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The Storytellers: Two Indian Americans Among Insider’s ‘Rising Stars’ in Entertainment Business

The Storytellers: Two Indian Americans Among Insider’s ‘Rising Stars’ in Entertainment Business

  • The news website says the 26 “dynamic” executives incorporate “fresh thinking and innovation” as well as “develop and promote powerful storytelling for today's audiences and platforms.”

Two Indian American creative executives — Mohan Mandali and Shivani Patel — are among Insider’s ‘Rising Stars’ of the entertainment business. The news website says the “26 dynamic” professionals incorporate “fresh thinking and innovation” as well as “develop and promote powerful storytelling for today’s audiences and platforms.” Those chosen work at “the biggest entertainment heavyweights — Netflix, Disney’s Lucasfilm, NBCUniversal — as well as independent studios and production companies,” the website says. What is common is their passion for storytelling, “developing untapped talent via fresh pipelines, and reaching new audiences.”

Shivani Patel, vice president for strategy and business development at Universal Filmed Entertainment Group, grew up in a large, extended Indian family in California. “Films were a language that helped her connect with her relatives, including eight other kids, despite their age differences,” the 32-year-old told Insider. “The family spent hours bonding every week in front of a television, huddling for their shared tradition of movie night at home. She joined Universal in 2014, and her work “now extends across the development slates at Universal, DreamWorks Animation, and the animation studio Illumination. She runs complex assessments about the business implications of each project the studios are considering, from box-office-success forecasts to licensing and streaming,” Insider said. Outside of her day-to-day job, she mentors up-and-coming professionals across Universal through The Lab, the company’s first internal incubator, which is sponsored by Donna Langley, Universal Filmed Entertainment Group’s chairman.

Mohan Mandali of Fabel Entertainment is listed along with his colleague Jasmine Russ, “considered a dream team at their small and growing company,” according to Insider. The two are said to “lean on each other to bring to life a television slate that entertains in new ways,” Insider says. Mandali, 28, was born in India and grew up in New Hampshire. For him, movies served as a way to learn English, he told Insider. He and Russ both worked at Fabrik Entertainment and later followed its CEO, Henrik Bastin when he exited to set up Fabel in 2021. Mandali believes that the success of Fabel’s police procedural “Bosch” on Amazon “will enable the company to take chances on shows that might come from a first-time writer or from a genre viewers might not know they want.”

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