Leslie Grandy
Lead Executive in Residence for the Product Management Leadership Accelerator
Leslie Grandy is a global, first-to-market product executive and board advisor with a 25+ year career delivering game-changing products for top brands – Best Buy, Discovery, T-Mobile, Apple, and Amazon. Throughout her career, Leslie has been at the front end of innovation launching the first paid video streaming service, RealOne SuperPass with over 1 million subscribers after co-authoring a patent for a system that provides integrated media; delivering the first Android mobile device, the T-Mobile G1 and the first cellular-enabled digital picture frame, the T-Mobile Cameo; and leading Best Buy’s Digital Innovation Lab. Leslie is the founder of The Product Guild, a Product and Innovation Advisory Services company through which she has advised both early-stage ventures and numerous publicly traded companies on innovation and new product development, including Starbucks, Oracle Power, and Red Robin Gourmet Burgers. Leslie is also an IDEO-trained leader in Design Thinking who inspires audiences to achieve their creative potential.
Jessi Alva
VP Technical Product | Program Management, SAP Concur
Jessi has spent the last 20+ years leading Product efforts. She has honed her key sense of solving customer pain points across a broad range of products and services that has included both software and hardware. Her domain experience includes managing products in organizations that delivered wireless software & hardware, domain registrar & registry and e-commerce. During the last 7 years, Jessi has worked at SAP Concur leading a team that delivers complex and critical engineering initiatives. Jessi has a passion for learning and evolving which is reflected in her work experience. She enjoys running, shopping, and traveling with friends and family.
Matt Carr
Former Vice President, Amazon Advertising
Matt has spent 25 years in tech and digital media, serving in leadership roles at both large companies and start-ups. Matt is currently teaching courses in product and software management at the University of Washington Bothell and doing guest lectures across a variety of higher-ed institutions. He is also advising a number of early-stage companies.
Most recently, he was Vice President of Amazon Advertising, where he led organizations in Product Management & Engineering, Account Management, Analytics & Insights, Operations, and Marketing. Matt spent ten years at Amazon. Prior to that, he led Product Management, Business Development, and Operations at AdReady, an advertising DSP serving mid-market customers. Matt also spent ten years at Microsoft where he led teams in Product Management building its advertising technology and ad products. Matt began his career in product management at an Internet start-up in the late 1990’s. Before that, he was a musician playing in a number of Seattle bands in the 1990’s. Matt has an MBA from the University of Washington Foster School of Business and a BA from Georgetown University (Magna cum laude).
Sudha Elavarti
VP of Product- Marketplace & Monetization, Shipt
With 20+ years across industries (enterprise, SaaS, consumer) including experience at Twitter and Microsoft, Sudha leads cross-functional teams from vision to user growth. She excels at crafting multi-year roadmaps, launching successful products, and fostering adoption. User-centric design, data-driven insights, and agile methodologies fuel her approach. A passionate advocate for building and mentoring diverse talent pipelines, Sudha fosters inclusive cultures that empower all voices. Her commitment extends to community work with Women in Product and promoting diversity & inclusion initiatives.
Dave Fleischman
Chief Product Officer at Angi.com
Dave Fleischman is the Chief Product Officer at Angi.com, where he oversees the company’s product vision, strategy, and execution. With nearly 30 years in the technology industry, Dave is an executive whose team leadership skills encompass a wide range of roles including product management, marketing, technology, and user experience. His expertise is in building high-functioning teams that conceive, invent, and deliver customer-centric integrated products that scale and drive growth.
Prior to his role at Angi.com, Dave served as Interim Chief Product Officer for ALSAC, the fundraising arm of St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, where he worked to strategize, manage, and deliver products to raise funds for the hospital. He continues to serve on the Digital Innovation Advisory Board for St. Jude’s. He has held senior-level product, business, and strategy roles at Compass, Blue Nile, Expedia and Microsoft. Dave has a BA in English from UC Santa Barbara.
Jono Luk
Chief Product Officer, SumerSports
Jono Luk is the Chief Product Officer at SumerSports, where he is responsible for the business strategy and execution of Product vision. His past experiences include Vice President of Product Management with Cisco Webex and Truveta, a Seattle-area Healthcare Data startup, as well as a founding team member at Microsoft for Azure Active Directory, SharePoint Online and Power BI. He is also President of the Board of Therapeutic Health Services, a Seattle area non-profit focused on delivering substance abuse and mental health support programs. Jono’s favorite claim to fame is that he put Webex into space as part of the Artemis 1 Mission in 2022 – facilitating the human race’s longest-distance video call.
Marcello Majonchi
Chief Product Officer at Arduino
Marcello currently serves as Chief Product Officer at Arduino, the the leading open-source hardware and software platform. He spent the last 25 years in the tech industry, holding senior and executive positions in Product Management, Engineering & Strategy in large public corporations (Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, DocuSign) and fast-growing startups. He pioneered new technology segments such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and Privacy-Preserving Technology, and had the opportunity to design and build breakthrough products and services on the cloud and on the edge.
Marcello is very active in the innovation ecosystem as an investor, and serves as advisor and board member for several startups in Europe and the US.
Karim Meghji
Chief Product Officer, Code.org
Karim is a seasoned product, and technology leader and entrepreneur who has helped build and scale successful businesses based on the belief that a strong customer focus, an iterative approach to product and technology, and an empowering people culture are critical to an organization’s success. As Code.org’s Chief Product Officer, Karim leads product in service of the mission that every student across the globe should have the opportunity to learn Computer Science.
Prior to joining Code.org, Karim held Chief Technology and Chief Product Officer roles at Remitly, a leading digital financial services provider for immigrants, steering the company’s product and technology teams through rapid growth, global expansion and a successful IPO in 2021 (RELY). Karim has also led product and engineering at companies disrupting online marketing for hotels (Booking.com, and buuteeq, acquired by Booking.com), corporate managed travel services (Yapta, acquired by Coupa Software), music and movie content distribution, and early on was part of the team that pioneered streaming audio and video on the internet (RealNetworks).
Karim earned his Bachelors degree in Computer Science from San Jose State University, discovered his passion for programming in a community college class using Borland’s Turbo Pascal, and had his first programming experience on an Apple IIe in a high school mathematics class.
Robert Neer
Co-founder of Goods
Robert Neer is a product leader with a track record of driving innovation, scaling teams, and delivering high-impact products at Fortune 100 companies, including Disney, T-Mobile, Amazon, Best Buy, and Walgreens. He specializes in building world-class product management, design, and engineering teams that harness the power of technology and human-centered design to solve real customer challenges.
Currently, Robert is the co-founder of Goods, a product transformation and development agency that helps organizations accelerate their product model and maximize the effectiveness of their teams. Previously, he served as Vice President of Product for Pharmacy and U.S. Healthcare at Walgreens Boots Alliance, leading product strategy across Walgreens’ growing healthcare portfolio—including primary care, virtual care, and clinical services.
With a deep passion for product management, engineering, and design in technology-driven organizations, Robert has held influential leadership roles, including Vice President of Product & Engineering at Best Buy, Principal Product Manager at Amazon, Director of Product at T-Mobile, and Director of Product Development at The Walt Disney Company. Across these roles, he has successfully led large-scale digital transformations, built high-growth product ecosystems, and fostered cultures of innovation.
Robert believes in the power of product-led growth and is dedicated to equipping teams with the skills and mindset to create impactful, customer-first solutions.
John Yurcisin
Former Chief Product Officer, Change.org
John is an accomplished executive with more than 25 years of experience across two different chapters as a Product Executive and a Marketing Executive in leading worldwide teams. He leads with a growth mindset and gets excited about bringing teams together to drive innovation, delighting customers or small businesses/brands by building world-class customer experiences and creating sustainable growth in e-commerce or non-profits. Most recently, he was Chief Product Officer at Change.org where he was responsible for teams in Product Management & Development, Account Management, Analytics & Insights, Design, and Marketing. Prior to that, John spent 10+ years at Amazon across four roles leading product and tech teams, innovating solutions on behalf of customers, direct-to-consumer brands, and small businesses. Before that, John lived in Hong Kong working in Marketing leadership roles at UBS and Ogilvy, and prior to that in Chicago with HSBC and Hyatt Hotels. John bleeds purple with three degrees from Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, including an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management, an MS from the Medill School of Journalism’s Integrated Marketing degree, and a BS from Northwestern University. Currently, John is in Seattle volunteering, mentoring, advising start-ups, and raising his two young sons.