Meet Our Mentors: Ajith Prabhakara
Ajith Prabhakara
Senior Manager, Technical Product Management at Cruise
I am an accomplished product management leader and engineer with 20+ years of experience in technology and innovation; I’m passionate about incubating, nurturing, launching ground-breaking innovations, and building high-functioning product teams. I currently lead a team of product managers and designers at an autonomous vehicle startup. I’ve previously led product and engineering teams at Amazon, T-Mobile, and Sony Mobile, and consulted for IBM.
“I believe that our society needs innovators more than ever. I mentor because over the last two decades leading teams of technologists and innovators, I’ve learned a lot of lessons the hard way; anything I can do to guide or assist innovators is inspiring and fulfilling to me. Selfishly, the opportunity to retroactively reflect on my learnings, refine them, and reapply them in new contexts is an ongoing learning opportunity that I am grateful for.”
As a mentor, I excel at…
- Career transitions and growth
- Product management
- Product design
- Building and leading successful teams
- Growth and retention marketing
- Applied AI / ML applications
When I have free time, I…
I read, spend a lot of time outdoors (hiking, biking, mountain climbing, skiing), travel, watch shows on stage, and seek new experiences to become a better human being.
As a kid, I was fascinated by…
drawing, sketching, acting on stage, and learning.
As an adult, I was fascinated by…
world history, innovative approaches to solving the socio-economic, geo-political, and existential challenges ahead of us, developing ethical and responsible technological solutions (especially those that rely on AI/ML), and learning by experimenting.
My favorite book, blog, podcast is…
at present, I’m binging history podcasts — primarily BBC’s History Extra and NPR’s Throughline.
Originally published at https://blog.foster.uw.edu on February 1, 2022.
