Ken has led technology teams for over 20 years in the San Francisco Bay Area. Ken works currently as an executive consultant and advisor for CEOs, CTOs, and senior Product, Engineering and Marketing leaders for companies in the US, Europe, Asia and Australia. He provides strategic guidance, coaching, and drives organizational transformation and process change, helping companies improve profitability and margins balanced with investment roadmaps for longer-term growth.
Examples of Ken’s recent work include:
- Engaged for a long-term cultural transformation after restructure at two of the world’s best known media brands. Implemented grass-roots programs to build greater user empathy, robust prioritization and road mapping processes, and shift to “squad” focus-teams increasing velocity, reducing dependencies and driving accountability.
- Interim CPO at a healthcare communications technology company, shifting a service-oriented department into a market-focused organization. Supported 100% revenue growth at significant ROI improvement. Established career development programs reducing employee churn by 80%.
- Executive coach for C-level at two data platform companies. Assessed and realigned their organizations around a compelling, product-led vision. Guided leaders through resulting culture change, turning around under-performing product and engineering teams.
- Created skills-competencies ladder for a large product and UX organization, aligning six VPs behind a common set of expectations, rolled out providing the company’s first complete “360” view across its talent, and developed tailored group training programs to address the gaps.
- Interim Head of Product for a mobile social networking product with 4 million monthly active users and 400,000 paid subscribers. Delivered their first substantial product release in almost 2 years, increasing subscription revenues.
Previously, Ken served as VP of Product Management at leading online education companies, MasterClass and lynda.com (acquired by Linkedin to create Linkedin Learning). Prior, he was General Manager for mobile companies at companies developing content and advertising platforms for independent publishers and startups creating mobile messaging and social networking solutions. He also led business units based in the United States, India, and China where he consistently defined, launched and managed award-winning web and mobile products loved by customers and used by millions of users across 60+ countries.
He is an industry fellow and lecturer at the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology at the University of California, Berkeley, where he pioneered and teaches the first product management course offered in the Engineering school; which has over 600 PM alumni practicing in industry.
He’s recently released “The Influential Product Manager – How to Lead and Launch Successful Technology Products” a highly practical and approachable guide to becoming more effective and navigating the challenging collaborative aspects of the product manager’s role. His work draws on leading teams at fast-growth, early-stage companies as well as at larger companies attempting digital transformation amidst industry disruption.
In his early career Ken was a consultant at leading management consulting firm, McKinsey & Co. He is an alum of Melbourne University, Australia, where he received his Bachelors in Engineering and Bachelors in Computer Science.
Kicking the Tyres of AI to See if it’s Right For Your Product
Building a product powered with AI is endlessly fascinating and can be downright enthralling. It’s also expensive, slower and riskier than a typical product build and requires building a bunch of new skills and habits into your team repertoire. Gen AI’s emergence into the mainstream hasn’t made any of that go away, it’s just upped the stakes and turned up the heat on the time to value. We’ll take a whistle stop tour through the things you need to be aware of and, if nothing else, you’ll walk away with better questions to ask!
About Kendra
I love building. Products, teams, companies. Turning great ideas into fantastic, profitable products. Being able to point to something and say ‘we built that’ is what stokes my fire.
I’ve released multiple AI products to market, generating key patents that support both the offensive and defensive patent strategy needed for new market entry.
I nurture, galvanise and inspire cross functional product and engineering teams to deliver game changing products and I work hard to create high performing and inclusive environments of continual learning and development where diverse perspectives are expected and celebrated.
Pragmatic and commercial, I have the academic and technical background needed to sort the real from the wishful thinking, value AI pitch decks accurately and call BS on the hype. I bring deep expertise in threading data and AI through new products and companies in a way that opens new markets and builds a differentiating moat.
Deeply committed to the belief that data needs to be used for good, I advise the Australian Government’s approach to data and AI via the National AI Centre Think Tank and the National Data Advisory Council.