13 Outstanding Product Leaders from theBoardlist
6 min readAug 5, 2016
Our community of global business leaders have done the heavy lifting for you by curating a list of 1200 (and counting) board-ready female candidates to make sourcing your next board member easy.
Last week, we shared the bios of 13 talented engineering leaders who are candidates on theBoardlist — women who are knowledgable, experienced, and ready to serve on your board of directors.
This week, we’re featuring 13 product leaders who have the chops to guide your board through the most complex product-related challenges. Without further ado, here is our totally unscientific list of outstanding product leaders in tech.
- Shalini Govil-Pai (LinkedIn, Twitter)
Shalini is currently the Director and Global Head of Technical Solutions at Youtube. Previously she was Product Manager for GoogleTV and Google Adwords and was also technical director at Pixar Animation, where she delivered the technology behind Toy Story and A Bug’s Life. She has a B.S in CS from I.I.T., Bombay and a M.S. in CS from Pennsylvania State University.
- Jess Lee (LinkedIn, Twitter)
Jess co-founded Polyvore and currently serves as its CEO. Previously, she served as President of Product Management at Polyvore and worked for 4 years as a Product Manager for Google Maps. Jess graduated from Stanford with a B.S. in CS.
- Ellie Powers (LinkedIn, Twitter)
Ellie is currently the Group Product Manager at Google, where she leads several teams of product managers on the Google Play team. Prior to Google, Ellie was the Senior Online Product Manager Lead at TalkTalk, a Senior Program Manager at VirtuOz, and a Program Manager at Microsoft. She has a B.S. in CS from MIT.
- Bora Chung (LinkedIn)
Bora is the VP of New Product Development at eBay, her second VP role at eBay. Before that, she served as Director of WW Payments and Financing at Apple and she held several senior positions at PayPal. Earlier in her career she was an Investment Banking Analyst at Merrill Lynch, and a Venture Associate at Athena Technology Ventures. Bora earned her A.B. in Economics from Harvard and her M.B.A. from Stanford.
- Sarah Tavel (LinkedIn, Twitter)
Sarah is currently a Partner at Greylock, where she primarily invests in consumer businesses and the consumerization of IT. Previously, Sarah was an early employee at Pinterest, holding different roles before becoming their founding Product Manager for search and discovery. Before that, she was a VP at Bessemer Ventures. Sarah got her B.S. in Philosophy from Harvard.
- Erin Teague (LinkedIn, Twitter)
Erin is currently Director of Product at Yahoo, where she is responsible for the new user experience product development and management. Previously, she worked as a Product Manager at Path and Twitter focusing on user growth, product strategy and analytics. Earlier in her career, Erin worked as an engineer and product manager at Morgan Stanley. Erin holds a B.S.E. in computer engineering from the University of Michigan and an M.B.A. from Harvard.
- Sarah Bernard (LinkedIn, Twitter)
Most recently, Sarah was the SVP of Product at Vantiv. Before that, she held senior executive roles at Johnson & Johnson, Hewlett-Packard, and Expedia, Baby Center. Earlier in her career, she was the VP of Operations at Mulberry Neckwear, the designer and manufacturer of the J. Garcia Art Ties. Sarah holds a B.A. in Cognitive Science from Brown University.
- Sakina Arsiwala (LinkedIn, Twitter)
Sakina is currently the Head of Social for Groupon. Previously, she co-founded Campfire Labs, Inc. in 2011. Arsiwala previously led the international charter at youtube, Google’s international Search Quality and User experience amongst other things. She started her career as an engineer at Altavista and Yahoo. She has a B.E. in Computer Engineering from the University of Mumbai and a M.S. in CS from SF State.
- April Underwood (LinkedIn, Twitter)
Currently the VP of Product at Slack and Founding Partner of #Angels Investing Group. Prior to that, she spent 5 years in various roles at Twitter, spending 3 years as the Director of Product and 2 years as Senior Partner Technology Manager at Google. Earlier in her career, she interned at Apple and 3M, and held product and engineering roles at Deloitte, Intel, Travelocity, and WeatherBill. April has a B.B.A. in Management Info Systems/Business from the Uni. of Texas and an M.B.A. from UC Berkeley.
- Gloria Lin (LinkedIn, Twitter)
Currently, Gloria is the Product Lead at Stripe. Prior to that, she was the Head of Product at Flipboard where she helped grow the product from 0 to more than 100M users and directed a team of 80+ people. Before that, Gloria was the Head of iPod/iPhone New Tech Group at Apple. She holds a B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford.
- Tali Rapaport (LinkedIn, Twitter)
Tali is currently the VP of Product at Lyft. Previous to that, she was the Director of Product at Groupon. Before Groupon, she was the co-founder and CEO of Plumfare. Earlier in her career, she ran product at Seatwave. In addition, she’s been an observer on The Gilt Groupe’s board. She has a B.A. in Applied Math and an M.S. in Environmental Engineering from Harvard.
- Victoria Ransom (LinkedIn, Twitter)
Victoria is currently Director of Product at Google, where she’s been since Google acquired her company Wildfire in 2012. She was the CEO and Co-founder of Wildfire Interactive. Prior to that, she was the founder and CEO of Access Trips and earlier in her career, she was a financial analyst at Morgan Stanley. She has a B.A. from Macalester College and an M.B.A from Harvard Business School.
- Deborah Liu (LinkedIn, Twitter)
Deborah is currently the VP of Platform & Marketplace at Facebook, where she’s held product roles since 2009, including managing the Games & Credits and Commerce & Payments products. Previously, she spent 7 years at eBay and PayPal, holding two different Director of Product positions. Deborah is the co-founder of social fundraising company Causera (acquired by SimplyCircle in 2014) and Mayaroad. She holds a B.S. in civil and environmental engineering from Duke and a M.B.A. from Stanford.
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