Her Story
About Parul
Parul Sharma is a distinguished technology and product leadership professional with more than 20 years of experience spanning engineering, enterprise storage, edge-cloud infrastructure, AI, and digital transformation. She currently serves at NetApp, where she leads a team of 16 product managers supporting a large-scale storage services business. Her work centers on solving complex customer problems, developing impactful products, driving strategic initiatives, and connecting technology innovation with business and customer outcomes.
Parul’s career reflects a strong commitment to continuous learning and professional growth. Her engineering education built a foundation in mathematics, logic, analytical thinking, and systematic problem-solving, while her master’s degree in management from Stanford Graduate School of Business broadened her understanding of business strategy and leadership. Her international professional experiences have also strengthened her ability to collaborate across cultures, industries, and diverse teams. She brings these experiences together to guide product strategy, build high-performing teams, and translate complex technology into practical solutions.
As a leader, Parul is guided by hard work, grit, integrity, curiosity, and a commitment to creating meaningful impact through technology. She believes in listening to customers, using data thoughtfully, asking questions, adapting through experience, and remaining open to new possibilities. She is particularly passionate about encouraging women to explore the many career paths available in technology, from engineering and product development to strategy and product management. Through her leadership, Parul demonstrates how technical expertise, business insight, collaboration, and continuous learning can come together to create innovative products and lasting organizational impact.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Parul
01What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I’ve received is to be as intentional about what you say no to as what you say yes to. Earlier in my career, I believed I could take on almost anything and find a way to make it better. As I’ve grown, I’ve realized that clarity comes from knowing where your time, energy, and strengths can create the most impact—and being willing to say no to opportunities that no longer offer meaningful learning or have diminishing returns. Saying yes creates opportunities, but knowing when to say no is just as important for growth.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
My advice to women starting out in the industry would be to stay open-minded and experiment. Early in your career, you may not know exactly what you are best at or where you will have the greatest impact, and that is perfectly fine. Try different things, even when others may not immediately support the choice. Some experiments may fail, but every one of them teaches you something.
Technology is much broader than academia or any single function. It is about connecting the dots across engineering, research, product, customers, and even marketing. So don’t box yourself into one definition of what your career should look like.
The world is changing rapidly, and your career should be allowed to evolve with it. Be willing to move across functions, take on unfamiliar challenges, and reinvent yourself every few years. That willingness to experiment without hesitation is often what creates the most growth.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
I think the biggest challenge and opportunity right now is the pace at which technology is changing, particularly with AI.
For product leaders, the challenge is no longer just identifying what is technically possible. It is deciding where technology can create meaningful customer value, what not to build, and how to move fast without losing focus.
The scarce resource today is no longer ideas or technology it is clarity on where to place bets.
Customers also expect much more: simpler experiences, faster innovation, better economics, and increasingly intelligent products. That puts product management in a unique position because we have to connect technology, customer problems, business models, and execution.
I see the biggest opportunity as being able to connect those dots. The strongest PM leaders will be the ones who can look across engineering, AI, data, customer workflows, and business strategy, make clear choices, and turn rapidly evolving technology into products that solve real problems at scale.
04What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
The two values that matter most to me are hard work and integrity.
I strongly believe there is no substitute for hard work. If you are fully committed to something, willing to stay with it through difficulty, and have the grit to keep going, very little is truly out of reach. There are no shortcuts to meaningful achievement.
The second is integrity. To me, integrity means doing what you said you would do, even when no one is watching. It is about how you show up, the choices you make, and how you make other people feel.
Sometimes doing the right thing means taking a difficult stand, even when it is unpopular or you are standing alone. But that sense of knowing you acted with conviction and stayed true to your values is irreplaceable.
Hard work earns results. Integrity earns trust. I believe you need both.
Join Influential Women and start making an impact. Register now.