Influential Woman · Product Marketing, Finance, Artificial Intelligence

Akanksha Rawat

Product & Program Manager, The Walt Disney Company

Bellevue, WA

3Awards received

Certifications · Degrees · Memberships

Degree Master's in Fashion Marketing Degree Nottingham Trent University Degree 2013-2015 Degree Master's in Information Technology and Management with major in Product Management Degree UT Dallas Degree January 2022-December 2023 Degree Graduated with honors

Her Story

About Akanksha

I've been in the product and product marketing field for about 10 years, and I've always taken a very unconventional path - I usually go to university for one thing but end up doing something else altogether, though I still utilize those skills. My career started at Louis Vuitton, where I began as an intern and was made permanent as a product marketing manager. That experience is closest to my heart because it was my first role and the impact felt real. I won an award there for delivering a business case for the India market that was replicated for 6 plus other East Asian countries. After Louis Vuitton, I went on to work with Estee Lauder and then with Bain. Currently, I'm working with two companies - Dreamline AI, an AI startup in Florida where I serve as the product lead, and New York Life Eagle Strategies in the finance department, where I provide administrative help to my financial advisor. Outside of work, I love fiddling around with Figma, designing app and website designs for my own ideas, because my bigger goal in life is having my own business someday.

Her Interview

Ten minutes with Akanksha

01What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?

The best career advice I ever received was about taking responsibility. I know it's a very bland advice to get, but when you're waging storms and into very simple yet hard decisions sometimes, taking autonomous responsibility of your team or of your own work matters a lot. The advice was to just take responsibility, start with yourself, and then anything else will fall into place, and it does eventually work out.

02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?

Be fearless, honestly. And it's just not a blanket term. Take as many risks as possible, because you never know what turns out to be your path, and even if it's not, you would have a bunch of experience to take and pour that into something else that you find to be your path, finally.

03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?

Uncertainty. That's definitely there. For example, when we talk about AI, yeah, it's everywhere, but then it's uncertain, there are no ground rules. That is why there's a huge debate about ethical and unethical. You don't know, we're just playing around with the gray area. Unless you're a huge firm like Microsoft or Amazon, yeah, there might be some ground rules, but overall, in the AI industry, there are no set defined rules. Anybody wants to do everything, and it's just a new bubble that has taken over the career scene right now, or the development scene right now in the world. So, uncertainty is a huge part of what I am doing, but then I love that. I love defining the rules and also questioning if that is a rule that we want to break or not.

04What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?

I feel like loyalty has been a huge trait that I really like. Loyalty in terms of professionalism - are you loyal enough to deliver on time, before time? How abreast are you with the tasks that we're working on right now? Are you doing your own research in terms of staying loyal to what we're trying to build here? Or, how much is it that you want to contribute onto the team that is outside of your own job description? I know that that's how I have led my professional journey, so I feel like that's something that I definitely engage others as well on.

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