Home: San Francisco, CA. Birthplace: Colombo, Sri Lanka. Profession: Product management executive. Alma mater: Yale; Stanford; Harvard Business School.
Current project: Helping AI teams turn demos into actual business impact. Recent recognition: My friend said I helped clarify his nonprofit's strategy. Nice to hear. Recent professional development: Vibe (AI-assisted) coding product manager prototypes, getting back to my engineering roots. Hobbies: Swimming since age 5, biking, meditation (with less and less help). Recent travel or adventure: Kyoto, Japan. I’ve traveled to more than eighty countries and lived on five continents. Last book read: AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future, by Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan. Recent unique acquisition: Vintage Fisher Space Pen on my desk, a reminder to understand problems before building solutions.
Personality profile: ENTJ. What one word would your closest friend use to describe you? Inventive. How do you define a perfect friendship? Mutual curiosity and the freedom to explore ideas without judgment. How do you define an ideal business relationship? Psychological safety, trust, and clear outcomes. What is your greatest joy? Bringing people together and watching them connect. What is your guilty pleasure? Tinkering with home automation, the modern version of asking my grandmother for batteries and wires when I was 7. What word or phrase do you use far too often? Big picture. What natural talent have you neglected? Stand-up comedy. What is your go-to workout? Swimming. What drives your curiosity? How ideas from one field solve problems in another.
What three emojis best describe you? 🏊♂️🤔🌍.
What was your first paying job? Programming the vision system for a hospital robot. What was your favorite college course? Romantic Poetry at Yale. What book have you repeatedly read? The Prophet, by Khalil Gibran. What movie have you repeatedly watched? Contact (1997). What’s prominently featured on your home or office wall? Go Karting Trophy from K-1 Speed. Besides your parents, who has had the greatest influence on your life? Arthur C. Clarke. I played table tennis with him in Colombo, Sri Lanka. He showed that creativity can bring impossible futures to life. What modern technology innovation do you most appreciate? Deep learning. Turns out, it's how nature encodes patterns.
What is your big idea? AI should help us understand ourselves, not just get more done. What message do you want to send out into the world? Slow down. Spend more time on fundamental questions. Most people rush past them. What widely held belief do you reject? That you must choose between being strategic and hands-on. The best product leaders do both.
Who would you like to spend an evening with, in heaven? Alan Turing, to discuss whether AI has passed his test. As a kid, what did you first want to be when you grew up? An astronomer.
Personal motto: Question deeply, build creatively, amplify others. Favorite quote: "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few" (Shunryu Suzuki). Desired epitaph: He gave that others might grow.
