SPEAKER_02 0:00

And it changed my life. She said, I've spoken to digital media. They know exactly who you are. They're incredibly impressed. Could you start on Monday? I love technology and as I said, I got my first computer when I was five. I am as digital native as you can get. By the time that we were in 1996, I was talking about the future of the internet. And it it just didn't arrive quickly enough for me. I can't imagine another man on that team would have been told, um, you know, you need to you need to dress differently. No. Everything that got me to this point, I needed to cast off. And almost, as I said, retrain and start again. Once you get to that first piece, don't just say you've made it. Keep challenging yourself.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Today on On the Posts, we're joined by Kavita Kapoor, a senior product and technology leader with a career spanning everything from early internet innovation through to leading large-scale teams across media startups, global tech businesses, and now higher education at Imperial College London. What's fascinating about Cavita's journey is how early she was in the evolution of the internet herself, building websites in the mid-90s, working on search engines at the same time Google was emerging, and then carving out a leadership path across organisations in the BBC, Channel 4, Just Eat, and now Imperial College London. Her career is anything but linear. It's shaped by curiosity, resilience, and a willingness to back herself, whether that's pushing for a role at the Olympics, transitioning into leadership, or driving cultural and product transformation in complex organisations. Today we're going to unpack that journey, the pivots, the leadership lessons, and her perspective on where product, AI, and technology are heading next. Govita, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 1:58

Thank you very much, Ricky.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

It's so good to have you here. So we um we obviously know each other very well. Indeed. Uh, and we've done a lot of work together. And I was really, really excited to bring you on because it's just a a super interesting story. Uh, and I'm really excited to share it.

SPEAKER_02 2:13

It's so kind of you.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Oh for you to share it. Um, and I think for the purposes of this, it would be great to go right back to the start.

SPEAKER_02 2:22

Right back to the start.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

Let's go all the way back. All the way back. Because I I I like the fact that your career really started in a world that looks very different to today. It's so different. Um, and yeah, being in the early internet era, uh era era and becoming a senior product leader. Um, so yeah, when you were getting back at the time, um can I go all the way back? Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:46

I got I got my first computer in s 1979.

SPEAKER_00 2:50

Wow. Yeah. Do you remember the make a model?

SPEAKER_02 2:53

Uh I still have it. It's a Sonic Games console. Um Pong? Uh yeah, we had Pong. It was just a brilliant and I yeah, and then so when I got my first programmable computer, yeah, age 12, an Acorn Electron, because obviously good parenting, they they wanted to. I remember going into a store and my dad just teaching me 10, print hello world, 20, go to 10, and immediately uh doing that at school the next week and getting told off.

SPEAKER_00 3:23

It was so brilliant. And it hooked you from then?

SPEAKER_02 3:26

Uh yeah, I think that control, that ability to be creative and um, you know, manage like you could you could make the computer do something that you wanted it to do. Um it just really excited me.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

So when you were starting to get into the work workforce workplace, what what what did you envisage your career being right at the beginning?

SPEAKER_02 3:48

That's very that's so fascinating. I uh did an undergraduate in business IT um because I'd passed an A level in computing and that sounded like the way to go. But like everyone around me, because we were a London-based, everyone wanted to go into the city. So I actually did my stock breaking exams. Okay. As you do when you graduate. But on the side, and just before that, um in my last year of university, I built um my first website, it was one page. Uh it looked a lot like the first Facebook page that you had out there. And now when I look back, I realised it was one of the first 10,000 uh web pages on the on the internet.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

Really?

SPEAKER_02 4:29

Apparently so.

SPEAKER_00 4:30

What was the page?

SPEAKER_02 4:31

It was just as I said, it was just a Kavita Kabool, my picture, and a little bit of details about me. I mean Mark Zuckerberg would have been proud, I think, when he when he did it ten years later.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

So at what point did it click that okay, this is the future, this is what this is where the the world is heading?

SPEAKER_02 4:49

I ended up it's a really good question because I'm not sure where I had the vision. Um but I do remember that by the by the time that we were in 1996, I was I was talking about the future of the internet. And it it just didn't arrive quickly enough for me. But I knew that we would be buying things and you know, selling our own things. I knew that we would be um transacting and doing banking and all of the positive things that came uh with the internet. I knew I kind of could see that in the mid-90s, but remember we didn't have the programming languages to do it at the time. We just had HTML. I mean, remember my first page was there was no colour on HTML back then. So my first web page didn't actually have any colour on it.

SPEAKER_00 5:39

Incredible.

SPEAKER_02 5:39

So does it still exist? Uh no. Uh but sneakily, I don't think so. I'll I'll check it out. I think I've got a like a 3.5 floppy disk somewhere that's probably got it on there.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

Not like nostalgic. Um so how did so Silicon Valley? I know we talked about this. Yes. Tell me, how did that come about? What what were you doing in Silicon Valley in in that in that period of time?

SPEAKER_02 6:05

Yeah, so by the time, as I said, I'd I'd somewhere in the mid-90s, I'd figured out that the internet was the future and that um I really wanted to be part of it. Um, Greenwich University had the first masters in internet technology in the UK. So I went and did that. And six months in, I got a phone call from a recruiter, and they said there's this company in Silicon Valley. Um could you do document management system? I was like, you know, young, naive, and I was like, sure, I could do that. And so I ended up working for this organization outside San Francisco, and it was as Silicon Valley as you could get, you know, full sales calls where you ended up in Hawaii. Um, you know, we were flown out to San Francisco a couple of times a year. Um, my clients spanned um so BP up in in Aberdeen through to the city, and so I was doing, you know, I was on planes constantly doing control alt-delete type things, but you know, and doing a little bit of programming for these clients. But it was it was a manic and just a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

And so w what what didn't so you l good times, I'm sure stuff that maybe didn't quite align in terms of you.

SPEAKER_02 7:22

I mean, I yeah, you know, you at when you look back, you I'm still a little bit shocked about how bro culture it was. I read Brotopia recently and I was like, tick, yeah, that happened to me, that happened to me, that happened to me. Um you know, I they they would tell me how to dress um clients. They would, which today, you know, I'm really pleased that isn't the case today. Um they would uh they they we didn't stop. That was one of the things, right? So if you're working around the clock, they wouldn't give you time off. Um they really didn't expect, they would expect you to be on a call with San Francisco at ten in the evening and in Aberdeen nine o'clock the next morning, and you just had to fit your life around that or no life.

SPEAKER_00 8:11

I I I don't want to go too much into like um ethnic minority female jetting off to Silicon Valley in the nineties, but that must have been a hell of a different experience, maybe to what the world is like today, you would hope. And did you ever feel that?

SPEAKER_02 8:29

I'm not sure I felt it back then, I have to say. Um I think back then I genuinely thought that we were all equal. That sort of when and and the if you look at the studies that come out, I think most people think that, you know, most women and men think that as you're going early career, it only really transpires when you start trying to get into C-suite and that middle part of your career that you really start realizing quite how much rubbish you put up with um at your early points. Um but now I look back, I think, you know, I don't think another man I don't I can't imagine another man on that team would have been told, um, you know, you need to you need to dress differently. No. Um you need to, you know, and and it was it was actually the length of my skirts that they were interested in.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

Maybe it was just a given, oh okay. And and at the time it it it was more of a norm to even hear that what that language you wouldn't dream of saying it now in the workplace.

SPEAKER_02 9:33

Yeah, and I think and I was thrilled when I moved on to like working with British companies. So I moved on to BBC and um Virgin Media as a you know, they were my clients, and and it was really gratifying to be in in an you know a much more English workplace where people were just a little bit more civilized about those things.

SPEAKER_00 9:55

And the BBC was a your first kind of more product-led role, right?

SPEAKER_02 9:59

Yeah, so um actually uh back then we didn't have the term product, right? So I was uh but yes, I I led a tech delivery team um for Gardener's World, Top of the Pops, top um Top Gear, Top Gear was amazing.

SPEAKER_00 10:13

Top of the Pops must have been amazing.

SPEAKER_02 10:15

Yeah, it was so much fun. Like we were trying to work out how you could like in real time again, 1999, we're trying to work out in real time.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

I think I went to Top of the Pops in 1999.

SPEAKER_02 10:25

No, who did you see? What did you see? Oh no, no, that's brilliant.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

Christmas special.

SPEAKER_02 10:30

Christmas special. Well, I probably worked on that.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

That's so cool that you worked on that.

SPEAKER_02 10:35

It was so much fun. Yeah. Um we were in TV centre. Yeah. And again hard in yes, yeah, inward lane. And we were, you know, hard drinking culture, um, but just you felt like you were trying to, you know, you were changing the world because we were the what one of the first the BBC was like leading the way on how web would be delivered in the UK. Um and we were, you know, we had that internal politics. Were we as good as news or were we as good as the uh main, you know, there were three factions within the we BBC that were pushing to to have their um content up, and we were BBC worldwide, so we were the commercial piece. Yeah. So we were seeing as a sort of lowly child of everything else, but it was just um yeah, really intense. Some of my favorite people come from that period of my life.

SPEAKER_00 11:30

So that was first role within project delivery type.

SPEAKER_02 11:37

Yeah, so it was the first, it was my first move out of consultancy into client side um delivery. Yeah. Um and yes, absolutely. And and from there it was sort of building website after website, so and getting bigger and bigger on each transaction.

SPEAKER_00 11:56

Because when when we when we've always spoken in the past, one story that always sticks out to me is is is the Olympics, right? Big brand on your uh resume, LinkedIn profile, however you want to look at it. And what I love is the story of how you got yourself in there.

SPEAKER_02 12:13

Yeah, I feel I feel very embarrassed because every time people do a sound cloud and anything I've ever said, it's it Olympics or and London 2012 comes up really highly. I think I say it all the time. But yeah, I'm really proud of that too, because I really wanted to work for them. So I after the BBC and Channel 4 television, I'd I'd freelanced and I'd done a few startups and um built out all sorts of things, and I was really proud of the work I'd done. I'd like built a pre-Youtube, pre-Facebook platform for for the BAFTAs, and I was looking for what do I want to do next. And every time I looked at it, we'd you know, the Olympics in London had just been announced as I was sort of exiting that um startup, and it was like, this is what I want to do next. I absolutely want to do this. So I I basically spoke to everyone in town. Every time I had a coffee, I'd say, So, do you know anyone at the Olympics? Do you know how I can get in? And um a friend of mine happened to be um consulting there, so he noticed there was a role for me, and I pried from that role. I the person who um interviewed me, I didn't think he I met him and I wasn't sure that we had the vibes. I didn't get round to the second round. Later I was talking to another recruiter and said, This is what I want to do, I want to work for the Olympics. She said, I have no contacts there. But do you know this one person? And I was like, Yeah, he interviewed me. And she was like, Why aren't you having a coffee with him? I had a coffee with him. Again, the vibes were pretty poor. I was like, not sure about this. Um, and then about a month later, I was having a coffee with somebody and said exactly the same. Really want to work for the Olympics. He said, Oh, my wife's actually got a delivery there. She's working marketing and she's struggling to get uh seven games out, so seven flash games out um in three months. Um she needs some help. And I said, I'm your woman. The next morning he inter he introduced us. I went off to play tennis. Um as I came off court, I got a voicemail. No, I got an email from her saying, Oh, that's great, could you send me your CV or the usual stuff? Maybe we'll organise a coffee in a few weeks' time. And then I picked up a voicemail and it changed my life. She said, Oh, I've spoken to digital media. They know exactly who you are, they're incredibly impressed. Could you start on Monday? I was just bonkers. And I it took a little while for the paperwork to come in. Um, they got me in on contract and then gave me a job and yeah, transformed my life.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

But I just think it's just so much about just tenacity, persistence, resilience, not necessarily always taking no for an answer and just going for what you want. It's just a lovely story.

SPEAKER_02 15:01

And then in terms of what that that particular role did in terms of your career trajectory, what what Yeah, I I think on I'd got to sort of CTO kind of level in very small startups, things that I was investing in, etc. etc. Or I could lead tech delivery teams. But I actually when they offered me the permanent role, they said, could you know, we need a senior product manager. And I was like, that's great, but actually there's this thing called product coming.

SPEAKER_00 15:32

Um they wanted a project manager.

SPEAKER_02 15:34

They wanted a project manager. And I said, and we're not doing projects. This is a pure play product where we're doing feature release every week. You know, um, yes, we've got this one big event that we have to have everything ready for, but actually what we're trying to do is build momentum. And at that point, we were trying to get kids into sports. Yeah. So we were co-creating products with children in schools, which was just mind-blowing because what the kids wanted was not what our marketing department wanted. But you know, that was another story. And so i I I convinced them to give me the job title product manager, and from there that propelled me into C-suite after that. So that a number of us I had a pick of suppliers after the Olympics that said come and work with us.

SPEAKER_00 16:21

Yeah, because 2012 products still an emerging role. Yeah. Um and I guess from there, what were the kind of triggers for you that made you start to think, okay, leadership, that's something that I'm enjoying and that I'm now going to continue to pursue.

SPEAKER_02 16:46

I think I had uh I don't know if lucky is the right word, but I think I'd always gravitated towards leadership within the roles I've had before. Um partly because I can, you know, I I I really enjoy taking technical, I I I am incredibly technical, yeah, but I really enjoy making that accessible to non-technical people. And if you think about the noughties and the late 90s, that was exactly the skill that you needed back then. And then product allows you to basically add a value add to that, the sort of business lens to it that says, yes, I can make your button green and I can put it on the right-hand side, but actually, if we make the butter, if we move the button to being exactly where you need it to be, you're going to make 10% more on all of your sales. That that conversation and shifting that conversation was really important to me. So again, at the Olympics, we needed to make half a billion pounds out of the mascot program that I was working on. So engaging with kids and getting them into schools, the sort of, you know, the the really sorry, getting them in, getting the schools engaged with sports was really important and r but quite difficult to track the you ha and to incentivise. And obviously something that the government continues to do today to see what the impact of that investment is. But also we needed to be commercially literate because we had we couldn't leave the the country in debt, so we had to make um a profit based on these assets that we were building, um, in order to make sure that the ticket sales were the strongest they could be, and they were uh to make sure our product sales, you know, our physical product sales were the best they could be.

SPEAKER_00 18:34

Yeah, and that's the beauty of product, isn't it? It's that whole kind of 360 thinking around what it is you're delivering and why you're delivering it and how to how to then go and do that. And but so but like someone, uh a previous guest on the podcast, Fabrice Cooler, described leadership as uh certainly moving into leadership as you go from you know working on the product, your team becomes the product. Yes. So like how I'm gonna be honest with you, I think. Talk us through that and how that lands for you.

SPEAKER_02 19:14

Yeah, no, it's really interesting. And when I reflect on it, I'm not sure that initially I enjoyed the um step up to C-suite as much as I wanted to. I made it hard for myself. Uh I decided to go and live in India and run a t uh teams in uh Dubai, Delhi, and Singapore, a challenge I'd never done before. I'd done a lot of Osh uh it was an innovations agency called Iris. Um they had actually designed the mascots for the Olympics. So this was a the opportunity to to sort of continue working with them. Um and so I I had the challenge, I had the cultural challenge of these very diverse teams, and then I had the C-suite challenge of being the only woman in in the locale working at that level. So so I I think I've had to learn, I've had to learn the hard way, and actually I've had to learn in three ways. I've had to go back to basics and go back to the books and say, what are the leadership skills that I bring? What are my strengths? Uh, what are my weaknesses? What are my blind spots? And really, and I've had to do that in every role I've had over the last decade. Um, but I've also realized that um I have a leadership style that is unique, it's it's very compassionate, very authentic. Um, and the more authentic I can be, the the more results I can deliver. And I like having fun. Yeah. I do not like to be in a serious workplace. I like to have fun. And I, you know, even in the stressful moments, I want to be in a world where we can we can make a joke about it or um or feel a camaraderie that we're in this together because we're still smiling.

SPEAKER_00 21:11

So do you think that there's a and uh this isn't a loaded question, but could it be said that there was an element of uh authenticity and what you believed you should be when you moved into that role versus what you truly were and how you lead now? Would you say that there is a stark contrast between that?

SPEAKER_02 21:33

Yeah, I I had some feedback a little while ago, I think it was at Just Eat, which is that I'm often brought uh I was brought in to transform and to bring my authenticity in rather than what is my natural ways to to absorb the culture that's around me and try and reflect it back to people.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

And do you think that was shaped by the Silicon Valleys and the corporate world? Taking all of that and believing that this is as a female in a leadership role, this is how I need to be.

SPEAKER_02 22:08

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 22:09

But not necessarily in the most effective way.

SPEAKER_02 22:11

Absolutely. There's a book that's called which has a great title, What Got You Here Won't Get You There. And I think the moment that you get into that leadership position where you're directing and not doing, it is the moment to use that sort of ideology of like actually everything that got me to this point I needed to cast off and almost, as I said, retrain and start again and look at my core skills again.

SPEAKER_00 22:42

So when was the first opportunity you felt that you were comfortable in that role?

SPEAKER_02 22:47

Um I think the first time. Oh, that's a really good question. Um I think each role I've had at C-suite level or director level recently has given me a different tool in my armour. So at so I ran um I I was chief operating officer for um Microbit. We got kids into programming, so the BBC had given this device to every 12-year-old in the country, every 13-year-old in the country, so a million devices, and I I had the opportunity to grow that worldwide. So we went from 20 countries to 60 countries, a million to four million devices worldwide. Really exciting times. And I think the I think having a small small organization of about 30 people and leading them, I felt I there was a moment where I sat back at dinner and I turned to my then CEO. We had we had a rotating CEO situation at the time. Sat to next to him and said I feel really this is this is where I need to be on del, you know, and leading from this spot. So I I I do remember that moment very much.

SPEAKER_00 24:01

Liberating. Very yeah. That's great. I mean it it it hasn't been linear, and I think that that's come through in so many of the conversations that I have. I know you you there was a there was a period of time where you were a startup founder as well, right?

SPEAKER_02 24:16

Yeah, I I've always been fascinated by founding, and so um I think for at least 15 years of my career, I've always had a side project hustle that sometimes becomes my main gig, depending on how successful it goes. So yeah, I've got a whole raft of them that I can tell you about.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

Look out martial arts, something in the future.

SPEAKER_02 24:41

So martial arts, I love running a club. So I run a small club in central London. And um yeah, I use all of those skills to to promote um yeah. But in terms of um like the biggest challenges, is uh talk talk me through that start-up journey and so I think the biggest challenge as a female founder is that only I think I can't remember, you know, back in the day the numbers were only two percent of uh women worldwide um got investment. So that was back in the times I was trying to get investment. And the other was that um, you know, people of colour are also um disproportionately um impacted, which is one of the reasons I wanted to live and work in Asia to see if that would open up more doors for me. Um did it? Yes, my network definitely changed and um allowed, you know, culturally um, you know, I'm I'm incredibly middle class and and come from a family that's incredibly proud that we're middle class. But what middle class is in Asia is very different to what middle class is in Europe. And it does open a lot of doors. I mean there's always set s uh setbacks. I think um, you know, I think that over the years I've definitely had to leave organizations where the culture was moving in a direction that I was unhappy with. You know, and that I can I can name that in in a couple of spaces. Um I f I I found the I found the um I find organizations that really just want to exit with a big capital bonus. So just eat has just been acquired, for example, and we were we were pushing to that point, and I helped them with that. I did some consulting with fig leaves just before they were sold. I find those periods where the stress is just off the level, and the only reason you're doing it is to make more money or a group of people that you may or may not have any affinity for, the most difficult of the challenges that I've faced in the last few decades. Um being at Imperial, where what our job is, is to deliver science for humanity and ensure that we are enabling some of the most innovation most innovative research to be brought into the fore, just allows me to really feel like it's worthwhile coming to work every day. Even if what I need to do at work is is you know, help someone put a green button on the right hand side. I feel like I'm still contributing to change in humanity rather than those organizations that are driven by just pure profit and then what's the exit rate?

SPEAKER_00 27:34

And that was a conscious decision.

SPEAKER_02 27:36

It's a real conscious decision.

SPEAKER_00 27:37

So it was just eat into Imperial, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_02 27:39

Yeah, that was a real conscious decision. Just e I I mean I think I I spent I think I started yeah, my poor boss at the time, I think I started at some uh at our promotion review and said, I'm not sure I like this culture very much where this is all we do. I came to them because they had invested in um a number of my programmes to get more women into tech and they were really committed to that. And we'd done some great work in Berlin and in London to get and so from the outside it just looked like the right role and the right location for me. But once you're in the inside and you're doing product delivery and everything is numbers driven, you kind of feel feel sort of yeah, uh it was it was tough getting them to work every day, I have to say.

SPEAKER_00 28:25

It sounds like um there comes a point in your career, especially as you kind of move um through and up the food chain, however you want to put it, but the values piece, maybe at the beginning of your career you can kind of overlook some of that stuff, but then as you start to mature into the role, become your authentic self, things like the values that run through the organization need to almost be reflected in you. Maybe I'm putting words in your mouth, and maybe that's something that I'm feeling myself right now. But it's just it's quite interesting that jump from corporate VC, PE back businesses, exits to Imperial. When when talk me through that transition, like when you arrived at Imperial, what was it? And it'd be interesting to explore what it's now becoming.

SPEAKER_02 29:15

Absolutely. Um so one of the things I was really conscious about is if I was going to do something that was values-driven, like Imperial, I didn't want to do a transformation piece. I think that's quite hard with um older organizations. And so I was thrilled when I got, you know, found this role uh because it was an elevation piece.

SPEAKER_00 29:37

Yeah, they started.

SPEAKER_02 29:38

So they had started the product journey well before I'd I'd been in place. They already had really great people to be work, you know, who who simply needed to be brought together. And and most of my first three months of my role was going, did you talk to that person? Have you spoken to this person?

SPEAKER_00 29:57

Um Why didn't you want a transformation piece, by the way?

SPEAKER_02 30:01

I find I find transformation is um very deadline and um I just find it stressful.

SPEAKER_00 30:09

Fine.

SPEAKER_02 30:09

Like just being honest.

SPEAKER_00 30:11

I prefer to take it from there's a base, and now I'm gonna elevate it, yeah, I'm gonna improve on that.

SPEAKER_02 30:16

And and and then you can choose which elevation pieces you're going to do, right? So you can say, so at the moment I'm looking at elevating our test um uh you know testing capability within the teams, um, really keen to to improve sort of our UX as well, you know, and I can get to cherry pick the things that really will m drive process changes and and get my team delivering at this elevator level. Um, and I can coach them all, that's the other thing. I have time to take individuals on a journey um to get them to the career uh spots that they want to get to. And my favorite people are people who say, I don't want your job, I want your boss's job. I want I want to run the university one day. It's like, okay, I can see that journey. How do we get you there? I'm sort of that sort of Japanese spirit of um leadership. And so I think that really excited me. And and you don't have that in transforms. In transform pieces, you have to hit the deadline, everything is about the program, and really I wanted to focus on the product. And the other piece here is that um I'm really passionate about Imperial. So all you know, I have a large amount of friends who've gone through Imperial. I've also had a large amount of um, some of the best people I've ever worked with have had uh received undergraduates from there. And so I I wanted to be able to help um our 20,000 students plus um to get to that same point in their career. And some of the best product people out there have gone through.

SPEAKER_00 32:01

Yeah, of course. But I think it's safe to say that higher education and products is a new emerging idea. Yes. Um and Imperial, may I say, from my understanding, is probably one of the first pioneers of really adopting product as a methodology uh in maybe more of a commercial way into higher education. Yeah. Um so I'd be really interested to explore kind of your thoughts on that and why it had never really happened before and what the benefits have become from bringing that mindset into the institution.

SPEAKER_02 32:43

Yeah, there's a couple of ways to go with this. I think um I'm I'm really fortunate that my C CIO is um such a strong advocate for the product delivery model. And I love going to work with other higher education institutions. Last week I was talking to the University of Galway a few months ago. I was talking to the University of uh Northumbria, and they they all said, Oh, I've seen I've seen your CEI talk, CIO talk, and she's brilliant, and she this is what we're going to do. And so they're now just starting their transformation model, yeah, which is super exciting.

SPEAKER_00 33:20

And you guys are doing the the product fair uh oh yeah, we put this product which is uh all the universities coming to hear how Imperial have done this or Yeah, so not just I'm uh the higher education one of the things that fascinates me about the higher education um sector is that we just phone each other up.

SPEAKER_02 33:38

If we're about to buy a new product and we hear a customer's, you know, a hate uh supplier's delivered this. So I'm I'm hoping that the festival build which I'm very excited about, yeah will help us elevate and showcase all those individual um people around the sector who are really pioneering. And it is pioneering, because you imagine um I I think my university's old, we're over a hundred years old, therefore, you know, there is a basement somewhere with a lot of paper that that um uh keeps the records for our students from way back when. I'm sure there's some geniuses in there who'd love to get that paperwork out. But then I was speaking to the University of Aberdeen and they were saying um they go back to the 1400s. So imagine what their archives are like. Um so what I adore about Britain and about our institutions is that we need to innovate and stay ahead, but we have to do it with our heritage. We don't burn our inf you what happened at the base before in order to move forward. And when you look at I mean, literally in in Asia, people will drop a beautiful building to put a new high-rise in. And if you look at Silicon Valley, that's exactly what they want to do. They want to come in and take the old, the old organization, drop it to the ground and disrupt it, this sort of disruption culture. That doesn't work here in in Britain, and it certainly isn't going to work in the higher education sector. We need to be cognizant of our heritage and what we do really well and have always done really well, which is to educate the world and educate, you know, you know this particular university is is number two in the world, just behind MIT. You know, we need to we need to stay innovative. We need to ensure that the students who are coming through through are on the zeitgeist of what they need to be learning. And our digital infrastructure that we provide to them should just be seamless and friction-free.

SPEAKER_00 35:46

So talking of friction-free product ideas, wider vision on what's going to work, why why we're building what we're building versus stakeholders who want something.

SPEAKER_01 36:00

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 36:01

How does that work in the organization and what what challenges has that kind of brought up?

SPEAKER_02 36:08

So one of the things I've had to really get my head around in the first 18 months is how the product model has to be adapted to higher education. Um, universities that have royal charter or any charter are run by governance boards. So if you look at the charity sector, you look at the NHS, and you look at higher education, we all have the same challenge, which is, and boards are, let's face it, let's be frank, the worst way to make any decision, especially when a product decision. Especially a product decision that you want to enable your teams to deliver on. So what we've started looking at is the sort of run, grow, transform pieces and um sort of the classic product framework and empowering our teams to be able to do their run operational work without any interference from the outside. And and really understand when the boards play a really strong piece in the governance of what we're delivering. So we've now separated out those sort of pieces. But what really caught my attention here is how we need to work in a structured way to be able to deliver growth elements of it or you know, new basically new feature requests. And what we do is we work with work streams. So we create we create these boards and in in a traditional commun um in a ch traditional charity sector, these would be subcommittees. But here at Imperial we call them work streams, which is fine. And within that work stream, we co-lead them. So we co co-lead them with a product, digital product person and a um person from the business, whichever part of the business that might be, might be property, it might be um advancement where we're trying to um raise, uh do fundraising, it might be pre-enrollment where we're trying to get students to apply. We co-lead those streams, and underneath that we then deliver, we have the squads that we need to deliver the different products that might be needed for that work stream. And we break that down by the student lifecycle journey or the colleague journey. Um there is a there is a third group of people that we need to think about because we need to also gauge the wider community. You know, you if science is uh is for humanity, the rest of humanity is also in there. Not a small task for a product um company or a product group, but um but those two, if we stay really true to the student and colleague journey and and restructure this way, uh we're seeing lots of dividends. Um, you know, we're recruiting at the moment for our colleague journey, so we're looking at finance and um people, um, and you can see the rest of the university beginning to look at us and go, okay, this is the model that will work for us. None of those four-year transform waiting for the product to turn up and it never quite meets my expectation because I've dreamt something far advanced of what it is.

SPEAKER_00 39:28

So, in a world where you can build anything, like how do you know what to build?

SPEAKER_02 39:35

Yeah, it's a it's a great question. Um I think actually having limited budgets actually helps in that. Okay. Yeah. So we have to we have to be really cognizant of what we're we're build uh what we're building and whether it's value is the right value.

SPEAKER_00 39:51

Because it's not monetary, right? It's not it's not like ROI. Obviously you want to be attracting a student and give the students a great experience. Yeah. But it's more about experience, isn't it? Than the right.

SPEAKER_02 40:03

And impact and how many Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:06

I think what drives those decisions and projects that you take on versus project that you park in a limited budget.

SPEAKER_02 40:14

I think one thing that the s uh people outside of the sector do not understand is higher education. And higher education that's focused on research like we are, is one of the biggest targets. Um I was literally speaking to my cybersecurity team um yesterday, and it is on the scale that's six times um higher than what I saw at the Olympics. And remember, at the Olympics, we worked hand in hand with the government and the police to protect our Wow, that's I'm really surprised.

SPEAKER_00 40:48

Why?

SPEAKER_02 40:49

Um well exactly that. We're doing research that changes humanity. And if you can get your hands on some of this before the commercial world has a ch, you know, and and monetize it. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:04

So that naturally goes higher up the higher up the priority list. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 41:08

And we're an institution. We saw what happened to Marks and Spencer's, that's you know, and we saw what's happened to the co-op. These are these are national institutions that we're proud to have and uh have worldwide visibility. Obviously, it's a target.

SPEAKER_00 41:24

Cyber. Have to talk about AI.

SPEAKER_02 41:27

Oh, of course we talked about cyber. We have to.

SPEAKER_00 41:32

It's been a topic that we're just covering across the show because it's on everybody's lips and it's really interesting to hear about leaders in uh our industry's perspective on what's going on. I think what I'm particularly interested in is um AI through the higher education piece and what lens you're looking at it through and what initiatives you think are gonna have a positive impact.

SPEAKER_02 41:57

Before I do that, what I think I want to share with you is that one of the reasons I work at Imperial is because in 2018 and 2019 I was working with um young people who were saying that they were going to go to university to to study AI. And I kind of was incredibly skeptical.

SPEAKER_01 42:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:16

I was like, wh why are you going off to learn about what I would rather call machine learning? Yeah. Um, you know, what what's happened in the intert intervening 20 years since I studied it that makes it more important today? And so I challenged myself in in September 2019. I actually did the MIT boot camp.

SPEAKER_01 42:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:39

And I only managed to get through a day and a half of the sort of online learning piece. Um, I wanted to rewrite every piece of code I'd ever commissioned or written for the last 25 years.

SPEAKER_00 42:54

Well after a day and a half?

SPEAKER_02 42:56

After a day and a half of learning machine learning. I just, you know, there were startups that I had bashed my head around against the wall trying to, you know, handcraft some of these that are now I could write in two lines. And and I was just flabbergasted about like just that. And so what I had envisaged in 2019 hasn't really come to fruition. What I had envisaged was that from the infrastructure up, we would rewrite each of the um platforms that we were building on. So if you imagine, you we know that quantum will come in a in a few decades' time. I've I think it's a decade away, but that will rewrite the zeros and ones on the grand level. You then have the um operating systems, and we haven't seen that yet, but I think the operating systems will need to be re enhanced. And uh, you know, now I talk to you, I need to go off and do some research and find out who's doing that piece of work because I think I think the underlying code base that talks to the assembler, which talks to the zeros and ones, will change. But we don't operate. We're talking about product and we're talking about the software that sits on top of that. And that I think can be, you know, pre-written, but won't be accurate enough. In the same way that we use LLMs today, you know, it can do so much. And then at some point, we still want human validation. And I think that we've seen this with the no-code um journey. Our applications, I still think, will need that human touch to avoid the canny and valley or you know, process that you end up with when you speak to a machine or or yeah, interact with a machine a bit too long.

SPEAKER_00 44:43

Everyone's saying not everyone, many people that I speak to are saying the same thing. Especially in contrast to the doom and gloom that you hear, but just the actually it's enabling a lot more uh in ways that we never thought we could, but that human understanding of it and able to utilize it, that's where the the winners will be in terms of career paths now, people who are adapting to it and allowing it to help them to make them better. And I think that is a slightly different lens as we start to learn more and more about what it is and how it can positively impact what we're doing.

SPEAKER_02 45:26

Yeah, but remember, Ricky, we're only tal you we think of AI in the modern world as LLMs, right? And it's only and that is an AI in my opinion. Okay. And so so the definition of AI for me that I want to hold on to is that it basically replicates the human entirely. Yeah. So eyesight, hearing, uh LLMs are just the verbal writing piece that we've got, you know, and okay, it could it wouldn't probably do voice voice pieces. But when it's, you know, and I do think that it will move to that point where it can tie show laces and and and and pick strawberries. Um but these are such these things need such cognition. Yeah. And we haven't yet understood um we haven't yet developed to the point that I think it's it's true AI. If you go back to Turing's paper, and again, Turing's paper is in the building next door to us at Imperial, just to make that point.

SPEAKER_01 46:30

Let's go.

SPEAKER_02 46:30

Um, you know, he what he said was that mathematically anything that could be um anything that could be mathematically modelled, it's any automation can be mathematically modelled, and we're not at that world yet. Yeah. It's coming, um, but we're not there yet. And I I think there's lots of things we don't understand about the human condition and the human uh the physical um world that we're going to hit a limit really quite fast. But this is an AI. LLMs aren't AI. What we need to do is start looking at those uh people who are working on what's next.

SPEAKER_00 47:14

The robots.

SPEAKER_02 47:15

The robots beyond robots.

SPEAKER_00 47:17

The robots are coming. Um so how but okay, but how's it changing the role of a PM today?

SPEAKER_02 47:25

It's a great question. Great question. I I I'm working on it at the moment. We're putting a so before we do the festival of products, we're actually going to bring all of our PMs together um for an away day. Not sure they know, so they might hear about it from this podcast. That's going to be fun. Um excuse it.

SPEAKER_01 47:44

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 47:45

Um but what I'm really excited about with that is we're going to look at how we can enhance each part of the product journey. So we actually sat down and we looked at where we felt we needed to improve. Um, and we felt that that was in that sort of initiation strategic pieces. Yeah. You know, we we come from a world where people think of IT as the people who deliver the piece of software that I want, rather than what we need to do, which is to say, look, we've got this capability, we can actually provide these pieces, we need to build these pieces for you. And it's having that conversation. And I think we could you, you know, we can use creative PMs, which I would form but say I was in that bucket of being a creative innovations PM to be able to articulate better the business cases back to our colleagues who want us to be more delivery-focused PMs and be able to put those cases back into boards where you know it's quite daunting for a junior PM to write a board paper, um, you know, for these vice provosts who've had incredible careers and are in the newspaper every day with their latest innovations. So we want to be able to write for impact. So I think that's gonna help us. On the other end, um, I really want to use automation to help us with um making sure that our products are the top quality that we can be delivering, and then that will help our cybersecurity colleagues make sure that we're as secure as we can be. So we're not leaving um, you know, we're all human, as they say. Um, so we're not leaving any backdoors in, we're not uh unexpectedly um going too fast and making problems for ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 49:38

So do you believe that it's uh moving towards fewer people doing more or more opportunity overall?

SPEAKER_02 49:49

This is a complicated question because I think you know when you know when animals transition from one type of species to another, they don't leave a fossil record in between. And I think that's where we are in that evolution of how we used to do product delivery and or or and run agile teams previously, and where we're going to get to uh once we've embedded the LLMs and the and the current types of AI that we have into our work process. And so it's it's I think we're in that experimentation stage, and I'm not quite and I'm not sure which experiments are going to actually land. I really don't, uh which is probably why I keep coming to work, right? Um but to answer your question directly, I feel like the real impact will be on product, will be where geopolitics goes, uh, where the higher education sector will go, and you know, whether uh how do we convince people that it's still value for money to get a an a degree while there's so many other ways of doing learning out there, and we need lots of different pathways for learning now that we're in a much more neurodiverse and aware l world. So what if we can we can get that correct, then there will be absolutely a need for great products and and for our teams to to grow. Um absolutely, uh rather than just keeping the lights on and using automation to do that. So I I do believe that we will stay constant.

SPEAKER_00 51:32

Good. So as we come to a close, um someone's listening to this and wants to follow a similar path into leadership. What what advice would you give them?

SPEAKER_02 51:47

I think to keep a growth mindset. I think that I know it's cheesy, but um no more so have I needed it than on this path. And not to stop. Once you get to that first piece, don't just say you've made it. Like just keep challenging yourself because the pace of change that we have is that that leadership environment is constantly evolving and constantly changing. So if you find gaps that in that in that world, then absolutely fill it and bring people into that world, help them get to that same stage that you have so that they're helping you fill it as well. So if you want a kinder workplace in your C suite, then find kind people to develop to get there with you.

SPEAKER_00 52:40

That's really nice.

SPEAKER_02 52:41

When you look back on your journey, what's ma what's mattered most having great mentors and advocates, having those people that um just reflect back to you that you're doing a job that other people are just slightly in awe of and I quite appreciate that. And you know, um for me this comes naturally. I love this, uh, you know, I love technology and it as I said, I got my first computer when I was five. I don't know I am as digital native as you can get. But I'm I understand that the people around me at my age or older than me or even younger than me are not. Um and that yeah, I I can I can be a mirror back to them.

SPEAKER_00 53:27

Kavita, thank you. It's been so nice just to sit on the couch and chat. Um and uh if any of our listeners uh uh want to reach out to you, uh ask any questions that you're happy to make.

SPEAKER_02 53:40

Obviously, you can't take every call, but yeah, I I don't take every call, but I definitely try my best for if you've got a very specific thing that you think I can help you with, then yeah, by all means send me a LinkedIn, contact you, and you can forward those details.

SPEAKER_00 53:56

Absolutely. Thank you. And yeah, thanks again, Gavita.

SPEAKER_02 53:59

That's welcome. This is a delight. Thank you.