Her Story
About Leena
I work as a lead designer at Amazon, where my expertise is in product strategy and creating end-to-end flows for user experiences. A typical day for me involves working closely with partners, product managers, and engineers on whatever project I'm working on. I basically drive the strategy on the design side and collaborate with partners on the designs, then deliver all those designs to them. It's not only about designing or delivering - it's more about the strategy, how I'm going to collaborate with the partners, and unblocking our partners if there's anything I can work on with them. Currently I'm working on two projects, but working as a lead designer on one of them. So it's typically a mix of designing and collaboration. What really inspires me about this field is how, when you're working on design, you empathize with users and always think about the user. You connect whatever you're designing back to solving user problems. That really inspires me - knowing that whatever I'm working on is meaningful work that's connecting with humans. I'm really enjoying it and have been in this field for more than 7 years now.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Leena
01What do you attribute your success to?
I just keep going. I always had a lot of hurdles and a lot of things happen in the past. When I moved to the States, I did not have a work visa for two, two and a half, three years, but I didn't stop. I just kept working as a volunteer, and that helped me a lot to add on to my experience later. Whatever the situation, I just keep going with whatever I get. I think that's it - whatever the hurdle is in life, I just keep going with that.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I received is that you are the owner of your own career path. You should be able to drive your own career and take ownership of where you want it to go, instead of looking for people's agreement. Like, if they say no or yes, you should be able to drive your own career path.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would say it's the same advice as how I made my path to till now. It's just don't lose hope, just keep going. If one door is closed, another one will open for you, so just grab that opportunity and just keep going.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
I would say AI right now is both a challenge and an opportunity at the same time. It's a big thing and everybody is talking about it. People also have fear that they might lose their job, and people are definitely losing their jobs. But it's also an opportunity because you can actually use AI in very different ways. It's a helpful tool, but you should know how and where to use AI. You can't fully trust AI because not everything AI is producing is trustworthy. So I would say it's both a challenge and an opportunity right now to keep learning about AI in this hot market. I use AI for generating research reports, but I just do proofreading and make sure everything's in place, rather than putting everything on assumptions or whatever AI has generated.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Transparency. In personal life and at the workplace, I really like when people are transparent with their cards, whatever they're sharing. I really appreciate that.
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