Meet The Leaguers: Noa Barbiro & Chen Siedner (By Avital Julia Bayer, Contributor)

They meet once a week for about an hour and a half, in their local coffee shop in Tel Aviv.

Upon meeting with them it’s instantly clear they are a great fit, who both admire the progress the other has made — I sat down with them to find out more:

Noa Barbiro (Mentor) Director of Product Management at Amdocs, focusing on outbound PM, Growth, Strategy, and Go-To-Market.
Noa’s experience brings a software engineering mindset and the passion for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence technologies.

Chen Siedner (Mentee) holds a degree in Computer Engineering and an MBA from TAU in Israel.
Having worked at CheckPoint, Trustwave and Ping Identity, she is now a Senior Product Manager at Zerto.

Noa and Chen were paired by the Product League team, based on their resumes, experience, and questionnaire they filled out upon applying to the program.

What drew you two to join Product League?

Chen: we both wanted to mentor/mentee but hadn’t had the proper setting to do so. Product League gives us an agenda of what to discuss, provides networking events to meet other PM’s and focuses on pairing people into smaller groups rather than large-scale events concentrate on more people that we are all used to.

Noa: For us, this was very important and offered a safe place to grow together as product managers.

Upon meeting Noa and Chen, it’s clear that they are not only a good match, but also a team who have progressed together. I couldn’t resist but ask for that special sauce they put in their weekly coffee meetings:

Why does it work for you? What are your secrets for real progress in a mentoring program such as Product League?

Noa: There is a well-known phrase — ‘You get what you give’ and I feel that we (although hugely busy) both give a huge amount to making things work:

We both create agendas of what we would like to discuss in the meeting
We create to-do lists of what we’ll do in the time between the meetings
We stay in touch throughout the week
We’re strict about meeting every week (unless something urgent comes up)

One of the things I found very interesting to find out in our conversation was that initially, both were unsure what a mentor/mentee relationship meant. Or, as Noa described it “we have found out what it means to us.”

Noa: I wasn’t confident that I had enough experience to be a mentor (Avital: she absolutely did).

Chen: And I wasn’t sure how the relationship would play out!

Noa: However, once we arranged to meet and finished up that first meeting -we both felt safe knowing that the relationship would be one that was genuinely organic, with no question out of bounds. We realize we could not have a clear understanding of our relationship before building one, as every mentoring couple is unique and face different challenges.

You undoubtedly have gained a lot in only a few weeks!

Chen: Previously, I would wait for external acknowledgments and avoid situations where I need to be confrontational but by discussing these issues with Noa — I have become more confident in a short amount of time.

Chen also mentioned that Noa sends a lot of motivational material throughout the week. Ted Talks, Articles and so on which often makes her feel more at ease about a situation, as well as helping her understand where she can improve.

Noa: It’s important to share that mentoring Chen gives me confidence in my ability to teach and has provided different methods to address some of the issues I was facing as a product manager. Sometimes I felt like the mentee rather than the mentor, which put us both on a level playing field.

After all, mentoring is a two-way relationship.