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Career Coaching
from a Seasoned Product Executive in Silicon Valley
Get the insights and support you need to supercharge your career growth from a former Chief Product & Technology Officer with leadership experience at Meta/Instagram, Sequoia-Backed Unicorn, and more.
About me
Coaching Experience:
I am a career and executive coach for Directors, VPs, and SVPs who aspire to the C-suite. Since 2016, I have coached hundreds of clients through successful promotions to VP+, landing step-up roles at their target companies, and growing their leadership toolkit.
My approach in coaching is to start with an assessment of your strengths, personality, and work environment. Together, we identify the hurdles holding you back, work together to shift your mentality and internal narrative, prototype new ways of getting work done or approaching others, and build habits and skillsets you need to break through to the next level.
In addition to 1:1 career coaching, I am a published author (The Uncommon Executive: Breakthrough to the C-suite as a Minority), a Reforge and Maven instructor, and an executive coach for Women In Product, Chief, and AWCC.
Professional experience:
I am the Chief Product & Technology Officer with Fuzzy Pet Health ($88M raised, series C, Matrix, Greycroft). I ran a 100+ person organization including PM, design, engineering, and research. I was also a PM manager at Meta and Instagram and the first PM at Thumbtack (Series I, Sequoia, Google Ventures).
Outside of product, I was a venture partner with LifeX Ventures, an $100M early-stage fund investing in Healthtech and Climatech. I began my career at McKinsey and Company and have co-founded a failed wine startup.
I have a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from UC Berkeley and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
My Coaching History
I’ve coached hundreds of clients since 2016.
I’ve helped Senior Managers transition to Director, and Director to VP+. I’ve helped high potential leaders find the right projects to showcase their superpower, navigate politics, and build executive presence. I've helped clients negotiate 150K+ compensation increases and land C-level titles.
Beyond it all, I've made many lifetime friends and seen their careers accelerate with my support -- and that is why I invest in coaching others.
Common Coaching Topics
Here are some past problems I’ve helped my clients solve.
Career path
I'm feeling stuck in my current role. My work is not valued. I am not growing. Just working harder is not getting me different results. What do I need to do differently? How do I position myself best for the next 3-5 years?
Personal Brand & Narrative
I need to establish myself as a leader at my company. Currently, I'm viewed primarily as a strong executor. How do I change how others perceive me and my work? If I'm looking externally, how do I position the work I'm doing to get a bump in level?
Strategy & Leadership Alignment
My team is just working on a list of projects without a clear strategy. I don't have the buy-in of senior leaders at my company, who often question the decisions I make, change the direction of the team, and ask for more with less. How do I manage up to my leadership?
People and Team
I have a manager who is unsupportive of my career. I have a peer or teammate who is actively hurting my credibility. What should I do? How do I best manage the path forward productively?
Mental Health & Strength
I'm constantly overworked and burned out. How do I do more with less? How can I better delegate to others? Increase my efficiency? Focus on the real priorities that truly deliver impact?
Combating bias
I'm being called aggressive or too direct. I'm being told to work on my collaboration or executive presence. I am not a part of the "in" group at work -- how do I change?
Services & Pricing
Choose what fits your need best.
1:1 Executive Coaching
With private coaching, we start with a FREE 30 min intro session to assess mutual fit and give you an initial feel for what coaching with me is like. Thereafter, sessions are one hour a month with a 6 or 12-month commitment. We'll also do a more in-depth intake process to assess your strengths and areas for improvement, and optionally conduct 360 reviews with key stakeholders.
Partners
Wall of Love
Yue was invaluable to me in thinking through and facilitating my move to VP, and then coaching me through the challenges I faced. She helped me better understand how I was limiting myself and my opportunities, and how to adjust it to reach my full potential. I've always appreciated Yue's honesty and 'realness' above all else; it is refreshing and balanced, and I always leave our sessions feeling a renewed sense of clarity and direction.
VP, Consumer Tech Public Company
Yue brings invaluable experience having served as a product leader at both hyper-growth and big tech companies. This means I trust her perspective as a product coach. From our very first session, she provided transparent feedback on where I'm at and practical guidance on what I need to do to work towards my long-term work and career goals.
Product Leader, Series C Enterprise SaaS startup
Yue has been instrumental in guiding my transition into product management from previous roles in product and operations. In just two sessions, Yue skillfully navigated through my short-term aspirations and long-term objectives, offering invaluable insights to craft a clear path forward.
What truly sets Yue apart is her ability to foster a nonjudgmental environment where she genuinely delves into who we are, understanding our unique interests and motivations, and tailoring her guidance accordingly. Prior to working with Yue, I had never engaged with a career coach, but her blend of coaching prowess and extensive PM expertise proved to be an absolute game-changer and a wise investment. I wholeheartedly recommend Yue to anyone seeking to embark on a journey into product management.
Head of Growth, Hyper-Growth Startup
Yue is on my speed dial. I was recently promoted to manage formerly my peers and I had a bad case of fright and imposter syndrome. Yue helped me think through what type of manager I want to be before jumping into a plan or even reading resources.
She really cares for people and is a solid visionary and executor!
IC7 Product Manager, Amazon
I wanted to thank you for the wonderful coaching sessions you gave me this year.
Those lessons have helped me up-level, not only as a PM but also as a person seeking clarity in his personal journey.
* On the professional side, I found your "managing up" and "written communication" strategies to be particularly helpful. Those helped me communicate at scale in an increasingly complex org.
* On the personal side, your encouragement nudged me over to starting a startup. Recently, I got a term sheet from a VC. Although the terms aren't ideal ($1M on $6M cap) and I may pivot, the most important lesson is getting started on this track.
So, thank you so much for the wonderful help you gave me this year.
Founder and Entrepreneur
Yue was a phenomenal mentor and coach. She dug deep into my motivations and shared how I could validate these interests through my ongoing work. She also shed light on the different career trajectories to consider based on my passions and skillsets, which was so valuable for me to understand and think about the long-term direction. As we established a monthly meeting, Yue was never short of spot-on questions, and honest feedback and genuinely cared for my growth and well-being. All in all, I can't say enough about Yue's wisdom, knowledge, and support for my career development, and would highly recommend working with her!
VP of Product, ClimateTech
Yue is an amazing coach! Yue gave me a way to think about what I wanted long term and worked with me through how to negotiate the transition in terms of levels and comp. She was vital in every step of the process, from creating a vision of where I wanted to be to the tactical compensation negotiations. Highly recommend!
Director of Engineering, Series C Healthcare Startup
I reached out to Yue when I was at the crossroads of my career. She gave me a framework and exercises to help me think through different scenarios. We then put those scenarios to practice: I worked with her on various topics, such as leadership, cross-functional collaboration, and managing up. She helped me level up my thinking and made a tremendous impact on accelerating my promotion timelines
PM Lead at LinkedIn
Our convos have really helped me the past few weeks; becoming a new mom has been challenging and workshopping things with you, hearing about your own experience, and learning to shift my mindset has been clarifying. Looking forward to future discussions and thanks for everything so far!
Head of Product, Tier-I Financial Services Startup
All testimonials are confidential and I will not provide live references to maintain the privacy of my clients.
Confidentiality
I take confidentiality very seriously. All interactions which take place in the setting of career coaching are considered confidential. This includes requests by telephone, all interactions with me, and any progress notes that I take during your sessions. I will not verify that you are a client or use your name or situation publicly in any identifiable way.
The Uncommon Executive
Breakthrough to the C-Suite as a minority
One of the most challenging, emotional, and time-consuming topics that come up in career conversations is how to break through from middle management into executive levels –VP or C-Suite. It is one topic where I get consistently bombarded with doubt, confusion, and fear.
This book seeks to provide a path forward through that doubt and confusion and be a guide for aspiring executives to follow in their journey to the top. It shines a light on what being an executive truly entails, what hiring committees look for, and what skills are truly critical for success. It then offers off-the-beaten-path (e.g. not white-male-centric) examples and tactics on landing stretch assignments, overcoming biases and stereotypes, finding your superpower, and finding role models in less obvious places.
Should I hire a coach? Is coaching right for me? Learn more here.
More Resources
More about me
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Reforge course: Breaking Barriers: From Manager to Executive
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Here | are some | product | launches I've worked on in the past.
Product & Leadership Programs
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