There’s no such thing as a typical day at the office for Dhriti Dhriti Pandhi ’12 . As Associate Principal Counsel for Legal Affairs at the Walt Disney Company, working in television production, she finds “there’s always an issue you’ve never dealt with before.” From crafting multimillion dollar deals with A-list directors and actors to negotiating international location agreements, then renegotiating on the fly when uncontrollable events upend production schedules, Pandhi handles a host of legal matters that accompany a show’s progress from concept to launch.
Pandhi’s ability to embrace novel challenges reflects an eclectic background and wide-ranging education. Born in India and raised in the US, after earning degrees in economics, finance, and Spanish, she returned to her family’s roots in India and worked in the northwestern state of Gujarat. A native speaker of Gujarati and Kutchi, she worked for an international non-government organization researching literacy among marginalized women in poor urban areas. She then received her Master of Philosophy in Development Studies from Cambridge University and her JD from BC Law.
She graduated with a Presidential Management Fellowship, which opened doors to stints in the federal government, including the White House and the Department of Commerce, where she liaised with industry representatives on infringement issues in international markets. Pandhi found her government experience “a great training ground, with a lot of really smart people.” Three years as an associate attorney in the Corporate and Securities Group at Baker & McKenzie LLP in Washington, DC, honed the transactional and negotiation skills that would prove invaluable in her present position. Now in her fifth year at Disney, she may never get to finish her to-do list, but as she says: “The fact that there’s always something new to learn and work on keeps it exciting.”
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