Product and growth leaders are some of the most powerful people in business today. But they don't always get the recognition they deserve. Today, we are thrilled to announce the 2024 Product 50, the list of the best and brightest product and growth leaders from around the world.
Making this year's Product 50 is no small feat. We received more than 620 nominations across 10 categories. These nominations were filled with examples of product innovation, business impact, and leadership—leaving us impressed and inspired. It also made for a challenging task for our judges, Amplitude Chief Product Officer Francois Ajenstat, G2 Chief Product Officer Sara Rossio, and Reforge Chief Operating Officer Tom Willerer.
Ultimately, only 50 individuals can be called the Product 50, and this group is nothing short of impressive. This year's class represents leaders from 10 countries and five continents, industries ranging from transportation to retail and cybersecurity, and up-and-comers to C-suite executives.
Read on to learn more about this year’s Product 50, what this award means to them, and their advice for product and growth leaders everywhere.
Meet this year’s Product 50
Please note that the winner and finalist titles and companies represented are at the time of recognition.
Most Admired Product Leader: Brian Elmi, Vice President, Product at Drata
Brian Elmi currently serves as the VP of Product at Drata, a security and compliance automation platform that streamlines risk and compliance for thousands of companies of all sizes across the globe. His experience, spanning two decades, covers product management and design for B2B and B2C SaaS products, ranging from startups to Fortune 500 corporations. Prior to Drata, Brian led Product at Intuit for its TurboTax Live product line, the fastest-growing product in the company's history. His professional expertise extends across product and portfolio management, user experience design and research, product-led growth, and lean product development, among others. He holds a bachelor’s degree from UCSD and an MBA from UCLA Anderson.
Also recognized in the Most Admired Product Leader category:
- Gautham Krishnan, Disney+Hotstar
- Naz Amarchi, Scopely
- Somen Mondal, Dayforce
- Sarah Laiwala, Salesforce
“The key [to building successful, innovative products] is being truly customer obsessed! That means connecting with your customers regularly, deeply understanding their problems, and building empathy with them . . . Once you have a deep understanding of the pain, it’s then all about execution. So build a continuous feedback loop with your customers, ship fast and iterate even faster to deliver a delightful experience that solves the problem.”
Best Product Leader, Large Company: Khatereh Khodavirdi, Vice President, Consumer Data Science, Analytics, and AI Recommendations Products at PayPal
Khatereh Khodavirdi is the VP of Data Science, Operational Analytics, and AI recommendations at Venmo and PayPal, where she spearheads data-driven growth initiatives for advancing next-generation commerce products. Previously, she was a founding member of eBay's first-party ads initiative, contributing significantly to its exponential growth.
Also recognized in the Best Product Leader, Large Company category:
- Sahir Azam, MongoDB
- Luke Jensen, Seven West Media
- Prateek Jain, Twilio
- Addison Huddy, Confluent
“One of the biggest challenges facing product teams is keeping up with rapid technological advances and creating differentiated solutions that address ever-changing customer needs. The emergence of LLMs is an excellent example of rapid change that has upended roadmaps across our industry. It is crucial to start with a problem domain that genuinely inspires you, coupled with a differentiated viewpoint and clear vision. Then it's nailing the basics: a deep understanding of your customer challenges, a sense of urgency irrespective of your market position, and having a bias to build-learn-repeat rapidly. And hiring the very best team, as execution is everything.”
Best Product Leader, Midsize Company: Gautham Viswanathan, Founder and Chief Product Officer at Workato
Gautham leads Product and Engineering at Workato, an AI-driven enterprise automation platform recognized for its innovative approach, and making automation accessible to all. Before this, he led the development of TIBCO BusinessWorks, a pioneering product that laid the groundwork for many of today's integration platforms. His leadership roles at TIBCO and now at Workato reflect a career committed to building innovative products that create extraordinary value for businesses worldwide.
Also recognized in the Best Product Leader, Midsize Company category:
- Chris Lauren, Domino Data Lab
- Tim Zheng, Apollo.io
- Geoff Charles, Ramp
- Steve Won, 1Password
“One of the biggest challenges facing product teams is the disruption caused by generative AI. Customers are rapidly identifying new ways to leverage AI to accelerate their digital transformation and achieve their business goals. They are expecting AI to be infused into products and services in new and innovative ways. As such, many product teams are finding the strength of their product-market fit to have degraded. Coupled with the ongoing macroeconomic pressures, there can be increasing headwinds hindering growth or risking churn. To address this, product teams need to deeply partner with their customers, evolve their strategy, and bring new innovation to market quickly to ensure they stay abreast of their customer needs.”
Best Product Leader, Startup and Small Company: Lisa Dziuba, Head of Growth Product Marketing at Lemon.io
Lisa Dziuba is a product marketing leader with ten years of experience and an engineering background. Currently, Lisa drives growth product marketing at Lemon.io, a $15M developer marketplace. Leveraging user insights, data-driven strategies, and continuous optimization, she explores untapped growth channels for the company. Previously, Lisa achieved a remarkable $3.6M in ARR with 30% MoM growth at WeLoveNoCode (acquired by Toptal). She led product marketing for Abstract SDK ($54M funded, acquired by Adobe) and built the foundation of the PMM function for LottieFiles ($46M funded). Lisa successfully sold her developers-focused startup, Flawless App. Lisa's accomplishments have earned her recognition as a Forbes 30 Under 30 nominee.
Also recognized in the Best Product Leader, Startup & Small Company category:
- Katie Mulligan, Radiant Security
- Siddharth Dhar, Innowatts
- Tamanna Kottwani, Clutch
- Claudia Natasia, Riley AI
“Leading product marketing and growth at startups is a daily challenge that I enjoy. It's about tackling countless hurdles, shaping a product that users adore and are willing to pay for, and juggling many projects simultaneously. So, it brings me true joy and a deep sense of fulfillment to be honored as the Best Product leader in the Startup category. I feel privileged to be recognized with this talented group of product leaders, and motivated to achieve even more remarkable results!”
Most Promising Product Up-and-Comer: Minji Lee, Head of Data Science at Uber Freight
Minji Lee is the Head of Data Science at Uber Freight, a market-leading enterprise technology company powering intelligent logistics. At Uber Freight, Minji leads a team working on AI and analytics solutions, including dynamic pricing for both carriers and shippers, rankings and recommendations, on-time pickup and delivery, ETA prediction, and economic forecasting.
Before joining Uber, Minji held Data Scientist roles at riseOS and KeepTruckin (now Motive), where she was responsible for building and leading KeepTruckin’s Marketplace and Pricing Data Science team. She holds a Bachelor’s degree from Seoul National University and a Master’s degree from Yale University.
Also recognized in the Most Promising Product Up-and-Comer category:
- Confidence Udegbue, Freeletics
- Sai Nikhil Y, Bizom
- Shannon Rhee, Tome
- Suvarsha Rai, The Product Folks | Carnegie Mellon University
“I advise folks starting their journey in product development or growth to adopt an adaptable mindset, embrace failure as a learning opportunity, and pivot quickly. In the product and growth world, we are often attached to pre-set roadmaps. However, as we release iteratively, learn more about user experiences, and refine our strategies, the ability to pivot quickly and intelligently becomes crucial.”
Best Product Design Leader: Avantika Gomes, Group Product Manager, Production Experience at Figma
Avantika Gomes is a Group Product Manager at Figma, the platform for teams who build products together. She leads the company’s efforts on Design Systems, Prototyping, and Developer Tools, exploring ways to bring the worlds of code and design closer together. She has over a decade of product experience, having held roles at companies such as Pinterest, Microsoft, Google, and Birchbox, with a particular focus on collaborative, creative products that help people visually express themselves.
Also recognized in the Best Product Design Leader category:
- Sergii Filonenko, Promova
- Julie Zhuo, Sundial
- Henri Liriani, Tome
- Shawnda Williams, REI
“Product teams have a tendency to focus on shipping as quickly as possible, without spending enough time ensuring that the solution is really seamless and well thought through. At Figma, we pride ourselves on the craft. Those subtle, quality-of-life changes—changes that get you from point A to point B in fewer clicks or that fix a bug that’s been bogging you down—can make a major difference in making the product feel magical, especially for our users who spend upwards of 40 hours of week in Figma.”
Best Growth Product Leader: Shahzad Shaikh, Head of Product Management, Growth at Asana
Shahzad is the Head of Product Management for the Growth Pillar at Asana. He leads areas across Asana’s R&D organization, including product-led growth, mobile, desktop, search, core navigation and wayfinding, AsanaDotCom, and critical platform investments.
Shahzad is a seasoned product and business leader with deep B2B expertise and a clear track record of building products and teams that deliver delight and value to users—on a scale of millions. He previously led product teams within Meta’s Monetization organization building business products that enabled tens of millions of businesses and creators to connect, engage, and transact with their audience across Meta’s family of apps.
Also recognized in the Best Growth Product Leader category:
- Esra Guler, Google
- Sam Richard, ngrok
- Ekaterina Gamsriegler, Mimo
- Amber Britton, Doppler
“It's really easy to get overwhelmed when you're first starting out in product management. The job is dynamic, and you're constantly learning, iterating, and reinventing yourself. But what doesn't change is the need to obsess over and be a fierce advocate for your customers. Make that your first priority and the guiding principle by which you make every decision. Business value, career growth, recognition, everything else will usually follow if you just keep solving problems for your customers.”
Best Digital Transformation Product Leader: Deepa Chatterjee, COO, Consumer Services at Dayforce
Deepa Chatterjee serves as COO, Consumer Services at Dayforce. In this role she oversees the innovative Dayforce Wallet product, enabling people access to their earned pay on-demand and the ability to actively manage their financial wellness. She uses her strategic mindset to shape the vision for Dayforce Wallet and keep the product at the forefront of innovation in the consumer finance industry. Before joining Dayforce, Deepa served as Head of Bank Partnerships at the consumer lending fintech Oportun and held multiple roles at American Express, including VP of Business Strategy & Transformation. Deepa holds a BA from Barnard College at Columbia University and an MBA from the Yale School of Management. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her family, playing with their new puppy, and doing puzzles.
Also recognized in the Best Digital Transformation Product Leader category:
- Harriet Fryman, IBM
- Isha Chhatwal, Walmart Connect
- TaQuonda Hill, Delta Air Lines
- Sidikat Bolanle Tyson, Sterling Bank
“Your product is only successful if your users succeed by using it. Deeply understand usage, experiment to optimize user delight, and obsess about what drives your North Star metric. Do all three, you’ll have delighted loyal users, and revenue will follow.”
Best Product Industry Influencer: Marily Nika, AI Product Leader at Google, founder of the AI Product Academy
Dr. Marily Nika is an AI Product Leader with 11 years of experience launching products at Google and, previously, at Meta’s Reality Labs in the Bay Area. She earned her Ph.D. in Machine Learning at Imperial College London. Marily is also an author and the founder of the AI Product Academy, which enables her to drive her mission of establishing the AI Product Management field. She has a community of 100,000 followers worldwide that she upskills with her content and courses. Specifically, her AI Product Management Bootcamp is the top rated course that educates and certifies the next generation of AI Product Leaders. In 2023 alone, she was invited to speak about her AI Product Bootcamp at TED AI, TechCrunch Disrupt, Harvard Business School, Women in Product, UCLA, and she was also a guest on Lenny’s Podcast. She writes at her AI Product Newsletter.
Also recognized in the Best Product Industry Influencer category:
- Ahmed Siddiqui, Branch
- Connie Kwan, Product Maestro | Nobody Studios
- Augusto Barros, Securonix
- Mirela Mus, Product People
“It’s such a great honor to be recognized for my efforts in establishing the AI Product Management field. Naturally, I believe the key to building innovative products lies in PMs embracing AI as I am certain that all product managers will be AI product managers in the future. This doesn’t just mean using AI tools. It means truly understanding AI’s lifecycle and how PMs can establish technical influence and effectively work with ML engineers and scientists to solve user problems with AI-powered solutions.”
Best Social Good Product Leader: Adam Nash, Co-founder and CEO at Daffy
Adam Nash is the co-founder and CEO of Daffy.org, a fast-growing platform and community for charitable giving. He has served as an executive, angel investor, and advisor to some of the most successful technology companies to come out of Silicon Valley. Adam previously served as president and CEO of Wealthfront and has held executive and technical roles at Dropbox, LinkedIn, eBay, and Apple. Adam also serves as an adjunct lecturer at Stanford University, teaching “Personal Finance for Engineers.” As an angel investor, Adam is well known for being an early investor in Firebase (sold to Google), Opendoor (Ticker: OPEN), Figma, Gusto, and over 120 other startups. Adam holds BS and MS degrees in computer science from Stanford University, as well as an MBA from Harvard.
Also recognized in the Best Social Good Product Leader category:
- Christopher Gray, Scholly by Sallie
- Annie Ta, Penknife Collective
- Ginny Katz, HazAdapt
- Nabeel Meghji, Wellthy
“A world-class product delivers real value to both the customer and the market it serves. That’s why Alejandro and I designed our business model for Daffy to align with both our mission—to help people be more generous, more often—and the needs of the entire philanthropic sector.”
Learn more about this year’s winners on the Product 50 website and in VentureBeat.
