Women We Admire is pleased to announce The Top 50 Women Chief Product Officers of 2024. In this executive-level position, the focus of the CPO is on aligning the product strategy with customer needs, business goals, and company vision. Before reaching this level, a professional needs to be highly experienced in product management and team leadership, and in this year’s list, we honor women from some of the most well-known and innovative companies around the world.
This year’s honorees include Sun Choe, Chief Product Officer of lululemon, who oversees women’s, men’s, accessories design, merchandising, and visual merchandising and is also deeply committed to driving racial equity and supporting underrepresented identities at the company. We also recognize Smita Hashim, CPO of Zoom Video Communications, who has over 20 years of experience in product management, including leadership roles at Google and Microsoft.
Lastly, we extend honors to Uta Knablein, CPO of iHeartMedia, the number one audio company in the US. With impressive clarity and skill, Knablein oversees all aspects of digital product management, strategy, and user engagement, including all 250 of iHeart’s platforms.
Please join us in celebrating the accomplishments of The Top 50 Women Chief Product Officers of 2024.
1. Linda Simovic
Chief Product Officer of Customer Engagement Apps, Microsoft
Linda Simovic is the Chief Product Officer of Customer Engagement Apps at Microsoft, an American multinational corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services. She first joined the company in 2016 as a principal group product manager.
She is a product manager with a proven track record for delivering disruptive and innovative solutions in technology. At Microsoft, her product leadership has branched across both Dynamics and Azure, focused on the latest innovations to help our customers with their digital transformation journey. She fell in love with product management when she launched her first product, CompleteView, a master data management software solution for healthcare data. She drove the end-to-end across GTM, pricing, marketing, and technical requirements for this highly accurate matching and conflation solution.
She was one of the first handful of product managers at Veeva Systems, when the company was still in its infancy, and launched the Veeva Web. This free out-of-the-box ecosystem of partner connectors helped Veeva build fast interoperability for their customers. She built innovative features for the Life Sciences market and became the subject matter expert on some of the most complex pieces of Veeva CRM. She was also responsible for integrating multiple software acquisitions under the technology solutions arm of IMS Health, now IQVIA. Her guidance helped IMS choose the right new platform to innovate and compete with the next-generation omnichannel solution for Life Sciences.
With a background in technology and industry, she brings a unique perspective on how companies are using technology to accelerate their business transformation. Simovic earned an Executive MBA from Fox School of Business at Temple University and an undergraduate degree in computer science and music from Albright College.
2. Rupali Kale
Chief Product Officer, Deloitte
Rupali Kale is the Chief Product Officer of Deloitte, a leading global provider of audit and assurance, consulting, financial advisory, risk advisory, tax, and related services. Kale is a seasoned product leader aligned with Deloitte’s Innovation group. She rose through the ranks of Deloitte from manager to associate vice president and to her current role as CPO.
She has managed and delivered complex, multi-year technology projects for healthcare, banking, and telecom clients. She has led product strategy, product development, product launch, customer success, and sales efforts for multiple product businesses, including HealthChoice, ConnectMe, AccessEdge, and ClearLight. She has experience standing up a highly complex and large product business from the ground up, growing the team from zero to around 140, and leading them through a market launch.
Kale graduated from Indiana University Bloomington with an MS in computer science and from the University of Mumbai with an undergraduate degree in computer engineering.
5. Kristina Bailey
Chief Product Officer, GEICO
Kristina Bailey has diverse work experience spanning various roles and industries. Bailey is currently serving as the Chief Product Officer at GEICO since August 2022. In this role, she creates intuitive products and experiences that outsize value for the business and customers by igniting product vision, implementing solutions that align products and technology to business needs, transforming organizations from a business-centric to a customer-centric focus, and building high-performing teams.
She has held leadership roles in diverse industries, including insurance, health care, financial services, technology, and professional services, and is known for maximizing organizational performance by launching award-winning and profitable products.
Prior to her role at GEICO, Bailey was the Vice President of Digital Transformation at Humana and Vice President of Digital Product Management at Capital One. Before joining Capital One, she worked at AOL as the Director of Product Management. She started her project career at WeatherBug as a Product Manager, where she managed a product portfolio and provided support to internal and external clients. Prior to that, she worked as an analyst for Accenture The National Institutes of Health.
Bailey holds an Executive MBA from the University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business and a B.S. degree in Information Systems with a specialization in Business from the same university. She also has a certification as a Project Management Professional (PMP) from the Project Management Institute.
6. Shruti Patel
Chief Product Officer - EVP Business Banking, U.S. Bank
Shruti Patel is Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer for the Business Banking Segment at U.S. Bank, where she is responsible for delivering an integrated product strategy that connects banking, payments, and software for business clients with up to $25 million in revenue.
Patel has two decades of financial services experience. Prior to joining U.S. Bank, she led partnerships and monetization at Shopify, managing financial services, retail, and cross-border partnerships and monetization strategies. Previously, she led digital payments products and partnerships at JPMorgan Chase, managing a suite of embedded payment services relevant to its card and consumer bank customers. She also collaborated with JPMorgan’s Corporate Responsibility team to run programs for enhancing financial literacy within court-involved youth and victims of the US justice system.
Before Chase, Patel spent 11 years at American Express, where she worked within the Corporate and Merchant Services units, across strategy, business development, and product management. Patel now resides with her family in New York City.
7. Navya Rehani Gupta
Chief Product Officer, Peek.com
Navya Rehani Gupta, Chief Product Officer at Peek, spearheads a bold vision for the Peek Pro platform, known as the 'Shopify for the experiences economy.' With over $1 billion in bookings annually, the Peek.com platform combines powerful business software with an award-winning marketplace for consumers to book fun activities, such as renting a boat, going zip lining, or visiting an art exhibit.
Before her pivotal role at Peek, Gupta played a key role in shaping new business lines at StyleSeat, the world's largest marketplace for beauty services, contributing to billions in beauty services. Her extensive experience also includes managing large-scale products at industry giants like Uber, Disney, and Goldman Sachs.
Her academic journey is marked by an electronics engineering degree from the University of Sheffield, UK, a master’s in computer science from Stanford, and an MBA from NYU Stern. As a seasoned product executive, Gupta excels in the art of building and growing products and high-performing teams. Beyond being a leader, she is a dedicated mentor, particularly sought after by peers, women, and students alike aiming to accelerate their careers in technology. Her personal passion extends to championing female founders, fostering inclusivity in the tech landscape, and reshaping the leadership paradigm.
9. Marianne McPeak-Johnson
Chief Product Officer, Cox Automotive Inc.
Marianne Johnson is chief product officer at Cox Automotive, where she leads the company’s product, engineering, and data teams, as well as the new product innovation discipline.
In her role, Johnson partners closely with the Cox Automotive executive team to deliver innovative solutions that create opportunities for the company’s clients while driving sustainable growth for Cox Automotive. As a 33-year veteran in the FinTech field, Johnson has helped shape the space, both through a technology and product innovation lens, and is applying her wealth of experience across the Cox Automotive ecosystem.
Before joining Cox Automotive, Johnson was at First Data, where she was head of product innovation and technology for the network and security solutions line of business and senior vice president of enterprise commercialization. Prior to First Data, Johnson was an executive vice president at Elavon, a U.S. Bank company, where she led global product innovation. Before Elavon, she served as a key driver of strategic growth at Equifax as senior vice president of U.S. growth and operations, where she successfully delivered new product innovation that resulted in significant revenue growth and served as an impetus for future innovations.
Johnson is a well-respected and awarded member of the technology industry, and she embodies the Cox spirit through her commitment to the community. She recently stepped into the role of co-chair for Cox Automotive’s “Empow[HER]” employee resource group. She has been named one of the top Women Worth Watching® by Profiles in Diversity Journal® and Woman of the Year by The Technology Association of Georgia. She was also honored in 2011 as a Turknett Leadership Character Award Nominee. She’s expanded her community involvement to include supporting the United Way and WIT – Women in Technology.
13. Sheryl McKenzie
Chief Product Officer, Western Union
As Chief Product Officer, Sheryl McKenzie leads Western Union's development of omnichannel strategy and product direction. This includes product vision, innovation, design, and development across multiple product verticals including retail, WesternUnion.com, digital banking, C2B, and B2B. McKenzie also orchestrates initiatives across the entire product lifecycle, from customer discovery and user research to development and delivery.
McKenzie brings more than 20 years of experience in the financial services industry, most recently at Mastercard, where she was responsible for global consumer products and digital innovation. Prior to Mastercard, McKenzie was the head of products at Bread Financial (formerly Alliance Data Systems) with accountability for credit products, payments, and digital capabilities. She also spent 15 years at American Express in leadership roles across cobrand portfolios, membership rewards, and loyalty.
She has an MBA from the Simon School of Business and a BA in Economics from the University of Rochester. She is based at Western Union's headquarters in Denver.
16. Eglae Recchia
Chief Product Officer, Berkadia
Eglae Recchia is the Chief Product Officer for Berkadia. In this role, Recchia drives the strategy, vision, and experience of Berkadia’s internal and external-facing digital products. She leads and oversees the product, design, and financial model teams, in addition to co-managing BeEngaged Powered by Berkadia, an accelerator program for startups that are destined to redefine the commercial real estate space. By leveraging her deep understanding of the commercial real estate industry and its technological landscape, Recchia has successfully guided the development and implementation of digital solutions that address the evolving needs of Berkadia’s clients and stakeholders.
Recchia joined Berkadia from Goldman Sachs, where she served as the Global Head of Digital Products for the Investment Banking Division. There, she led IBD digital products and strategic information. She was responsible for long-term digital functional roadmaps that brought efficiencies, automation, and growth to the global investment bank. Prior to Goldman Sachs, sheRecchia was at Freddie Mac, where she served as Chief Product Owner of Customer Management Tools and led the restructuring, vision, strategic alignment, and execution of a unified customer engagement platform in Single Family.
Recchia serves as a leader on the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging Steering Committee at Berkadia, ensuring that Berkadia continues to bring diversity of thought to everything they do. She’s passionate about building an environment where everyone feels safe and welcome to bring their whole self to work. Additionally, she’s part of the Educational Council for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she speaks regularly with prospective students to offer insights and advice.
Recchia has a Bachelor of Science from the University of Miami, double majoring in Philosophy and Advertising. She also holds a Master of Business Administration from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management. She resides in Virginia with her husband, two kids, and two dogs.
View the complete list of awardees
19. Saumya Bhatnagar
Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder, involve.ai
Saumya Bhatnagar is the CPO and Co-founder of involve.ai, an AI-driven Early warning dashboard that helps companies predict churn and revenue growth opportunities using customer data.
Before starting involve.ai, Bhatnagar co-founded a startup right out of high school in New Delhi which focussed on using technology to reduce gender-based abortions in India. She did her undergrad in Computer Science and went on to earn her Masters in Computer Science from the University of California, Santa Cruz, with a focus on Natural Language Processing.
She is a Forbes 30 under 30 alum, winner of the Stevie Gold Entrepreneur of the Year award, recognized as the 50 Most Powerful Women in Tech by the National Diversity Council, and is on the list of Top 100 Women in Technology by IBM. Bhatnagar is a strong advocate of more representation for women in tech and is the founder of a nonprofit in India for women's empowerment.
21. Kara Sasse
Chief Product Officer, Springboard
Kara Sasse is the Chief Product Officer at Springboard, the online learning platform preparing students for in-demand technology careers through mentor- and instructor-led programs. She leads the product, curriculum design, and engineering teams, which focus on scaling and growing Springboard’s consumer and enterprise portfolios. Sasse is also a venture partner at Emerge Education, a senior advisor for The Leapfrog Group, and a founding member of Chief.
Previously, Sasse was Chief Product Officer and Chief Operating Officer at Knowledge to Practice (K2P), where she led market research, product design, curriculum strategy, and user research. She also served as head of project management at Gallup, where she built and scaled digital products and subscriptions to fuel growth. She held additional roles at 2U, Forum Ventures (formerly Acceleprise), EVERFI from Blackbaud, Blackboard (acquired by Anthology), Rave Mobile Safety, Intelliworks, Crossmedia, and RG (Robbins-Gioia).
Sasse graduated from Roanoke College with a degree in marketing and earned her MBA at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. She is based in Washington, DC.
24. Heena Sood
Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer, ZenOptics
Heena Sood is the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at ZenOptics, a company that helps organizations maximize the value of their BI and analytics investments by providing business users with a centralized platform to access, assemble, and collaborate with all the reports they need to do their job.
Over the past 20 years, Heena Sood has been fortunate to work in many roles and view data and analytics challenges through different lenses. She has worn multiple hats, leveraging entrepreneurial, technical, and strategic leadership skills to deliver customer value every day. She's grateful for the various perspectives her career path has yielded, which enable her to view product delivery and adoption through a customer viewpoint and build products that solve real-world challenges. Sood is passionate about solving business problems by enabling people, process, and technology innovation and enjoys applying this across the data ecosystem – from data strategy and management to data engineering and analytics. In her current role, she is excited to drive capable teams, product vision, and technology innovation, leveraging a deep understanding of multiple business domains and technical expertise in information management, strategy, and governance to achieve objectives.
As a strategic and execution-focused leader with a solid technical foundation, Sood is always willing to jump in and get her hands dirty to solve problems, capitalizing on such opportunities to mentor geographically distributed teams to work effectively and encourage out-of-the-box thinking and problem-solving by connecting the dots. She enjoys cultivating committed teams that work smart, not just hard. During her career, she has been responsible for the data and analytics portfolios and digital transformation at large enterprises, such as Adobe, eBay, and PayPal. She has built a successful data and analytics services business, delivering strategic digital transformation projects across various domains and industry verticals. This experience enables her to holistically address the various challenges customers face in today’s data-democratized, best-of-breed analytics world.
Sood believes in continuous learning, facilitated by interacting with customers, practitioners, technology experts, and product visionaries across geographies, industries, and business processes. She holds a master’s degree in engineering management from Andrews University and an advanced certification from Stanford University, Graduate School of Business in project/program management.
25. Shelly Shires
Chief Product Officer, Springboard Collaborative
Shelly Shires is a passionate, strategic, and committed Chief Product Officer in the global education technology and virtual learning industries. Throughout her impressive career, spanning stints at companies including Pearson, Shutterstock, and Wall Street English, she has worked extensively in instructional and curriculum design, product and technology management, and end-to-end lifecycle development. Among colleagues and employees, she is known as a curious and empathetic leader with a unique ability to synthesize ideas, translate them into actionable roadmaps, and execute them successfully, creating industry-leading, digitally native experiences that captivate students across the globe.
Shires began her career working as assistant director of project management, technology support coordinator, and head of planning and evaluation for the Baltimore County Public Library, where she created various digital tools, including digital books, digital databases, and a self-checkout feature. In 2007, just a few years after joining the library, Shires accepted a position as executive director of global products and systems development for Wall Street English, an English language education company. There, she directed the full product development lifecycle, creating a reliable and scalable business plan that achieved the highest franchise and customer satisfaction ratings in the company’s history. Having demonstrated her ability to effectively manage the product lifecycle and lead global teams, Shires advanced to a new role at Pearson English, where she directed retail product development. In this position, she identified opportunities to implement innovative technologies for a product portfolio with over 50 projects servicing more than 400 schools in 29 countries.
Most recently, Shires joined Springboard Collaborative in the role of Chief Product Officer, where her research on family educator collaboration in combination with her professional experience will deliver transformational literacy solutions that bridge the literacy gap through family educator partnerships. In 2023, Shires was nominated for the Global CPO 20 Award by Products that Count.
Shires holds a BA in geography and environmental systems from the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, an MS in information systems management from the same university, and a Doctor of Education in curriculum and instruction from Liberty University. She resides in Baltimore, MD.
27. Sarah Jacob
Chief Product Officer, MedBridge
As MedBridge's Chief Product Officer, Sarah Jacob leads the product strategy and product organization. Jacob has been a product leader in the digital health technology space for over 10 years, both at businesses that were acquired and ones that have gone public. She's built world-class product organizations in both startup and scaling environments, as well as built both enterprise and consumer-facing solutions.
Prior to her current role, Jacob served in multiple product leadership roles with companies, including Optimize Health, Accolade, and CareCloud. She is an expert at developing differentiated products and loves to build and mentor Product organizations.
28. Tiffany Johnson
Chief Product Officer, NMI
Tiffany Johnson is an experienced, innovative product executive and award-winning leader, passionate about financial technology and inclusion. She has been published, quoted, and consulted by many top players and publications in the payments industry. Her reputation for excellence in planning and executing large-scale, complex products at strategic and tactical levels has allowed her to stand out among her peers. Johnson was recognized by American Banker as one of the Most Influential Women in Payments in 2022 for being a Change Agent in the space and by Women We Admire in 2023 as a Top 50 Leader in Arizona.
As Chief Product Officer (CPO) at NMI, a global payments enablement platform, Tiffany brings her extensive leadership and diverse product portfolio to the company, having worked on some of the world's top embedded finance and consumer-facing payment programs. Vijay Sondhi, CEO of NMI, welcomed Johnson into the role last year, “As we continue to drive more product innovation and solutions for our partners, Tiffany's deep payments experience makes her the perfect leader for our product team.” In her first year in the role, Johnson doubled the size of the product team, set the product roadmap to align NMI strategy with ISV and ISO customer needs, and played a key leadership role in NMI’s acquisition of the Sphere Commercial Division (2023).
Her top five product principles include outcomes over output, leading with context, learning early and often, leveraging data in decisions, being passionate, and believing in your product and its ability to help people.
Before joining NMI, she served as SVP of product at Green Dot and head of product for North America at U.K.-based Railsr (formerly Railsbank). In these roles, Johnson led new product development and drove innovation across each company’s banking, payments, debit, and credit "as-a-service" offerings. She holds an MBA, B.S. in economics, and B.S. in management from WP Carey School of Business at Arizona State University and resides in Phoenix, Arizona.
32. Wendy Zhou
Chief Product Officer, Oin Auto
Wendy Zhou is the Chief Product Officer of Oin Auto, a company dedicated to creating premium accessories for electric vehicles in AI power that can generate high-quality datasets to productionize machine learning models for their customers and users.
In this role, Zhou channeled a global team across three countries for both internal and external product and strategy development, generating $1M for the company in 2022. She led a team to establish the AI strategy for the company through its growth stage, doubling active user engagement over four months, and bringing in $1M in contracts, and she strengthened product experiences to keep and engage clients based on user feedback and market research, with 82% higher consumer engagement over the years.
Prior to joining Oin Auto, Zhou was a product design manager and senior product designer at Microsoft, as well as a product designer at HBO. Zhou earned a master’s degree in technology, jointly conferred by the Human-Computer Interaction Institute and the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.
View the complete list of awardees
34. Nancy Hill
Chief Product Officer, AltPep
Nancy Hill has a track record of building and growing innovation-driven life science companies. With extensive experience in biopharmaceutical, medical device, and diagnostics companies and strengths in product development, commercialization, and operations, she has built global businesses leading to multiple successful exits. Hill is currently the Chief Product Officer of AltPep, a start-up biotechnology company focused on amyloid diseases.
Prior to AltPep, Hill was Executive Vice President of Operations and Program Management at Adaptive Biotechnologies and a member of the core executive team that grew the company from early start-up through IPO to a multi-billion dollar peak market cap. She is also a past president of the Seattle Chapter of the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association and is a mentor for the University of Washington's Creative Destruction Lab. Hill has an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and a BA from the University of Washington.
37. Cheryl Chavez
Chief Product Officer, Firstup
Cheryl Chavez is the Chief Product Officer of Firstup, the world’s first intelligent communication platform that is used by more than 40% of Fortune 100 companies to connect with their people, design, and deliver personalized communications, and gain engagement insights throughout the employee journey.
As CPO, Chavez leads Firstup’s product team, including product management and design, and works closely with the technology team to deliver product strategy and roadmap for Firstup’s category-defining software. She most recently served as CPO at Bloomreach, where she was focused on connecting data to the right action for customers. Prior to that, she held product leadership roles at Duetto, Engagio, and Marketo, where she was the company’s first product management hire and went on to lead the product and UX teams through $300 million in revenue and IPO. Chavez graduated from UCLA with an undergraduate degree in biological anthropology and pre-med.
43. Keri Voke
Chief Product Officer, Dutch Pet, Inc.
As Chief Product Officer, Keri Voke leads the product and design team at Dutch Pet, a company focused on bringing stellar end-to-end virtual telemedicine to pets and their owners from the comfort of their homes.
In her previous role as Director of Product Management and Innovation at Walmart, she led a team of product managers focused on a diverse portfolio of innovation, machine learning, computer vision, and profit management. Before that, she worked as a senior consultant at IBM and as a consultant at CGI Federal.
She has been recognized by Brand Innovators as part of the 40 under 40 West class and has spoken at several retail conferences, as well as onstage alongside the current Walmart U.S. CEO at the Walmart Shareholder’s meeting. Her team’s work has been featured in major publications, such as TechCrunch, Forbes, and Innovation Leader. Voke graduated from William & Mary with an undergraduate degree in business administration and marketing.
45. Christa Hoffmeier
Chief Product Officer, BrightInsight
Christa Hoffmeier is the Chief Product Officer for BrightInsight, helping to fuel business growth by implementing, maintaining, and supporting solutions that drive value for customers. She has more than two dozen years of experience building technology roadmaps and solutions aligned to business goals and strategy. She holds a patent for a software product and is a recognized development leader with in-depth experience developing and delivering leading-edge software medical devices.
Hoffmeier’s team oversees maintenance and support, ensuring operational continuity post-production, managing product life cycles, and proactively mitigating risk for customers. She is adept at understanding customer objectives, designing solutions to achieve that outcome, and enabling project teams and contributors to excel.
Prior to joining BrightInsight, Hoffmeier served for seven years as senior director of product development at Haemonetics, a medical technology company. Throughout her career, she has specialized in software medical devices, hospital software integration, regulatory submissions, and more. Hoffmeier graduated from Purdue University with a B.S. in industrial engineering.
48. Kaliel Roberts
Chief Product Officer, Crunchyroll
Kaliel Roberts is the Chief Product Officer of Crunchyroll, a global anime brand that serves a passionate community of fans in more than 200 countries and territories. She leads the company’s product, engineering, customer experience, ad operations, and user experience. Since joining the company in 2019, she has led a global platform unification, built an in-house, diverse engineering expert team, and launched numerous products, services, and experiences for anime fans.
Roberts is an experienced product, operations, and engineering leader with a passion for combining technology, users, and content. She has 15 years of experience in market-leading consumer experiences, product, operations, partnerships, and data-driven development and has demonstrated success scaling major brands and players into digital environments. She’s also a Seasoned manager with a history of building strong, loyal, and high-performing teams with significant business results.
Early in her career while at CNET, Yahoo, and Discovery, she focused on short-form video. At Discovery, she split her time between short-form video, while also focusing on building platforms for the long-form linear TV offering. Roberts was honored as one of the Top Women in Digital Media by Cynopsis Media in 2015. She has a bachelor of arts from Cornell University.
50. Ashley-Kay Basile
Chief Product Officer of Clinical Solutions, Availity
Ashley-Kay Basile is the Chief Product Officer of Clinical Solutions for Availity, one of the nation's largest real-time health information networks. In this role, Basile is responsible for building and scaling Availity’s clinical suite of data solutions and identifying areas of opportunity for growth and impact in the challenging space of healthcare data interoperability. She works closely with a varied customer base including health plans, solution partners, health information exchanges, government, and life insurance companies, and she oversees product strategy, product management, clinical informatics, and solution engineering teams to help drive business growth and execute product strategy.
Previously, she was the CPO for Diameter Health, an early-stage start-up that was acquired by Availity and focused on automating and scaling clinical data standardization. She also led strategy for Optum's provider and payer analytic product portfolio and served as Vice President of Client Analytic Services. While at Optum, Basile built a new client-facing analytic team to support large provider health systems and payer organizations with the management of their costs, provider performance, and value-based care delivery, as well as launched a new flagship product that leveraged integrated clinical and claims data to support population health management for providers and payers.
Basile holds a Ph.D. from the Harvard Business School and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in Health Care Management and Policy, where she received multiple teaching awards and published over a dozen articles on healthcare improvement and management. She is a faculty instructor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health where she teaches health policy and management graduate students.
View the complete list of awardees