28 Great Product Leaders and What We Can Learn From Them
Sorry to go all middle school gym teacher on you, but to be the best, you’ve got to learn from the best. Or at the very least, follow the best product leaders on your social feeds. Product Management is complicated, there’s a lot to wrap your head around.
A good Product Manager is a good learner. So flex those brain muscles (whoops there’s the gym teacher again) and start looking for key insights from some of the product world’s brightest and best. The industry is full of inspirational, knowledgeable, and simply badass Product Leaders whose journey and expertize can help you become better at what you do.
We’ve put together a list of people who we think you can learn a great deal from. Think of it as a celebration of folk who deserve to be shouted about, and who have contributed positively to the product world. All the people we’ve considered have unique things to say.
This list isn’t exhaustive, it’s impossible to include all the great people in Product Management, but we believe it represents a good cross-section of the industry. Add these folks to your social feed and you’ll have a consistent flow of cutting-edge thought leadership.
There are a lot of names we’d like to highlight, so let’s get to it. In no particular order – we promise 😉 – here are 28 great Product Leaders that you can learn something from.
Did we miss someone? Of course we did. The product world is bursting with great people, we’re bound to have missed people.
If you know anyone who’s doing a really great job, let us know in the comments or on social. We love having our eyes opened to the wonderful work of product people.
Who knows, we might do this again one day.
1. Janna Bastow
Co-founder & CEO of ProdPad, Co-founder of Mind the Product
Okay, let’s nip this in the bud. Yes, Janna is our Co-founder and CEO here at ProdPad, but she’s made it on this list of Product Leaders through merit – not blind favoritism.
Janna has been a huge voice in the product space for many years, hosting and appearing on webinars and talks to share her masterful insight into roadmapping, customer feedback, and more. She also Co-founded Mind the Product, an excellent community of product people that hosts world-renowned conferences and events to help Product Managers excel.
Janna pioneered the Now-Next-Later product roadmap, a now popular time horizon-based roadmap that we’re pretty crazy about. We think it’s waaaaay better than restrictive timeline roadmaps and it’s now a fundamental feature of the ProdPad tool.
Janna chats about the benefits of Now-Next-Later often, and you can catch her speaking about it in many of our webinars. We think this is a great one to start with 👇.
[WEBINAR] How to Prove To Your Team That ‘Now-Next-Later’ Works Best.
2. Tatyana Mamut
Co-founder & CEO of Wayfound
Tatyana is a customer-obsessed Product Leader, believing that you should spend your energy building things that make your customers happy, not your bosses. With her long list of successes, we think she’s onto something.
Tatyana has been a transformative leader for multiple companies, building high-impact products for Amazon, Salesforce, Nextdoor, IDEO, and Pendo. Those are some pretty big names. At the time of writing, she’s currently killing it at Wayfound, helping businesses to thrive with AI.
With AI transformation and how that affects customer experience being a recent focus of Tatyana’s, she’s an excellent voice for those looking to learn how to leverage this technology without losing the human touch.
3. Brian Elmi
SVP of Product at Drata
Brian Elmi is one of the most highly admired Product Leaders, but don’t just take our word for it. He’s been named The Most Admired Product Leader category winner at the Product 50, an award run by Amplitude. So, what’s he done to deserve this crown?
Well, Brian is currently the VP of Product at Drata, but it’s his two decades of experience that make him a standout Product Leader to learn from. He’s been involved in Product Management and Design at multiple Fortune 500 companies but has also lent his expertize to startups, too.
Brian once led Product Development at Intuit, overseeing the TurboTax product line – which happens to be the fastest-growing product in the company’s history. That’s pretty good going.
4. Melissa Perri
Founder of Product Institute
No list of great Product Leaders is complete without Melissa Perri. In fact, she’s so awesome that we’ve also included her in our 15 Women in Product You Should Be Following list.
Melissa Perri is a coach, consultant, and advisor, focused on helping Product Managers make their organizations amazing. She’s also the creator and lead instructor of Product Institute, an outstanding school for product people to polish their skills.
She’s focused on steering people away from the Build Trap and has written Escaping the Build Trap to act as a guide.
Melissa speaks often on this subject, and has been our webinar guest here at ProdPad on multiple occasions. Why not check out this Product Ops Bootcamp webinar with Melissa Perri, no signup required. Consider it a gift from us, because we’re nice like that.
5. Marty Cagan
Partner at Silicon Valley Product Group
Marty Cagan needs little introduction, as he’s a well-known name among Product Leaders. Marty is a great voice and also a combative one. Not afraid to hide away from heated debates on best practices, his insight is well-considered, and designed to get you thinking on ways to improve your processes.
His arguments are coming from a place of experience, having served as a product executive at companies like eBay and Netscape. His trilogy of books, Inspired, Empowered, and Transformed, are highly regarded and considered essential reading for those in Product Management. His books delve into topics like the approaches of leading tech giants, ways to create environments where teams thrive, and how to update your business for the ever-changing demands of the modern day.
He’s the Founder of Silicon Valley Product Group and his insights cover the length and breadth of Product Management. Following him will give you a well-rounded look at all aspects of the discipline, including valuable ways to find marginal gains to drive improvements.
6. Matt LeMay
Author & Product Consultant
Matt LeMay is a Product Leader focused on helping others streamline their processes to make things far simpler. He delivers data strategy and training workshops for companies like GE, American Express, and Pfizer.
His ethos is all about focusing on the work that matters most. His two books, Agile for Everybody and Product Management in Practice are bursting with great insight to help you improve and develop and work in a more agile way. They’re perfect resources for those at the dawn of their careers and are something seasoned Product Managers wish they had access to when they were first starting.
He’s also the creator of the One Page/One Hour Pledge, a commitment to help reduce busy work and maximize collaboration. The framework is used by over 100 teams worldwide.
In the past, our CEO Janna has had the pleasure of picking Matt’s brain about a few topics for our webinar series, most recently she spoke to Matt about how to show the ROI of your product work. It’s a grade A webinar you should really check it out.
[WEBINAR] How to Show the ROI of Your Product Work.
7. Adrienne Tan
Co-founder & CEO of Brainmates
This is a big claim, but a true one – Adrienne Tan has invigorated Australian Product Management, breathing life into the scene. A lot of her work has been focused on boosting the product community in the country, which wasn’t as vibrant when she first started. This desire to connect product people led to the successful creation of Leading the Product in 2015, an annual conference that brings together thousands of Product Managers to learn and share insights.
Adrienne Co-founded Brainmates back in 2004, working to give clients the tools to drive business growth. Adrienne is highly active on LinkedIn, posting insightful blogs and videos on various topics relating to leadership, frameworks, and more.
She’s a wonderful contributor to the Product Management landscape and teaches that we thrive in a community and that if you haven’t got one in your area, maybe you should build one.
8. Brant Cooper
CEO of Moves the Needle
For over 15 years, Brant was one of the leading lights in Product Management, being an innovative voice and one of the originators of the Lean Startup movement. Most recently he founded and was CEO of Moves the Needle. In July 2024, the product world lost Brant, and with that a key figure in Product Management.
But his work lives on and should be celebrated. A great way to explore all that Brant stood for is through his book Disruption Proof. Designed to help you through times of unforeseen change, it’ll teach you more about the RAD mindset, the five E’s, and the K-A-S-E strategy. Three core principles that Brant championed.
Since his passing, the Product Management world is just that little bit dimmer. We’ll miss you, Brant.
9. SC Moatti
Founder of Products That Count
If you’re looking to network with other Product Managers, then SC Moatii is a must-follow. She’s the Founder of one of the largest networks of PMs across the globe, boasting a community of over 20K product leaders, managers, and innovators that you can learn from.
That community is called Products That Count, and we highly recommend you join it if you’re not involved already.
All that said, SC Moatti is more than just a facilitator of connection. She’s also got great insights herself, with a good focus on mobile product management and digital transformation. She often talks around the U.S. and is also the host of the Product That Count podcast, which we really recommend!
If you’re looking for more podcasts to listen to while you do the dishes, walk the dog, or whatever, we’ve got a list of some of our absolute favorites 🌟.
10. Lenny Rachitsky
Former Product Lead at Airbnb & Podcast Host
Talking about podcasts, Lenny is the host of one of the biggest product podcasts around, hosting a range of impressive guests who have bundles to say about Product Management and more.
Lenny doesn’t piggyback on the name value of his guest – he’s one of the best Product Leaders in his own right. As a former Airbnb Growth Product Manager, he’s seen his fair share of success and knows what he’s talking about.
Lenny had a great chat with our own Janna Bastow on the topic of building better product roadmaps. You can take a listen to that episode below 🔽.
Listen to Lenny and Janna chat all things product roadmaps.
If podcasts aren’t your thing, you can also check out his socials which are chock full of insights, witty remarks, and advice. He’s one of the more entertaining people to follow on social media. His newsletter is also a great resource, with around 70,000 signed up to it, so you just know it’s stellar. Check out the Lenny Rachitsky Newsletter.
11. Lisa Dziuba
Head of Growth at Lemon.io
Lisa is a champion of finding untapped growth channels and exploring those avenues to grow your product and your company. She’s a pro at product marketing, using her decade of experience to drive growth, focusing on user insights and data.
She’s the Product 50 winner for the Startup and Small Company category and is currently a Product Marketer at Lemon.io, bringing to that position a treasure trove of knowledge and success to draw upon.
Lisa’s accolades and achievements are insane. For WeLoveNoCode she generated $3.6 million in ARR with 30% MoM growth. If those numbers mean nothing to you, she basically helped the company earn $3.6 million a year while growing the company by 30% each month. No surprise that it’s been acquired by Toptal.
More excitedly, Lisa is just getting started. She was a nominee for the Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2021 so there are plenty more miles in the tank and plenty more opportunities for her to achieve even more success.
Follow her to learn more product marketing tips and ways to grow your market share.
12. Eric Ries
Founder of Lean Startup Co & Author
Eric Ries is likely a name you already know. He’s a big fish in not just the product world, but also among startups. This is because he’s the brainchild of the highly popular Lean Startup Methodology.
This methodology provides the basis of lean product management, and we think it’s such a fundamental aspect of modern-day product management that we’ve included his book The Lean Startup in our list of Best Product Management Books.
The reason why his work is so useful is that it details how to work in a lean way that saves you development time and money. It focuses on the Build-Measure-Learn cycle that helps you move faster, learn quicker, and drive consistent improvements.
Although this book is from 2001, Eric hasn’t rested on his laurels. He currently serves on the advisory board of multiple tech startups and has been a consultant for several high-profile companies.
13. Ken Sandy
Product Coach & Lecturer
Ken Sandy is a senior technology Product Manager hailing from the San Francisco Bay area – a hotbed of great Product Leaders – with experience at MasterClass and LinkedIn Learning.
He’s a fantastic product teacher, crafting the first Product Management course at the Engineering school at UC Berkeley, which has over 400 alumni, now making waves in the industry.
His work is a great resource when learning how to be a great Product Leader yourself. His book The Influential Product Manager is particularly valuable for those stepping into senior positions.
Ken Sandy is a product sage, imparting his wisdom to startups and scale-up companies all over the United States, Canada, and Europe.
We’ve got a kickass on-demand webinar with Ken about building a killer product strategy that you shouldn’t miss. Give it a watch, it’s worth it.
[WEBINAR] Create Your Killer Product Strategy with Ken Sandy.
14. Jake Knapp
Co-Founder at Character
Jake Knapp is one of the more recognizable Product Leaders as he’s a New York Times bestselling author with his book Sprint. Don’t let the name deceive you, it’s definitely not about athletics.
Jake Knapp is the inventor of the design sprint, a five-day, short burst of intensive activity that allows teams to tackle complex problems quickly and effectively. He began using this methodology at Google in 2010, working with the teams behind Chrome, Google Search, and more, before bringing the design sprint methodology to Google Ventures in 2012.
Basically, many Google features that we use and love daily are thanks to Jake and his ingenious design sprint approach.
Today, Jake Knapp coaches thousands of product teams, is the Co-founder of Character, and also writes a newsletter that you can subscribe to here.
15. Aileen Lee
Founder of Cowboy Ventures
Aileen is the Founder of Cowboy Ventures, a company that partners with start-ups and enterprises to help them build products that their users will love. She’s a Product Leader with years of experience and is a significant voice, with her finger firmly on the pulse.
She proved this when she first coined the popular term ‘unicorn’, used to describe a business that hits $1 billion in revenue without being listed on the stock market. She’s a trendsetter, and highly influential – even Times Magazine seems to think so, placing her in their 100 most influential people list in 2019.
She’s been a massive player in making Product Management less of a boys club by supporting more women to get into positions of power within product. Her support, mentorship, and angel investment have helped to increase the number of female venture capitalists, start-up owners, and Founders.
Her ‘Welcome to the Unicorn Club’ article, where she first used the term unicorn, is a great resource for Product Managers looking to learn from and analyze the success of high-performing start-ups. For something more recent, you also check out why she believes that more unicorns will be female-led in the future.
16. Teresa Torres
ProductTalk Coach
We’re big fans of Teresa Torres here at ProdPad, so much so that she’s featured on multiple of our awesome webinars!
As a Product Management coach, Teresa has helped multiple companies like CarMax, Spotify, and Tesco to improve their development. She’s also helped thousands of product people with her product discovery courses found on Product Talk Academy. She’s a big deal, okay.
Teresa is big on the importance of continuous discovery in the product world. She follows the mantra that you’re always learning and uncovering things about your product to make it better. Consider Teresa an expert on this, so much so that she’s written a book to guide you on how to do it.
Continuous Discovery Habits digs deep into step-by-step frameworks you can follow to make continuous discovery a key aspect of your product development. From the book you can learn how to collect customer insights, validate assumptions, and make better data-driven decisions. Cool.
Want a taster of what Teresa has to say? Check out our webinar with her to find out more🔎.
[WEBINAR] Continuous Product Discovery.
17. Khatereh Khodavirdi
VP of Data Science at PayPal
When you play a massive part in the success of one of the world’s biggest online payment and money transfer businesses, people are going to stand up and take notice. Khatereh is the current Vice President of Data Science, Operational Analytics, and AI at Venmo and PayPal. She’s big into using data and analytics to drive growth, taking advantage of insights to spearhead the next generation of commerce products.
Before her time at PayPal, Khatereh was a core member of eBay’s first-party ads initiative, playing a key part in the outrageous growth of the business in its heyday.
Khatereh knows a thing or two, and her expertise has been rewarded by being named the Best Product Leader in the large company category at the Product 50 awards. She’s a consistent poster on social media, making her a great person to follow and learn from.
18. Ibrahim Bashir
VP of Product Management at Amplitude
Ibrahim is the vice president of Product Management at Amplitude – yes the Amplitude that’s behind the Product 50 that helped illuminate so many great Product Leaders. We thought with his company helping to champion some of the best Product Leaders in the world that he deserved some love too. And boy does he deserve it.
Ibrahim has been building and shipping software for over 20 years, scaling Twitter’s service infrastructure and Amazon’s Kindle business to name just two. In his newsletter Run The Business on Substack, he writes a lot about building teams, shipping products, and repeating outcomes.
It’s a great resource to gather the thoughts of someone who’s been around the block and knows the ropes, and we’ve loved his insights so much that we’ve invited him to share his thoughts on our blog.
Read what he has to say on Product Value in B2B Software.
19. Aziz Musa
Founder of Cush Digital
Aziz is one of the best public speakers and Product Leaders, and since blowing us away with his talk about delivering a pure product at Mind the Product in 2013, we’ve been big fans of his work and insight.
Aziz has a lot of experience leading multiple startups, including the digital consulting arm of Pegasus, Blackbird, and Spartans Boxing Club. He’s now the Founder and CEO of Cush Digital, one of the fastest-growing digital agencies in the Middle East and North African region.
Aziz has a wonderful focus on psychology, philosophy, and empirical study to help you create amazing products that your customers love, and shares his knowledge at conferences regularly. Aziz has been a guest on a number of great podcasts and webinars and is a strong voice to listen to if you’re looking to improve your understanding of Product Management and marketing.
20.Ghazal Badiozamani
Chief Product Officer at Catchafire
Ghazal is a unique thinker in the product space, suggesting some great ideas that go against the grain, and that’s why she’s a great person to follow and learn from. In November 2023, she stood firmly at a conference stating that we need to stop aligning our product strategy with our business strategy. What 🤯?
Well, looking for answers we asked Ghazal to elaborate on our blog, and her really useful and insightful explanation can be found below.
Ghazal is a Product Leader with a lot of pedigree, with success in helping companies create their strategies and develop high-performing teams. She’s the current Chief Product Officer at Catchafire, with experience launching products in medicine, edtech, analytics, and material science. Fancy.
21. Bruce McCarthy
Product Culture Founder & Keynote Speaker
Bruce McCarthy is a serious thought leader when it comes to product roadmaps, having co-authored the book Product Roadmaps Relaunched. He explores new ways to build your product roadmap that go against the traditional deadline-based approach – something that we can definitely buy into.
Like our CEO Janna Bastow, Bruce has been an early voice in moving away from feature-based roadmaps. If you want to see Bruce talk about his approach to roadmaps and to effectively use OKRs alongside them, oh boy do we have the webinar for you.
Watch as Bruce and our CEO Janna Bastow break down the relationship between OKRs and roadmaps and figure out how to work most effectively.
[WEBINAR] OKRs vs Roadmaps Deathmatch.
22. Susana Videira Lopes
Director of Product at Abatable
Susana is a powerhouse of Product Management, with over 10 years of experience leading product teams in multiple B2B scale-ups. Her mantra for Product Management is to focus on solving difficult yet truly meaningful problems for your customers.
A great example of this is how she launched an award-winning AI product to fight identity fraud at Onfido, which helped the brand achieve tenfold revenue growth over six years.
Susana is one of the Product Leaders who helps product people get a leg up. She’s an angel investor at Ventures Together and also provides coaching to founders in early-stage businesses. Her blog is a fantastic resource covering some key principles and frameworks in Product Management, including minimum viable product and customer research in B2B.
Susana is currently the Director of Product at Abatable, which focuses on building a thriving future for climate, nature, and people.
23. April Dunford
Author & Founder of Ambient Strategy
If you’re looking for advice on how to position your product and business to drive success, April Dunford is your woman. She’s spent 25 years as a startup executive, operating in the trifecta of Marketing, Product, and Sales Teams.
In these roles, she learned what makes the difference between a winning product that everyone wants, and a loser that never got off the ground. She’s used that insight to develop multiple successful products and build startups that were acquired with a total cost of over $2 billion 🤑.
April has developed an impressive approach to positioning products in ways that work, becoming a certified expert in the craft. She’s written Obviously Awesome, an absolute barnstormer of a book that captures her approaches to positioning that any startup can follow. Her follow-up Sales Pitch is a fantastic resource for designing a compelling case for why your product should be chosen over others.
24. Adam Thomas
Product Lead at Pendo.io
Adam Thomas is a Product Leader and speaker, boasting over 15 years in product leadership roles at the likes of Google, BP, and SmartRecruiters. He now uses his experience to help product teams plan better and communicate more effectively to achieve their goals.
He’s one of the few Product Leaders who’s seen the tension between customers, Product Teams, and organizational outcomes firsthand, and now shares strategies to overcome this challenge.
Adam Thomas has risen through the ranks, starting as a System Programmer to become the insightful voice he is today. He writes and talks about helping businesses move beyond relentless triage and create solutions that promote a better culture.
He’s an exciting voice in Product Management, and we’re thrilled that he’s a ProdPad webinar guest! Find out how to avoid the five deadly sins of strategy 👿.
[WEBINAR] How to Avoid The Five Deadly Sins of Strategy.
25. Nilan Peiris
Chief Product Officer at Wise
Nilan is the VP of Growth at Wise, being in that role since 2014 while acting as an advisor for the brand since 2012. During that time, Wise has grown to become one of the biggest international money transfer providers in the world. Good going. He’s also the Chief Product Officer, leading the way for new product development and innovations.
Like many other great Product Leaders, Nilan spends time advising startups and small businesses to get the most out of their products. He’s spoken at length about how to market your product through word of mouth and has also reflected on his 10-year experience with Wise at an insightful Mind the Product Talk in 2023.
He’s a consistent podcast guest and provides great insights on his socials, so he’s definitely worth a follow.
26. Lewis C. Lin
CEO of Impact Interview
Lewis C. Lin is one of the best Product Leaders focused on helping you get hired. Since leaving his position as Director of Product Management at Microsoft, Lewis has been a massive voice in helping product professionals develop their interview skills and land their next role.
His book, The Product Manager Interview is a great resource for learning tips and tricks to excel and stand out in your field, and he’s also got a great Slack community where you can practice for your interviews, too.
By the way, we’ve made a list of some great Slack channels built for Product Managers. They range from being communities to help connect with other PMs, places for marginalized individuals in Product, and everything in between. Why don’t you take a look?
Lewis C. Lin was named as one of the best job posters you should be following on social media, making him a fantastic resource for Product Managers looking to change up their careers.
27. Itamar Gilad
Product Manager at Google
Itamar and his ideas are a very big deal in Product Management. Not only has he worked with some big boys in Google, YouTube, and Microsoft, but he’s also led the product growth teams at Gmail that helped the application reach one billion monthly active users. Wow.
But he’s not done there. Itamar is also the inverter of a couple of well-known frameworks that many Product Managers use today. The GIST framework for product development and planning may be his biggest one, which separates your roadmap into goals, ideas, step-projects, and tasks. Hence the name.
He also has the confidence meter to his name, which lets you calculate how confident you are in a product idea. It’s a pretty nifty tool we recommend you try. In fact, a confidence meter is built into ProdPad allowing you to be a fast visual of your entire backlog by confidence rating.
We’ve actually spoken to Itamar in depth about the benefits of GIST over product roadmaps. You can get your hands on the on-demand video by clicking the link below ⬇️.
[WEBINAR] Product Roadmaps vs GIST framework.
28. Minji Lee
Head of Data Science at Uber Freight
Last, but certainly not least, we have one of the most exciting Product Leaders to keep your eye on in the coming years.
Minji Lee is a product expert who’s one to watch, being voted the Most Promising Up and Comer at the Product 50 awards. She’s currently the Head of Data Science at Uber Freight, the market leader in intelligent logistic solutions.
She works on AI and analytical solutions to power her product discovery and creation, using the technology to craft dynamic pricing solutions for carriers and shippers. Her efforts have improved the satisfaction of her customers, launching key features to enhance Uber Freight’s value proposition.
Minj Lee is a product expert in waiting and is poised to make a big splash in the product world.
Feeling inspired by our Product Leaders?
Inspired by this list to become the best Product Manager you can be? Well, we’ve got a whole host of resources for you to dive into to improve your knowledge and understanding. We’re talking webinars, courses, downloadable templates, blogs, glossaries, you name it. Check them out!
Of course, a Product Manager is only as good as the tools they use. You’ll struggle to chop wood well with a rubber axe. At ProdPad, we’ve got one of the best tools for Product Managers that can help you up your game. Be it for roadmapping, idea management, feedback analysis, or more, try ProdPad today to see how we can make your outcomes better.
Dive into ProdPad today. No credit card required.