something, we’ll send along the ‘Pablo Escobar waiting’ gif. I feel like it accurately shows the inner turmoil we experience when we’re staring at Slack, just waiting for the other person to respond. It’s become a real classic on our team. We use it all the time!
