RESUME

Ethan Charles Stuart

Senior Manager · Data & AI Products · Disney Studios — Fortune 50 scale · Founder · Stuart Ventures

ethan.c.stuart@gmail.com linkedin.com/in/ethan-stuart

PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY

Lead a 45-person data and AI product engineering organization at Disney Studios — 5 studio groups, 500+ downstream users, spec-to-shipped lead time down ~50% (Jira cycle-time, 6-month rolling), tens of millions in annual efficiency. Built and scaled three enterprise data platforms from zero across financial services, restaurants, and entertainment — Phoenix Fire at Capital Group (100% adoption), CDP across Yum Brands (80% YoY loyalty growth, MMM-attributed, 7,000+ operators), and Disney Studios' multi-agent system (semantic search, RAG, and multi-modal in production). Build personal projects through AI coding tools — NexusWatch (geopolitical intelligence, 45+ live data layers across 86 countries, open source) live; Composer (agentic media) and Product OS (spec-as-code for PMs) in active development.

CORE COMPETENCIES

AI-Native Team Operating Model: AI Coding Tool Deployment | Agent-Augmented Product Workflows | AI-Built Internal Tooling | AI-Fluency Hiring & Onboarding | Cross-Functional AI Task Force & Enablement Program Leadership

EXPERIENCE

The Walt Disney Company | Studio Technology

Senior Manager, Data & AI Products and Analytics Engineering

June 2025 - PRESENT

Lead a 45-person data and AI product engineering organization — 17 direct and matrix reports across 5 disciplines (PMs, analytics engineers, technical writers, program and project managers); set direction for ~28 additional via governance forums. Partner with the Director (operating at VP scope) on cross-org strategy and executive engagement; mandate expanded to include Analytics Engineering ownership and cross-org AI enablement.
Brief CTO and President of Studio Technology monthly on enterprise platform investment; deliver bi-annual studio demos. Collective platform and AI delivery drives tens of millions in annual efficiency gains.
Mentor 5 PMs across Disney Studio Technology beyond the immediate org; led multiple contractor-to-FTE conversions and several direct-report career growth moves into expanded scope.
Established an AI-native team operating model — AI coding tools as standard (100% weekly active PM adoption, telemetry-tracked), agent-augmented PM workflows, AI-fluency hiring, and AI-built internal tooling including an in-daily-use PM portal. Spec-to-shipped lead time down ~50% (Jira cycle-time, 6-month rolling).
Expanded platform from 1 to 5 studio groups (15→120 stakeholders, 500+ downstream users) through stakeholder-led change management; established enterprise data governance, metadata, security, and quality frameworks across the same footprint, with production pipelines under documented freshness and quality SLOs.
Owned platform-level build-vs-buy decisions — consolidated BI tooling (killed a legacy reporting vendor for a unified analytics stack across 5 studio groups) and selected Snowflake Cortex + Neo4j over leading enterprise vector-search and RAG vendors for the multi-agent system (governance and Snowflake-native lineage).
Shipped semantic search and talk-to-your-data into production; directed architecture decisions across orchestration, Cypher, and RAG agents; integrated TwelveLabs multi-modal AI.
Delivered a production chatbot suite for studio workflows — multiple chatbots live; lead use case saves 6.5 hours per person per week.
Delivered a portfolio of production ML forecasting and decision-support models for studio finance (cash flow, quarterly budget); contributor to the studios' cross-company finance transformation.

Yum Brands | Taco Bell

Portfolio Manager, Product, Data & Analytics Platform

January 2025 - June 2025

Reduced platform incidents 85% (12→1-2 P1/P2 monthly) and increased satisfaction 50% in 60 days — transformed service team into product organization through prioritization frameworks, transparent stakeholder communication, and org-wide BI best practices that rebuilt the data team's brand with senior leadership.
Led a 25+ person matrix team driving enterprise platform strategy — shipped reporting structure, governance frameworks, and Microsoft Fabric + Gen AI capabilities while partnering on AI drive-thru, digital menu boards, and Cantina launches.
Delivered ML models for labor prediction and CRM alongside data platform support for digital marketing and e-commerce.
Expanded from CDP to full platform portfolio after demonstrating rapid impact — led product vision and roadmap for all enterprise data products serving 7,000+ operators and executives.

Staff Product Manager, Enterprise Customer Data Platform

June 2023 - January 2025

Drove CDP adoption across all Yum brands (Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut) — led implementation and GTM enabling 80% YoY loyalty growth (CDP contribution validated via marketing mix model) through personalized insights and data-driven marketing.
Shipped ML models and pipelines for retention, lapse prediction, and CRM insights — delivered intelligence to 7,000+ operators through in-store reporting, regional dashboards, and franchisee tracking.
Transformed data team from order-takers to strategic product organization — led a 14-person team spanning product, engineering, and analytics; increased satisfaction 40%.

Capital Group

Product Manager, Data Platforms & Strategic Automation

August 2022 - June 2023

Launched Phoenix Fire data platform (0→1) achieving 100% enterprise adoption — transformed sales and marketing operations for all Capital Group ETFs and Mutual Funds through consolidated tools, automated workflows, and modern UI/UX with defined data governance.
Shipped data product through 3 ETF launches while managing unified product roadmap across Marketing, Sales, and Compliance.
Established data governance framework enabling proactive quality monitoring and stakeholder notifications — built foundation for reliable, compliant data products in highly regulated financial services context.

Sprout Mortgage

Manager, Analytics & Product Strategy

October 2021 - August 2022

Built enterprise analytics function from scratch — standardized reporting and drove 15% loan origination increase across 85 sales professionals through product-ops strategy and cross-functional analytics adoption.
Integrated Power BI with custom CRM — delivered self-service analytics and pipeline visibility for 4 VPs, 10 regional managers, and 85 loan officers, accelerating sales decision-making.
Previously held investment analysis and BI leadership roles at Pacific Urban Investors (2018–2021) and Civic Financial Services (2016–2018), building the financial analysis and data foundations that inform a career in enterprise data products.

PERSONAL PROJECTS

Personal portfolio that pressure-tests the AI-native operating model deployed at Disney. Architected and shipped through AI coding tools.

NexusWatch (nexuswatch.dev) — Real-time geopolitical intelligence platform. 45+ live data layers across 86 countries (conflict, disasters, infrastructure, intelligence, environment); AI analyst synthesizing threat patterns; MCP server for AI agent access. Open source, paired with a geopolitical-risk newsletter. Vite + TypeScript + MapLibre GL + Supabase + Claude API. Live as of April 2026.

Composer (in development) — Agentic media platform. Multi-channel content distribution (newsletter, social, decks) driven by a small set of editorial agents.

Product OS (in development) — Spec-as-code for product managers. OSS CLI + planned commercial dashboard for PR-based spec workflows. TypeScript, Turborepo monorepo.

Personal AI/ML work — Maintain a paper-traded systematic trading research platform with walk-forward evaluation and SEC EDGAR insider-signal modeling, alongside supporting tooling. No real capital deployed.

WRITING & THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

The Data Product Agent (thedataproductagent.substack.com) — Substack on data products, AI-native team operating models, multi-agent systems, and building enterprise software through AI coding tools.

EDUCATION

Loyola Marymount University — B.B.A. in Finance and Economics

CERTIFICATIONS

AI Fundamentals for Non-Data Scientists — University of Pennsylvania, Wharton (Credential ID: 9QM1CR10FD5F)

Databricks Academy Accreditations — Generative AI Fundamentals + Lakehouse Fundamentals (Credential IDs: 112741113, 112676552)