Women In Product is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and global community of more than 30,000 women and non-binary product professionals. Founded in 2016 out of a casual networking event in Silicon Valley, it equips members to thrive as builders, leaders, and changemakers through an annual conference, local chapters, leadership programs, peer mentorship, and online resources - with a particular focus on closing the gender gap at the mid-career, senior, and executive levels where it is widest.
Chief is a private membership network built for senior women executives - VPs, C-suite leaders, and the rungs just below. It pairs members into facilitated peer 'Core' groups led by executive coaches, layers on workshops, curated events, and physical clubhouses in major U.S. cities, and aims to close the gap at the top of the corporate ladder by giving women the kind of back-channel network that has long been reserved for men. Founded in 2019, Chief became one of the fastest female-founded U.S. companies to reach a $1 billion valuation.
Allied Telesis is a global networking infrastructure company that designs, manufactures, and supports wired and wireless products - switches, routers, firewalls, wireless access points, transceivers, and the software that manages them. Founded in Japan in 1987, it builds resilient, standards-based networks for governments, schools, hospitals, transportation systems, and smart cities, with a focus on automation (its Autonomous Management Framework), reliability, and supply-chain security.
Huawei is a Shenzhen-based technology company and the world's largest maker of telecommunications equipment. Founded in 1987 by Ren Zhengfei, it now spans carrier networks, enterprise ICT, cloud computing, digital power, and a consumer business that builds smartphones, wearables, and the homegrown HarmonyOS operating system. Despite years of U.S. sanctions, the company posted roughly 880.9 billion yuan in 2025 revenue and pours over a fifth of that back into R&D.
Darrin Chen is the VP of Global Partners (NPN) GTM & Operations at NVIDIA, where he leads go-to-market strategy and operations for the NVIDIA Partner Network - the company's global partner ecosystem spanning solution providers, systems integrators, and channel partners. With 30+ years in technology from storage to networking to AI infrastructure, Chen joined NVIDIA through the 2020 acquisition of Mellanox Technologies, where he had spent over a decade building worldwide channel programs. In mid-2023, NVIDIA expanded his mandate as it split its global channel chief role in two, tapping Chen to oversee its entire NPN program as the company transformed into a full-stack AI computing company.
Gilad Shainer is Senior Vice President of Networking at NVIDIA, where he leads the strategy, marketing, and ecosystem development for the company's networking portfolio — including InfiniBand, Ethernet, DPUs, and interconnect technologies that power more than half the world's top 500 supercomputers. A Technion-trained electrical engineer who graduated Cum Laude at both B.Sc. and M.Sc. levels, Shainer spent nearly two decades at Mellanox Technologies before joining NVIDIA via the $6.9 billion acquisition in 2020. He founded the HPC-AI Advisory Council in 2008, which now spans 400+ organizations globally, co-founded the ISC Student Cluster Competition, holds two R&D 100 Awards (2015 and 2019), and has authored or co-authored dozens of papers across IEEE, ACM, and Springer venues. At a moment when AI factories are rewriting the rules of data center design, Shainer is the person making sure the wires — and the protocols running through them — are ready.
Jesse Dougherty is Vice President of Global Networking and Network Edge Services at Amazon Web Services (AWS), based in Vancouver, British Columbia. He leads AWS's global network backbone including CloudFront, Elemental, and Perimeter Protection services, while also serving as the Vancouver site lead overseeing an office of 1,000+ software engineers. With 20+ years in software engineering and leadership, he previously spent nine years at Microsoft as a Group Program Manager for Exchange Server and Office 365, and held technical leadership roles at Sophos, ActiveState Software, and Mindquake Software. A champion of the Vancouver tech ecosystem, he has been instrumental in Amazon's expansion in Western Canada and serves as a mentor in the BC Tech Association's Dragons 1-on-1 Mentorship program.
Ross Ortega is VP of Product Management at Microsoft, currently leading Discovery and Communications initiatives. He previously built a $1 billion portfolio of Azure networking services - including ExpressRoute, Virtual WAN, Application Gateway, and Web Application Firewall - and then led Azure for Operators, Microsoft's 5G and edge computing platform for telecommunications providers. Before Microsoft, he co-founded Consystant Design Technologies and served as President and CTO of GraniteEdge Networks. A career technologist with roots in embedded systems and networking, Ortega has spent over two decades at Microsoft shaping how enterprises and telecoms connect to the cloud.
Sampson Han is Vice President of AI and Data Center Marketing at NVIDIA, the Santa Clara-based technology powerhouse behind the GPU revolution driving modern artificial intelligence. Operating at the intersection of cutting-edge silicon and the enterprise market, Han oversees marketing strategy for NVIDIA's data center and AI product portfolio - the very infrastructure powering the global AI buildout. He works within one of the most influential technology companies in history, helping define how hyperscalers, enterprises, and sovereign AI initiatives understand and adopt NVIDIA's data center solutions.
Ayman Sayed is President and CEO of BMC Software, the $2.3-billion enterprise software company serving 86% of the Forbes Global 50. He joined BMC in 2019 after senior roles at CA Technologies (President and Chief Product Officer) and Cisco (SVP, leading 2,500+ engineers). Under his tenure, BMC pivoted toward AI-driven IT automation under the 'Autonomous Digital Enterprise' framework, and in 2024 he announced a landmark split of BMC into two independent companies - one focused on mainframe software and one on digital services management.
Keith Southard runs Allied Telesis, the San Jose-headquartered networking company building switches, routers and software-defined infrastructure used everywhere from US military bases overseas to smart-city deployments. He took over as CEO of Allied Telesis Capital Corporation in 2008 and has stayed at the controls ever since, quietly steering a 1,900-person company through the awkward transition from hardware vendor to network-automation outfit.
Jeyappragash 'JJ' Jeyakeerthi is the co-founder and CTO of Tetrate, the company that made Istio enterprise-ready and brought FIPS-verified service mesh to regulated industries including the US federal government. An IIT Madras graduate who once ran Twitter's Cloud Infrastructure, JJ co-founded Tetrate in 2018 with Varun Talwar to secure the cloud-native stack from edge to datacenter - building one of the most technically credible teams in the service mesh ecosystem, trusted by the US Air Force and some of the world's largest enterprises.
Kannan Kothandaraman is the Co-Founder and CEO of Selector AI, a Santa Clara-based AIOps and network observability platform that uses large language models, knowledge graphs, and causal reasoning to help Fortune 1000 enterprises detect, diagnose, and resolve infrastructure issues faster. Before founding Selector in 2019, Kannan spent nearly two decades at Juniper Networks - rising from senior software engineer to Vice President of Product Line Management - and before that at Cisco Systems. Selector has raised $104 million in total funding, including a $32M Series B in February 2026 at a valuation of $375 million, and counts Fortune 20 companies in manufacturing and healthcare among its customers.
Andrew Verhalen is a General Partner at Matrix Partners who has been investing in infrastructure and communications companies since 1992. A former Intel product manager for the 8086 microprocessor and a divisional VP at 3Com, he brought operator scars to venture before that was a phrase. He helped seed Grand Junction Networks (later a major division at Cisco), led Matrix into Unwired Planet, SiTera, and Alteon WebSystems, and serves as lead independent director at semiconductor company Ambarella.
Cheng Wu is a General Partner at Taiwania Capital and a four-time founder whose networking and video startups have returned over $6 billion to investors. Best known for selling ArrowPoint Communications to Cisco for $5.7 billion in 2000, he now invests in early- and growth-stage technology companies bridging Silicon Valley, Taiwan, and Asia.
DreamBig Semiconductor is a San Jose-based chiplet company building open silicon platforms that scale AI networking from 800 Gbps to 12.8 Tbps. Founded by Marvell veterans, the team is selling chiplets, a SuperNIC, and a chiplet hub aimed at AI data centers, automotive, and edge compute.
HiHello builds digital business cards, email signatures, virtual backgrounds, and contact management tools for individuals and enterprises. Founded in 2018 in Palo Alto by serial founder Manu Kumar (CardMunch, Carta) and Hari Ravi, the company turns the awkward exchange of paper rectangles into a tappable, shareable, trackable contact moment.
Jeremy Schneider is General Partner at Webb Investment Network (WIN), the San Francisco-based single-family investment office founded by Maynard Webb, former COO of eBay. Since joining WIN in 2011, Schneider has helped build a portfolio of 121 companies including unicorns Ironclad, IPOs like Okta, PagerDuty, and AppLovin, and 48 acquisitions. A Dartmouth and Oxford-trained historian turned venture capitalist, Schneider is known for betting on founders over ideas, building WIN's affiliate network of 90+ seasoned operators, and offering hands-on support that one founder described as worthy of a statue.
Khaled Nasr is a General Partner and Chief Operating Officer at InterWest Partners, a Menlo Park-based venture capital firm with over 40 years of history investing in healthcare and information technology. A Cambridge-educated mathematician turned Silicon Valley dealmaker, Nasr joined InterWest's IT team in 2005 and became COO in 2016, overseeing all financial, fundraising, investor relations, and administrative operations. Before InterWest, he spent 16 years in networking and telecom startups - including stints as CEO of FlowWise Networks and COO of Advanced Computer Communications - then made the jump to venture investing at Alta Partners. Born and raised in Lebanon, Nasr co-founded LebNet and is a charter member of TechWadi, bridging Silicon Valley capital with Arab and MENA entrepreneurs. In January 2026, he published 'Rule Arbitrage,' a book on evading regulatory, tax, and accounting rules.
Ed Meyercord is President, CEO, and Director of Extreme Networks (NASDAQ: EXTR), a publicly traded enterprise networking company with 2,700 employees and over $1.1 billion in annual revenue. He took the helm in April 2015 after serving as Chairman of the board since 2011, steering Extreme from a hardware-centric also-ran into a cloud-managed, AI-native networking platform. Under his watch the company now powers the wireless networks at Old Trafford, the Burj Khalifa, Taylor Swift concert tours, and Samsung's global operations, while its SaaS ARR has grown dramatically. Before Extreme, Meyercord ran Talk America (a publicly traded telco), Cavalier Telephone, and Critical Alert Systems, after starting his career as an investment banking VP at Salomon Brothers. He is also known for bringing improv comedy principles into corporate leadership and for his advocacy for people with intellectual disabilities through SKIT Programs.
Elizabeth Ames is a technology executive and advocate for women in product management, best known as the CEO who led Women In Product from 2019 to 2024. Under her leadership, the nonprofit community doubled to over 34,000 members across 24 local chapters, growing from a single annual conference into a year-round platform for training, coaching, and career development. Before Women In Product, she spent five years as SVP of Strategic Marketing, Alliances, and Programs at AnitaB.org, the organization behind the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Her earlier career spans marketing and strategy roles at Apple, Verifone, Netcentives, Vontu, Certive, and Plastic Logic, plus a stint as Founder and CEO of RETHINK Partners.
Jim Dolce is CEO and Chairman of Lookout, a cloud security company he has led since 2014. A four-time founder with deep roots in networking and enterprise security, Dolce built his career through a series of acquisitions - from Cascade Communications to Redstone Communications, Unisphere Networks (acquired by Juniper Networks for $500M), and Verivue (acquired by Akamai). Under his leadership, Lookout pivoted from a consumer mobile security app to a pure-play enterprise Security Service Edge platform, making the landmark CipherCloud acquisition in 2021 and divesting its consumer business in 2023 to sharpen focus on enterprise and government customers.
Jun Shi is CEO and President of Accton Technology, the $7.9B Taiwanese ODM powerhouse behind much of the world's white-box networking hardware. A 25-year veteran of Silicon Valley's networking giants — Cisco, Juniper, and F5 — he shepherded startup Volterra from inception through its $500 million acquisition before joining Accton in 2023. Now he's steering the company's ambitious pivot: from hardware maker to full-stack open infrastructure provider, anchored by Nexvec, a turnkey AI-ready infrastructure solution launched in May 2025.
Todd Swanson is the Chief Executive Officer of Proficium, a Union City, California-based company specializing in high-performance optical transceivers, fiber optic cables, and connectivity solutions for hyperscale data centers and AI/ML clusters. With over 30 years in optical networking, he brings deep expertise from Finisar (where he rose to Co-CEO and COO) and Intel (where he led Silicon Photonics as VP/GM). Appointed in August 2024 following Proficium's acquisition by Mill Point Capital, Swanson is steering the company through the AI-driven data center connectivity boom.
Yuval Bachar is the founder and CEO of EdgeCloudLink (ECL), the company building the world's first off-grid hydrogen-powered modular data centers. A 20+ year veteran of hyperscale infrastructure at Cisco, Juniper Networks, Facebook/Meta, LinkedIn, and Microsoft Azure, Bachar co-founded the Open19 open hardware standards project and holds eight U.S. patents. At ECL, he is reimagining what a data center can be - deploying capacity in nine months (vs. the industry's 3-4 years), generating zero emissions, and producing cooling water as a byproduct of hydrogen fuel cells. In May 2024, ECL unveiled the world's first off-grid hydrogen-powered AI data center in Mountain View, California, and Lambda deployed the first hydrogen-powered NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 systems there. ECL's TerraSite-TX1 near Houston is planned as a 1-gigawatt AI factory on 600 acres.
Guido Appenzeller is a Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) focused on AI and infrastructure investing. A two-time startup founder, he co-founded Voltage Security (acquired by HP) and Big Switch Networks (acquired by Arista), led the team that developed the OpenFlow v1.0 networking standard at Stanford's Clean Slate Lab, served as CTO at both VMware and Intel, and is now one of Silicon Valley's sharpest voices on LLM economics - having coined the term 'LLMflation' to describe the 10x-per-year cost decline in AI inference.
Mansour Karam is the founder and CEO of Aria Networks, the AI-native networking company that raised $125M to rethink how GPU clusters talk to each other. A Stanford-trained electrical engineer with a Lebanese-American background, he helped build Arista Networks from a handful of employees to a $4B IPO, then founded Apstra - the company that coined 'intent-based networking' - and sold it to Juniper in 2021. A piano player who names companies after musical terms, Karam has spent 25 years at the bleeding edge of how data moves, and now bets that the network - not the GPU - is the real bottleneck in the AI era.
Bill Coughran is a Partner and Founder's Coach at Sequoia Capital who spent two decades at Bell Labs - where C, Unix, and C++ were born - before scaling Google's engineering organization from a few hundred to over 10,000 people across four continents. A mathematician by training (Caltech BS/MS, Stanford PhD in Computer Science), he oversaw Chrome, YouTube, Maps, and Search at Google before joining Sequoia in 2011. He is one of Silicon Valley's most seasoned operator-turned-investors, known for his belief in small teams, deep technical rigor, and the kind of coaching that only someone who has actually built the thing can offer.
Heidi Roizen is one of Silicon Valley's most iconic figures — a serial entrepreneur who co-founded T/Maker in 1983, led Apple's Worldwide Developer Relations during a pivotal transition, and became a venture capitalist at Threshold Ventures. She is the subject of a landmark Harvard Business School case study on networking and the famous 'Heidi vs. Howard' gender bias experiment. Today she is a Partner at Threshold Ventures, a Stanford lecturer, board director at Planet Labs and Upside Foods, and host of 'The Startup Solution' podcast.
Martin Casado is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz leading the firm's infrastructure practice. A Spanish-born computer scientist and entrepreneur, he pioneered software-defined networking (SDN) by inventing the OpenFlow protocol during his Stanford PhD. He co-founded Nicira Networks, which VMware acquired for $1.26 billion in 2012, where he then scaled the networking and security business to $600 million in annual revenue. An ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award winner, Casado now invests in cutting-edge infrastructure and AI companies, serving on boards of over a dozen startups while shaping the future of enterprise technology and AI regulation policy.