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The Product 50 winners: Meet 2024’s top product and growth leaders

Presented by Amplitude

In a customer-first, product-led world, a new generation of leaders has emerged: the influencers, innovators and visionaries building everyone’s favorite digital products. Some are elbows-deep in AI to make good personalization great. Some are dragging old-guard companies into the new age to drive growth. Others are turning the product teams they lead into the beating heart of their organizations. But one thing is clear: Product and growth leaders are becoming some of the most influential figures in the business world.

“Digital products are no longer things we deliver — they are the key to unlocking business growth. This means product and growth teams sit at the core of business transformation today,” says Francois Ajenstat, chief product officer at Amplitude and one of the judges of the Product 50, now in its second year.

The Product 50 celebrates the creativity and impact of product leaders, from entrepreneurs to enterprise stars. They’re the innovative, curious and data-driven experts who are overhauling product teams, remaking organizations and disrupting entire industries.

Selecting the Product 50

This year’s call for nominees garnered more than 600 nominations across ten categories, and the Product 50 list represents ten countries across five continents. Five leaders were selected in each of the ten categories chosen by a panel of three judges: Francois Ajenstat, CPO of Amplitude, Sara Rossio, CPO of G2, and Tom Willerer, COO of Reforge.

Each nominee was evaluated for their demonstrated product innovation, impact on business growth, their influence in the product world and their unique background, perspective or way of working.

“The quality of these nominations makes it clear that the future of product innovation is already here,” Ajenstat says. “I’m confident the incredible product and growth leaders on this year’s list will become the business leaders of tomorrow.”

VentureBeat congratulates all the finalists and winners! Read on to learn who they are, and learn more about the Product 50 at amplitude.com/product50.

Introducing the 2024 Product 50

Category: Most Admired Product Leader

Winner: Brian Elmi, Vice President of Product at Drata

Brian Elmi is 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. He has two decades of product management and design for B2B and B2C SaaS products experience, 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.

Runners-Up:

  • Gautham Krishnan, Executive Director of Product at Disney+Hotstar         
  • Naz Amarchi, SVP & General Manager, Stumble Guys at Scopely    
  • Somen Mondal, General Manager of Dayforce      
  • Sarah Laiwala, Senior Director, Product Management at Salesforce 

Category: Best Product Leader — Large Company                                                                          

Winner: Khatereh Khodavirdi, Vice President, Consumer Data Science, Analytics, and AI Recommendations Products at PayPal

Khatereh “KK” Khodavirdi is the VP of data science, operational analytics and AI recommendations at PayPal, where she spearheads data-driven growth initiatives to advance next-generation commerce products. Previously, she was a founding member of eBay’s first-party ads initiative, contributing significantly to its exponential growth. 

Runners-Up:

  • Sahir Azam, Chief Product Officer at MongoDB        
  • Luke Jensen, Senior Product Manager, Web and Mobile Apps at Seven West Media         
  • Prateek Jain, Director of Product Management at Twilio     
  • Addison Huddy, Vice President of Product, Kafka at Confluent

Category: Best Product Leader — Midsize Company

Winner: Gautham Viswanathan, Founder and Chief Product Officer at Workato

Gautham Viswanathan 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.

Runners-Up:

  • Chris Lauren, Senior Vice President, Product at Domino Data Lab   
  • Tim Zheng, Founder and CEO of Apollo.io    
  • Geoff Charles, Vice President of Product at Ramp    
  • Steve Won, Chief Product Officer at 1Password       

Category: Best Product Leader — Startup or Small Company

Winner: 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, she achieved $3.6M in ARR with 30% MoM growth at WeLoveNoCode (acq. by Toptal) and successfully sold her developers-focused startup, Flawless App. Lisa’s accomplishments have earned her recognition as a Forbes 30 under 30 nominee.

Runners-Up:

Category: Up-and-Coming Product Leader

Winner: 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/delivery, ETA prediction and economic forecasting. As a data scientist at riseOS and KeepTruckin (now Motive), she led KeepTruckin’s marketplace and pricing data science team.

Runners-Up:

Category: Best Product Design Leader

Winner: Avantika Gomes, Group Product Manager, Production Experience at Figma

Avantika Gomes is a group product manager at Figma, the platform for teams that 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.     

Runners-Up:

  • Sergii Filonenko, Head of Design at Promova
  • Julie Zhuo, Founder of Sundial          
  • Henri Liriani, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Tome           
  • Shawnda Williams, Senior Manager, Product Design Membership & Digital Commerce at REI      

Category: Best Growth Product Leader

Winner: Shahzad Shaikh, Head of Product Management, Growth at Asana

Shahzad Shaikh 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, and critical platform investments. He previously led product teams within Meta’s Monetization org 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.

Runners-Up:

Category: Best Digital Transformation Leader

Winner: Deepa Chatterjee, COO, Consumer Services at Dayforce

Deepa Chatterjee is COO, consumer services at Dayforce, overseeing the innovative Dayforce Wallet product, which enables consumers to access their earned pay on-demand and actively manage their financial wellness. She has nearly 20 years of experience in the payments industry driving impact and growth Before joining Dayforce, Deepa served as Head of Bank Partnerships at the consumer lending fintech Oportun, and multiple roles at American Express, including VP of Business Strategy & Transformation.

Runners-Up:

Category: Best Product Industry Influencer

Winner: 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 at Google and, at Meta’s Reality Labs in the Bay Area. She is 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. She writes at http://marily.substack.com.

Runners-Up:

  • Ahmed Siddiqui, Product Leader at Branch  
  • Connie Kwan, CEO of Product Maestro and Chief Product Officer/Operating Partner at Nobody Studios
  • Augusto Barros, Vice President, Product Marketing at Securonix    
  • Mirela Mus, Founder and Chief Product Officer at Product People 

Category: Best Social Good Product Leader

Winner: Adam Nash, Co-founder and CEO of Daffy

Adam Nash is the co-founder and CEO of Daffy.org, a fast-growing platform and community for charitable giving. He’s been an executive, angel investor and advisor to some of the most successful technology companies 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 is also an adjunct lecturer at Stanford University, teaching “Personal Finance for Engineers.”

Runners-Up:

Learn more about the Product 50 and this year’s winners and finalists at amplitude.com/product50.

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