She’s Lovin’ It
Anusha Ramdas’ (mpd² '19) is driving the development of McDonald’s efforts to successfully integrate AI into the heart of its business.
Anusha Ramdas (mpd² '19) wants McDonald's drive-thru customers to leave with a smile as wide as that worn by the restaurant's legendary mascot, Ronald.
McDonald’s, like all major players in the fast-food industry, is working to integrate AI into its workflows to provide better and quicker service without sacrificing accuracy. Anusha joined the company as director of conversational commerce products in December 2024. Her focus is to ensure that McDonald’s automated order-taking technology will delight those who go through the company’s 27,000-plus drive-thru locations each year.
“We’re exploring new ways to deliver greater convenience and speed, piloting innovative solutions aimed at enhancing the ordering experience,” Anusha said. “My role combines innovation leadership with organizational alignment to deliver scalable, customer- and crew-centric solutions that create a measurable global impact.”
Success is critical for McDonald’s to keep its standing on top of the fast-food chain. Roughly 65 percent of all McDonald’s restaurants around the world feature a drive-thru, including nearly 95 percent of those in the United States.
Seventy percent of the company’s US business rolls through its drive-thru lanes.
The company is looking to gain an edge by using conversational commerce—the integration of real-time, AI-driven conversations into the drive-thru. The goal of the approach is to blend convenience and personalization, improving engagement, loyalty, and operational efficiency.
Anusha believes she can help thanks to her time in Northwestern Engineering's Master of Product Design and Development Management (mpd²) program.
“What appealed to me about mpd² was that it offered a truly well rounded product education—human-centered design, creative problem solving, and the business rigor needed to actually build and scale a product,” she said. “The coursework taught me several key lessons that still guide my work today.”
Chief among those lessons is the importance of deeply understanding a business problem before jumping to a solution. Beyond that, she said mpd² taught her that human-centered design is about more than aesthetics and extends to deep empathy for the end user to create solutions that truly meet their needs.
After graduating from the mpd² program, Anusha spent nearly three years at Amazon as a senior product manager, working on the cloud-based virtual assistant Alexa. Her time with the e-commerce giant is proving valuable in her new role at McDonald’s.
“Amazon taught me the power of deep thinking through writing and the importance of grounding every decision in customer obsession,” she said. “The leadership principles taught me to balance depth with speed, because execution and outcomes matter just as much as insight.”
Now, Anusha is set on bringing that top-level execution to the McDonald’s drive-thru lane.
“People sometimes expect a director role to be purely strategic, but in AI commerce, you can’t be effective without being hands-on at critical moments,” she said. “I stay hands-off enough for teams to own the work, but I get hands-on when the path needs unblocking or when the product’s quality is at stake.”
Finding that balance is built on the skill set she developed in mpd².
“The lessons reinforced a disciplined yet creative approach to product design and development,” she said. “I wasn’t looking for a traditional MBA. I wanted something that balanced right-brain design thinking with the practical skills to turn ideas into real businesses.”