Patti Cudney ’96
Political Science
San Jose, CA
Senior Recruiting Business Partner, Amazon
Originally from Fremont, Patti earned her BA in political science from UC Berkeley in 1996. At Cal, she was active in Greek life as a member of Alpha Omicron Pi, served as Vice President of Membership Recruitment for the Panhellenic Council, and spent many weekends as an intern in the sports department at KTVU.
Patti’s career started in public relations and government affairs consulting in San Francisco, with Barnes Clarke Inc and Berg Davis Public Affairs. She returned to school to earn an MBA in marketing from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business in 2004. During her graduate studies, she worked in the MBA admissions office which led to her post-MBA career in university admissions. For more than 15 years, she directed graduate recruiting and admissions activities in the business schools at Southern Methodist University, Boston University, and Texas A&M University. During this time she traveled globally to engage with candidates, delivered countless presentations, and developed and executed on marketing and admissions strategy to enroll the most competitive graduate students.
After spending the better part of two decades away, in 2020 she returned to California and shortly thereafter joined Amazon as a recruiter for the Pathways operations leadership development program. In this role, she guides her team on school engagement and marketing and also partners directly with graduate students as they onboard into internship and full-time roles.
Patti previously served on CAA’s Young Alumni Council (1999–2002) and as a board member of two CAA Alumni Chapters (Bay Area Young Blues and Dallas-Fort Worth). She is engaged as a scholarship application reviewer and interviewer, and as a board member she looks forward to diving deeper into service to CAA and the University. She also has extensive experience serving as an alumni adviser for three collegiate chapters of Alpha Omicron Pi, including guiding the development of two new chapters at Bryant University and Texas A&M University.
She is a proud aunt of three, an owner of far-too-many shoes, and her favorite season is football.