Women in Product Management in APAC 2019

We are pleased to announce Product Management Festival’s Women in Product Management in APAC 2019 List. Each finalist is an experienced product manager with demonstrated track for success. They have shown they have the management, technical, and interpersonal skills that’s needed for a product leader. These ladies come from industries ranging from automotive to finance and come from backgrounds ranging from computer science to French and classical studies. Several have founded their own companies along their journey whereas others have spent their career at one company. What all of them have in common is that they have made a difference in their companies, community, and profession.

On 18th June 2019, Product Management Festival will be hosting a Women in Product Management Night where all the women who made it on the list are meeting to celebrate their success. Other women in product are welcome too! Please register here for the event.

1. Our list starts with our most nominated female product management superstar, Chen Wei Jia, based in Kuala Lumpur. She’s Head of Consumer Product at Fave, a multi-category online-to-offline platform. With a law degree and start as an investment banker, Ms. Chen decided neither was challenging enough that she learned coding from scratch at 26 years old then co-founded and was a full stack developer at NoNonsense Labs. Eventually, she went to Fave as their first female software engineer. Can we say inspirational?
2. Rhiannon White is CPO at Vend, an Auckland-based cloud-based point of sale system. Our only New Zealander on this list, Ms. White was previously VP of Product Management at Shazam in San Francisco and Head of Marketing at BBC in London. She has a background in direct and digital marketing, and probably could do it all in French. Her university degree was in French and Classical Studies..
3. Chennai-based Padmini Janaki is one of several females on this list who comes from a UX background, but her particular speciality is in fraud management. After over six years at PayPal in UX and product management, she is now Senior Product Manager-Payments at Change Healthcare. Previously, she also founded Frozen Tomato, which supported poor single mothers. Ms. Janaki is also the Chapter Lead of Women in Product in Chennai.
4. Petra Gross is CPO of MedicalDirector, a Sydney-based medical software and information provider. She’s been interviewed for iTWire and founded Think Big Consulting, an Australian-based management consulting company focused on creating tailored eCommerce strategies for companies. Ms. Gross was previously VP Product Management at Expert360 and CarsGuide and started her product management career at eBay.
5. A Product Manager at Oracle India, Deepa Rajan holds an industrial engineering degree from Georgia Institute of Technology. She was a business analyst with Microsoft previously. Ms. Rajan is also the Co-Lead for the India chapter of Women in Product.
6. Nattinee Gonanont is Product Director-Major Appliances, East Asia (Head of Product Lines) at Electrolux. Based in Bangkok, she is an MBA with a background in electrical engineering. Ms. Gonanont also is a Master Black Belt with high expertise in Six Sigma tools and methodology.
7. Rakuten Viki’s Deepika Rudra Murthy is a software engineer by background and now Manager for Product and Growth Analytics. She’s also the chapter lead for Women in Product Singapore.
8. Sophie Parker is Product Director at Indeed.com in Tokyo. Ms. Parker has a PhD in Psychology and was previously Director of Product at Booking.com in Amsterdam.
9. If you’ve used an HP notebook, chances are you’ve used one of Josephine Tan’s products. As HP Vice President, Ms. Tan oversees HP’s core (HP/Pavilion), gaming (OMEN) and premium (Envy, Spectre) notebooks. She previously inaugurated HP Taiwan’s development center to design and develop HP global consumer notebooks, desktop and PDA products. Ms. Tan has also been AVP Global Marketing and Branding at Acer.
10. Building and launching products for specific market verticals and geographies in Asia? That’s the specialty of Pallavi Aravind Narasimhan, Regional Product Manager at PayPal. Ms. Narasimhan spearheaded the creation of PayPal’s payment system for the Indian market and has a background in equity market analysis and portfolio risk management and modeling.
11. Sanchi Gupta is Musafir.com’s Head of Products and specializes in online travel and payments. A software developer by background, Ms. Gupta previously was with Paytm, where she shared the stage with the honorable Finance Minister & Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma for the launch of the first Paytm Payments Bank debit card.
12. Sony Mobile Communications’ Xinjuan Song is their Head of Customer Product Management Greater China. Ms. Song started as a Quality and Test Manager at Hua Wei, Nokia, and Siemens. She has a BA in Mathematics and Masters in business and computer networks.
13. Fly Air Asia a lot? Malaysian-based Andi Nadia Ikrana Hasanuddin revamped their loyalty program into a digital product offering. Ms. Hasanuddin is AirAsia BIG Loyalty’s Regional Head of Product–Airline. With a degree in finance and marketing, she has experience in aviation revenue management, network development, and financial service consulting.
14. Savitha Ajitraj is a PayPal Senior Product Manager who is a certified scrum master and previously a technology consultant. She’s spoken at events like Product School Chennai and API World 2018 and was also a recipient of the Change Champion Award by PayPal.
15. eBay’s Head of Product management & Seller Marketing/Communication, Chaoou Huang, is also a certified scrum master. Based in China, Ms. Huang started as a software development manager and eventually came to eBay, with whom she holds several patents.
16. Singapore-based TransferWise Product Manager, Christine Sou, has launched products that have touched over 250 million people. Previously a Product Manager at Zillow and PlayStation Network in San Francisco, Ms. Sou is a Founder and Lead of Women in Product’s Singapore chapter. She is also a certified ScrumMaster and Scrum Product Owner.
17. If you are a Jira Software Cloud user, you’ve likely used Megan Cook’s products. She is Head of Product-Software Teams at Sydney-based Atlassian. Ms. Cook holds a degree in computer software engineering.
18. Janine Wang is a specialist in drone services. Talk about a killer way to break the ice at a networking event! Senior Product Manager of Rakuten Drone Service, Japan-based Ms. Wang was previously SPM at bilibiliGroup in Shanghai and started her product management career at Baidu. She holds an engineering degree in computer science.
19. Melbourne-based Belinda Ralston is another product leader with a software engineering background. Currently Head of Product at HROnboard, Ms. Ralston was previously Head of Product Operations at Navigo. She is also a Level 2 Ballroom dance teacher!
20. Marina Arbuzova is Head of Product Management at BMW, where she led efforts in BMW being one of the first manufacturers in bringing electric mobility to the market. Ms. Arbuziva started as a Product Specialist at Nissan in Moscow and eventually became Head of Planning and Analysis at Hyundai. Now, she’s in Bangkok heading up product management at BMW.
21. China’s Ying Ding is Senior Manager, Head of Product Lifecycle Product Management team at Nokia in Beijing. With a bachelor’s degree in Telecommunications Engineering, Ms. Ding built her career at Nokia, where she now leads the lifecycle global market activities for those products which have launched in the global market.
22. Geraldine Balboa-Vallejo is Director, Head of Internet Access, Product Management at Globe Telecom based in the Philippines. Ms. Balboa-Vallejo has an MBA degree and started in product marketing before switching over to product management.
23. Kate Claringbold is the Chief Product & Technology Officer of on-demand workforce startup, Sidekicker. Based in Melbourne, Ms. Claringbold co-founded WhatWeWishFor.com, an online gift registry business and worked in Deloitte Australia’s digital forensics arm. She is also an advisory Board Member for SEEK Volunteer.
24. Christine Zhu is Senior Manager, Product Management, at Amazon in Beijing. Previously, she was a product director at Yota Devices and in product management at Microsoft and Nokia. Ms. Zhu has an bachelor’s in computer science and master’s in economics.
25. Online grocery company HappyFresh’s Hanifah Azhar is Head of Product with a degree in informatics engineering. Previously, she co-founded a travel-related startup and was a product manager at GOJEK based in Jakarta. With a degree in informatics engineering, Ms. Azhar has developed award-winning apps, including one that won Microsoft’s Imagine Cup.
26. EunSu Park is Chief Product Manager at Line Corp in Seoul. She has a degree in Biological/Biosystems Engineering and Masters in International/Global Studies;
27. Joelyn Wong is AirAsia BIG Loyalty’s Head of Product-Lifestyle. With a degree in management and marketing, she added in technical skills starting as a data services account manager at OgilvyOne Worldwide Malaysia and worked on Nestle, Purina, Guiness working on their CRM consumer databases.
28. Co-founder and CPO of Pollen, Liyana Sulaiman, is a technologist, entrepreneur, and activist. She also is a speaker and has spoken at TedX multiple times in Singapore and has also been a member of the judging panel for the NUS-DBS Social Venture Challenge.
29. Tania Aidrus is Director, Product, Payments & Next Billion Users at Google. She previously spent eight years as Country Manager for South Asia Emerging Markets. Ms. Aidrus was a founding member of Boston-based ClickDiagnostics, a start-up that connected rural patients with remote medical specialists using mobile technology and community health workers. Ms. Aidrus has a bachelor’s of science degree in Biology and Economics and MBA from MIT. She’s also published a case study with with MIT Sloan on “A Story of Technology, Entrepreneurs and Global Networks “
30. Product leaders need to be able to tell a good story, and our final female product superstar can do just that. Karthi Subbaraman was CPO of Xperian, the design ecosystem for designers, and recently started an educational arm called Xperian School. She has been featured in the Business Standard among other publications and was named “Best Business Storyteller” by the Institute of Product Leadership (IPL) at its Shareathon event/competition last year. Ms. Subbaraman has a degree in Human Factors Engineering, started her career as software engineer, and then moved into design. She founded a company, which eventually became part of Xperian. When not at work, she’s a co-lead of Women in Product India and a visiting faculty member of India’s National Institute of Design.

Congratulations to our Women in Product Management APAC 2019 finalists! Thank you for all your efforts and contributions to the product community! We look forward to celebrating with ALL female product managers at PMF’s  Women in Product Management event on 18th June! Don’t forget to register here for the event.