Justin Restivo

Work and perspective

I’ve spent my career helping complex media move accurately and responsibly—from metadata and localization to streaming quality control, delivery, and operational improvement. At Paramount, I supervise metadata specialists while remaining hands-on with review, escalation, training, and workflow design. At Disney, I evaluate video, audio, timed text, and metadata for streaming delivery, with particular experience in Mandarin-language and APAC content.

My applied-AI work grows from the same foundation: define the problem clearly, preserve human judgment, test what the system actually does, and make uncertainty visible. I’m studying Applied Generative AI at Johns Hopkins, where I build practical workflows around evaluation, retrieval, structured review, and responsible assistance—not automation for its own sake.

Creative background

I earned a BA in Film and Media Studies from Columbia University, graduating magna cum laude with departmental honors. Through Columbia in Beijing, I studied intermediate Mandarin at Peking University—an experience that continues to inform both my cultural interests and my media work.

I’m also an actor with credits including The Adventures of Pete & Pete, Leave It to Beaver, Bull, and 4:44 Last Day on Earth. Acting remains an active creative practice and an important counterweight to systems work: it keeps attention on voice, behavior, context, and the human stakes beneath the process.

The throughline

Across these disciplines, I care about the same things: listening closely, making complexity legible, and doing work that people can trust. Whether I’m reviewing a media delivery, testing an AI-assisted workflow, solving an everyday technology problem, or preparing a role, the goal is practical clarity without flattening the human part.