Go-To-Market PM leader

GAYATRI PUWAR MAHENDROO

510-***-**** ******@*****.*** https://www.linkedin.com/in/gpuwar https://www.medium.com/@gpuwar1 Product, Program & Integration Leader with 20+ years of experience developing innovative AI/ML and data platforms, Conversational experiences, and IoT, Consumer Mobile, and Cloud Productivity solutions for Mobility, B2B SaaS, B2G, Fintech, and in B2B2C sectors in both 0-1 and 1-N markets. Proven track record in delivering customer-centric platform solutions and applications, API-driven features, and technology partnerships with measurable business impact. Expert in scaling platforms across cloud environments and creating standardized partner programs and integration processes that significantly build adoption globally while building long-lasting partnerships across the value chain. Hands-on leader with a track record of leading cross-functional teams to implement large-scale platforms and software solutions across diverse industries. Demonstrated success in driving strategic partnerships and significant operational efficiencies while balancing customer needs, business goals, and technical feasibility. Adept at working with multiple stakeholders to resolve conflicting requirements, with strong technical and business acumen, and experience in driving go-to-market and product-led practices to drive growth. EXPERIENCE

Product Consultant Wevise.org (EdTech non-profit) San Francisco, CA April 2024 – March 2025

Wevise.org is a nonprofit organization in stealth mode that helps people find mentorship and career opportunities in the tech industry.

● Formed an 18-month vision and roadmap to align with the community requirements to build platform user experience features such as chat and calling on the mentor and mentee platform, defining requirements, UX experiences, and agile roadmap /project plan.

● Created a strategic partnership with GetStream.io, negotiating favorable terms for the non-profit while establishing a technical architecture, and built a joint UI/UX to deliver an MVP in the beta in Q1, 2025, for a non-profit organization and to 50+ members, while keeping in mind user trust & safety needs for the “ADA” community. Director of Platform Partnerships, Product & GTM Passport Labs, Inc (B2G Fintech) San Francisco, CA January 2023 – September 2023

Passport is a series D, B2B startup, specializing in business applications, data, and payments for the public and private sectors. Product lines include parking payments, transit payments, enforcement, and permit management to serve communities. Passport’s mission is to reduce operational complexity and deliver intelligent data solutions to improve decision-making and operations in the physical/digital world.

● Developed and executed a comprehensive vision, product strategy, quarterly roadmap for payment integrations and IoT/Mobility Platform Data and Analytics joint solutions, and for the Developer /Partner Portal for the Platform Ecosystem team, aimed at creating a B2G apps & integrations marketplace. Led a team of 4-5 Core Product Managers and squads, an API Product Owner at 3 different locations to manage the portfolio across Payments, Parking, and Governance core Product lines.

● Launched and scaled Text2Park from concept, design to go-to-market (GTM) phase, in cities with a 22% adoption rate.

● Led, developed and launched embedded Payment APIs on portal and integrated Passport’s parking payment solutions in 3 B2C apps for the Google Maps, in Accessibility area (iAccess) and off-site parking (Way.com) for the end-users to beta cities including comprehensive revenue and parking operations dashboards on the new SaaS platform to cities to drive adoption.

● Led complex strategic operations initiative, working across CS, operations, legal, and leadership teams, addressing number of issues with contracts, payment gateways scaling issues, and with marketing teams for B2G cities and municipalities clients to scale 3 partner applications across 150 cities that increased payment API utilization and transaction volume by 25%, contributing to $10M ARR within 7 months, while working closely with legal and CS teams to ensure adherence to governance frameworks.

● Led end-to-end process working from customer and partner selection, to SoWs (statement of works), selecting and integrating with partners’ data models, to production, to lead solutions in the areas of “Parking Occupancy”, “Citizen Surveys Feedback”, and

“Fleet Management” platform use-cases with partners and internal R&D teams, working with customers to drive pilots end to end.

● Launched a "Data Lab" and in-app marketplace listing features to reduce time-to-market for new features by 40%, and re-worked Passport’s Labs website and new platform partner lead form in HubSpot, working with the agency and marketing teams.

● Established a compliance risk tracking system for partner integration verification, ensuring all third-party applications met security and legal requirements before pilot deployment with the Partner Program, including Partner Program analytics, including APIs usage, revenue, and health status to provide transparency on program status to leadership and identify potential compliance issues. Head /Principal Product Manager, Integration Experiences & Growth Egnyte, Inc (Cloud B2B SaaS) Mountain View, CA January 2020 – December 2022

Egnyte is a series of E B2B SaaS startups that provide enterprise-secure content collaboration and file sharing software. Additionally, it provides cloud-based content intelligence, governance, e-signature, and workflow tools through a unified intelligent content platform, empowering more than 22,000 enterprise customers globally to manage their IT operations across cloud and on-premises.

● Owned product strategy, roadmap, program execution and beyond of a $250M ARR enterprise integration portfolio for Pre- IPO B2B SaaS Platform during its 5X growth, with strategic ISV partners, Microsoft, Google, DocuSign, Adobe Sign, Splunk, and Salesforce, to build app and integrations in productivity, and content governance area, on and off platform for IT and end-users, leading a team of 25 across 3 Agile squads, with cross-functional apps marketplace, Engineering teams and data engineering teams.

● Led program management for high-volume cloud storage platform operations supporting 40+ native integrations and millions of users, implementing incident triage processes that reduced critical escalations by 25% with the support and CS teams, with training, and improving documentation for the complex initiatives with M365 deployment, Salesforce, and other complex native integrations.

● Analyzed user data and feedback to identify pain points and opportunities for product improvement in key platform areas, in OAUTH, and gaps in user journey and documentation for key workflows and native integrations, including improving telemetry. Developed Tableau dashboards for tracking integration health, usage, ARR growth, and adoption metrics to leadership and GTM teams.

● Defined, designed, and launched new collaboration features for MS Teams and Office 365, including 0-1 'Desktop Co-authoring' integration, first in the industry, and leading feature retention by 40% month-over-month during the Beta and LA phase within 10 months, while handing file infrastructure, cloud orchestration, and application UX end-to-end, with 7+ internal and external teams.

● Managed trust & safety initiatives for content sharing and collaboration features for in-app integrations marketplace, working with data governance, channel and legal teams to develop policies that balanced user experience with regulatory requirements to manage Fed RAMP Certification as well as HIPPA, GDPR and CCPA compliances for integrations for the Enterprise File Sharing and Governance platform, including SIEM integrations with the Splunk, ServiceNow to provide end to end management. Head of Product & Program, Messaging Platform and Apps ApexChat, Inc (B2B Contact-Center) San Ramon, CA (Fractional) Feb 2019 – August 2019

ApexChat is a private company that specializes in customer engagement and lead management within the advertising conversion sector. It provides 24/7 Live Chat software, with live contact center agents for SMB companies to generate more web leads.

● Conducted user research using a combination of qualitative and quantitative research to identify key issues of the lost leads and churn issues. Launched SMS and mobile-optimized lead widgets, drove analytic and A/B experiments to personalize agent avatar, and led launch of AI lead bot to engage web and mobile visitors to drive top-of-the-funnel improvements that reduced average response time from 45 seconds to 27 seconds, improving lead qualification rates by 22%.

● Built and led a cross-functional team, including 2 product owners, UI, and Data analytics contractors to manage product development and design, with an offshore engineering team for a contact center unified platform & lead widget, and portals.

● Researched, scoped, and designed field mobile apps with agent-handover capabilities to minimize lead loss with an on-the-go field proposition. Launched 0-1 Android and iOS cross-functional messaging apps, generating 40% more leads during beta with ~20 SMB customers, positioning the ApexChat business from a lead-based model to a SaaS based consumption-based plan.

● Built a strategic AI partnership with Lumin.ai to launch NLP-driven "Agent Assist" tools for agents, streamlining workflows for offshore contact center agents when integrated into the contact center agents' web platform and launched in beta. Sr. Technical Product Program Manager, AI/ML Data Platform Apex Systems (Consultant) San Francisco, CA November 2017 – September 2018 (CLIENT: Wells Fargo Innovation Lab)

● Directed a $10M enterprise program for a newly established innovation lab for the Wells Fargo Bank, managing two different initiatives to drive machine learning pilots while building a 0-1 AI /ML Data Platform across different banking use cases. Partnered with platform stakeholders to define and align product scope, deliverables across 50+ teams, across data ingestion and data warehouse, data engineering, data science, and application engineering teams.

● Communicated risk assessments and program status to executive leadership through structured communication across the platform and groups, highlighting data compliance concerns, and program deliverables to launch Machine learning models on time with defined OKRS, in compliance with the PMO processes to manage overall scope, timelines, risks, cost, and resources.

● Defined, aligned, and led to deliver a Conversational UX and EVA (Enterprise Virtual Agent) pilot for customers and agents, building a robust knowledge base and orchestration layer to enhance agent productivity, improving first-time resolution rates by 35%.

● Managed scope, cost, resources, delivery, and risks from the PMO office for enterprise AI/ML hybrid platform implementation and delivered the first pilot use case to the Payment Fraud Operations team to help them prioritize high-priority cases, working on XGboost model with H20.ai and the internal data team, to improve baseline model by 20% to address payment fraud in near real-time and reduce the risk portfolio by $ 2- 4M, while creating standardized platform to intake other models, using historical batch data as well as streaming real-time data using Hadoop, Spark /Apache and Micro-services architecture and ML Ops.

● Identified platform gaps, aligned and scoped the intermediate model monitoring component architect for the fraud client operations team to connect and analyze issues at scale, enabling early identification of potential platform health issues, with the disaster recovery and alert systems in place to key groups and clients with escalation processes to scale platform services and models. Product Manager, AI (Conversations as a Platform) Microsoft, Inc. (B2B2C Messaging and AI) Palo Alto, CA September 2015 – September 2016

● Conduced User research, defined requirements, and roadmap, also responsive interaction /visual design patterns with the UX, and executed Skype's 0-1 AI BOT Framework and Conversational UX on Skype’s existing app’s surfaces working on BOT Profile, in-app Discovery, user engagement features, and Adaptive cards (low-code UI modals) across all surfaces on web, desktop and mobile.

● Led scrum of scrum teams consisting of 6 different global teams and ship rooms to orchestrate complex platform launch 0-1 within 4 months for Microsoft’s launch for the developers and consumer launch subsequently in 2 months, reaching 0.5M MAUs.

● Developed and launched 7+ initial bots working internally with Studio Engineering Squad, Cortana, and Bing internal teams to bootstrap "In-App Directory" and BING Chatbot marketplace, driving end-to-end development, design, and beta launches.

● Developed escalation management framework for AI-generated content issues, establishing clear paths for handling user reports and potential violations, and editorial processes. Managed platform BOT portal, including onboarding and QA team, resulting in a doubling of qualified bots in the in-app directory and garnered 15k developer sign-ups in the V2 launch, surpassing OKRs. Partner Program /Product Manager, Mobile Device /OS Integrations and Growth Microsoft, Inc. (Skype B2C) Palo Alto, CA September 2013 – December 2015

● Developed and executed technology roadmaps and business cases for the new integrated use cases, and owned Skype’s mobile experience on devices and OS devices for the Growth Product team. Worked with over 20 global OS and device partners and global app stores, owning 15M+ incremental MAUs, and a 4.4 rating of Skype Mobile Apps in the App Store.

● Designed and developed a 0-1 cloud contextual nudges framework, and mobile-optimized onboarding widgets on the home screen, including smart badges, reducing friction in the user journey and improving activation and engagement by 40% on mobile.

● Defined, led cradle to scale, integrated Picture-in-Picture features on Galaxy Tablet devices, and HD video calling features on Android Fire for Kindles using HW offloading in the Beta, and subsequently scaled to 100M Mobile Active users.

● Defined and launched Mobile SDK, and integrated Skype Dialer MOD user and app experience on the Partner OS (Cyanogen Android OS), featuring cross-platform video calling (akin to Apple’s “FaceTime”), with native unified contacts, and Cortana.

● Developed mobile engagement analytics, tracking user behavior patterns, and integration and partner rev-share analytics.

● Integrated Skype’s services into Microsoft’s Partner Program for certification processes for the HD video offering, and conducted thorough root cause analysis on call and app quality issues, developing systematic approaches to identify and resolve technical problems impacting millions of users, with the external JIRA and partner escalation processes in place to resolve. Senior Portfolio Product Planning Manager, Mobile Platform & Applications Google, Inc. (Motorola Mobility) Sunnyvale, CA March 2001 – October 2012 (VARIOUS ROLES)

● Led comprehensive hardware /software integrated mobile apps and services for Android Core Services portfolio across mobile and wearable devices, encompassing: Mobile Device Management (MDM) and enterprise security features for Mobile /NFC payments, and APIs to app developers via Moto Developer program.

● Managed P&L and SW BOM responsibilities for Mobile Ecosystem and saved $10M in cost across a portfolio of products in savings, by working on the application and silicon ecosystem and tech partnerships, joint native experiences and development across portfolio of mass-market device portfolio to bring economies of scale, and end to end selection to development.

● Managed Program Managers for the “Moto Dev” initiative to lead the 3rd party ecosystem and development of the application layer. As a product head, worked on scalable Android core services improving overall platform performance by 30%, while exposing key OS APIs to developers and partners for key areas – such as Browser, MDM (Mobile Device Management), Trusted Security framework, and codecs across Android Devices portfolio and working with the regional teams, partners, R&D teams and carriers.

● Led Product and GTM efforts with Facebook & regions to co-brand and co-develop, and launched a new product line with integrated Facebook Social Phone (MotoKey), driving 1.5M device upsells and $10M in incremental revenue, quickly becoming a top 3 initiative at the organization level to expand the portfolio in LATAM and APAC. EDUCATION & CERTIFICATIONS

● Retention + Engagement Tracks in Product-led Growth Leadership, Reforge, CA, 2021

● Master's, Project /Program Management (PMP equivalent), George Washington University, IL, 2008

● M.B.A., International Management, Lake Forest Graduate School of Management, IL. 2007

● M.S., Computer Information Technology, Florida Institute of Technology, FL, 2000

● Certificates: AI and Advanced coursework in Machine Learning. Agile /Scrum Master, Dale Carnegie, and Lean Six Sigma. TECHNOLOGIES & TOOLS

● Analytics: Pendo.io, SQL, Mix panel, Tableau, Looker, Big Query, Google Analytics, and other data tools and frameworks.

● Integration: REST APIs, Graph QL, Real-time Sync, OAUTH, and API integration patterns.

● Cloud Platforms: Salesforce Platform, AWS, Azure Cloud, and apps (multiple), Google Cloud, and Firebase

● Applied AI /ML: MS Bing’s BOT Framework for Agents, LUIS (Language understanding models), IBM Watson, H20.ai, etc.

● UX & other PM tools: Usertesting.com, Dovetail, Figma, Balsamiq, Miro. JIRA, Atlassian tools, MS Project, Product Board

● Program Management: Jira, Microsoft Project, Smart Sheets, Confluence, Risk assessment frameworks (Lean Six Sigma tools)

● Methodologies: Agile, Scrum, Kanban, and Six Sigma /M-gate processes.

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