Her Story
About Heather (PeiChun)
Heather (PeiChun) Chen serves as Principal Product Manager for AI/ML at Twitch, where she owns the machine learning scope across platforms and surfaces. This includes recommendations in search and matching for viewers and creators in a two-sided marketplace, leveraging machine learning, AI, and generative AI to help users create communities. She has been at Twitch, the parent company in live video streaming media entertainment, for two years. With a career focus on machine learning and AI spanning more than ten years across different companies, industries, and company sizes, her path began after earning a master's in electrical engineering from Stanford University. There she took classes in machine learning, AI, and data systems, leading to her first role at Google as a data scientist building machine learning models, writing papers, and filing patents on marketplace matching systems for job seekers and recruiters. She later transitioned to product management while continuing to focus on marketplace and machine learning initiatives. Subsequent roles included building an enterprise assistant using AI and natural language processing at a commercial real estate company, followed by work at a Series E startup in fintech and prop tech before joining Twitch to explore direct B2C experiences at scale.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Heather (PeiChun)
01What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Be brave, be open-minded, and don't be afraid to make mistakes. Always reach out to people to ask for help or guidance because chances are people are actually kinder than you will have thought. Finding a mentor is great especially in their earlier career.
02What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The biggest challenge and opportunity is that AI and machine learning is evolving with such a crazy speed especially with generative AI that could work as an agent or assistant. It allows working much more efficiently but the challenge is figuring out the right balance so that it is still your voice and your unique value added rather than AI doing most of it. Everyone's function is shifting and companies are removing middle management layers so focusing on becoming an IC with AI superpower might open more paths.
03What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Equality is the most important value. At work it shows in focusing on fairness and inclusivity in models like the Matching Engine at Google to avoid bias. Personally it means being a feminist supported by a husband who shares the value and ensuring mutual support in careers without gender being a barrier.
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