Women Product Leaders 2020

As the current VP of Product Innovation at Netflix, many of us owe countless hours of our entertainment to Keela Robison. Despite a bunch of competitors threatening to take their place on the market, Netflix continuously reigns supreme. Keela’s team is responsible for the customer experience globally, across all platforms including TV, web, and mobile. It’s hard to imagine what part of Netflix Keela doesn’t influence!

Deborah Liu has over 17 years of experience in Product Management, including working with serious Product players; Facebook, PayPal, and eBay. Currently the Vice President of Product at Facebook, Deborah leads Facebook’s marketplace, which is available in over 70 countries and is used by 800 million people each month.

A self-proclaimed Greek, Carol Carpenter is a Product Marketing champion. She started out as a Product Manager at Apple, has built and scaled products at a wide variety of companies. Now the VP of Product Marketing for Google Cloud, Carol helps to scale a product which is used by millions of people around the world.

Being an executive leader is a golden achievement on anyone’s resume. Try spending 20 years at that level! At Google, Tamar Yehoshua started out as a Director of Product Management, leading the teams for Search Experience, Google Translate, and Internationalization. Over the course of her Google career, she rose to Vice President, working on Search, Growth, and Analysis, as well as Identity, Privacy, Account Security, Span and Abuse, Contact, and Sharing solutions. Both the breadth and depth of her knowledge are an achievement in themselves.

The key to being truly great in Product is being customer-obsessed, something which Tatyana Manut absolutely masters. An expert in customer-driven innovation, Tatyana is currently the CPO of Nextdoor, a platform which aims to bring neighbours together.

Automation is one of the biggest problem-solvers of the 21st Century, and one of the women leading it is Anna Marie Clifton. As Product Lead for Automation at Asana, Anna Marie has had plenty of hands-on experience. She’s previously worked for Hakker Labs as a Product Manager and Developer Evangelist, which involved working closely with designers and developers to launch a new brand new product. She’s also taught data literacy, including python, machine learning, and open data, to Fortune 500 managers.

Helen Sims is a very familiar face around here! She was recognized as the Top Instructor of the Year, and made it to our Top 25 Persons in Product list in the 2018 Proddy awards. Some of our alumni will recognize her too, as she previously taught our Product Management certification.

Claire Vo is a brilliant example of how creativity pays off in a Product career! She started out as a Social Media Coordinator, and later a Director of Product Development and Online Marketing. She was the Founder of Pretty HQ, a platform which helped users share beauty products with their friends, and which made to InStyle Magazine’s #bestofdigi Awards in 2013.

Maryanna Quigless leads the Ads Manager org at Facebook, leading four teams working on different aspects of the product. Currently, over 6 million businesses are using Facebook ads...now that’s what we call impact! If that wasn’t cool enough, Maryanna’s work has also been featured in Forbes as examples of how Facebook helps small businesses and drives high ROI campaigns to help companies grow at scale.

With over 20 years of consumer internet experience, and 15 years of management experience, there’s not much you can teach Lilian Rincon about Product Management that she doesn’t already know!

A Product leader with a very impressive resume, Tiffany Dockery’s experience includes Google, American Express, Amazon, HBO, Spotify, and now Instagram. If her professional history wasn’t already impressive, Tiffany excels outside of the office as well. Before joining Google, she traveled to Dar-Es-Salaam in Tanzania, where she worked for CARE International. While there, she wrote human interest stories for the Women and Girls Empowerment Program.

Pooja Ghera has been at Amazon for almost 4 years, and in that time has risen through the ranks from Senior Product Manager to Head of Product, working on Alexa Smart Home. Before joining Amazon, she began her career at Infosys, progressively attaining Engineering positions and building a solid understanding of tech. As an IT professional, Pooja is passionate about Big Data, e-commerce, and the Internet of Things. In her work at Amazon, she masterfully uses her multidisciplinary skills to lead her teams, whilst always keeping business strategy in mind.

There’s no escaping the topic of AI in the product world nowadays, and that includes thoughtful conversations about how best to implement it. There are few people better to join that conversation than Ria Sankar, who is a founding member of the AI for Good Research Lab at Microsoft. The Lab focuses on incubating AI solutions for the non-profit sector, ensuring that the technology is implemented ethically and responsibly.

There’s not much about eBay that Clémence Tiradon doesn’t know, having been there for a staggering 14 years! She started out as a Customer Support Representative, and diligently worked her way through various Product roles, all the way up to Director of Product and Design. She’s living proof that rolling up your sleeves and getting the job done pays off.

When Rachel Bailin moved to California to found Farmscape, she started the largest Urban Farming company in the United States! At Farmscape, she did everything from managing product honing in UX/UI, to running the kickstarter. As Marketing Manager, she got coverage in 60+ publications in just 18 months, including Wired and USA Today.

Inclusivity is right at the top of Samantha Stevens list of priorities as a Product leader. While studying at Georgetown University, she founded Chronic H.O.P.E., a space which provided support for students facing emotional, medical, and physical challenges. She has also spent some time as a Career Mentor of Coalition for the Homeless.

All good Product people know that data is king! Theresa Johnson started out at Airbnb as a Data Science Graduate Fellow, before becoming a Data Scientist. In this role, Theresa used data to focus on growth, and on understanding the complications of running experiments in a two-sided marketplace.

Harbani Malhotra is a passionate product leader, with an equal passion for being data-driven. She’s truly part of the global product community, having lived and worked in the USA, the UK, and India, as well as managing teams in Portugal and China. She’s a strong advocate for being outcome driven, and focusing on the user at all times. Her true talent lies in being able to break down seemingly impossible challenges into small, manageable tasks.

When Dheerja Kaur embarked on her career at ESPN, she claimed her space as a woman not just in tech, but in sports. In this double-whammy male-dominated space, she rose from Web Developer to Senior Product Manager. After nearly 7 years of absolutely rocking it at ESPN, she made the move to theSkimm, a newsletter and online platform which aims to keep millennial women informed on the day’s important news.

Samatha Bufton has had a stunning career, including high-powered roles at Yahoo, AOL, Intuit, and Facebook. As VP of Product Management at SurveyMonkey, Samantha leads the teams for Surveys, CX, Engage, Apply, & Integrations. She was also responsible for both defining and building the first Enterprise offering for SurveyMonkey. Across her 10 years in the industry, her products have impacted millions of users.