Her Story
About Sapna
Sapna Gupta serves as Head of Product at AWS, leading cloud infrastructure and services. With more than 14 years in the field of product management and engineering within the AWS Cloud computing and information technology industry, she has built a career spanning multiple prominent technology companies. Prior to her four years at Amazon, Gupta worked at Microsoft on the Digital Transformation Team within the Windows and devices organization, at Intel as a staff engineering lead, and at Praxare as a research scientist. Her career has evolved from being a scientist to an engineer to a product lead. She earned her PhD in Material Science and Engineering from the University of Connecticut and holds a Black Belt certification in Green Six Sigma. Gupta is passionate about her career growth and attributes her success to self-drive and learning from successful leaders. She values authenticity, respect to one another, and supporting one another in her work and personal life. Gupta advises young professionals to think through short-term and long-term goals, work backwards from what they want to achieve, ensure they enjoy their work, and build the right network for guidance and success.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Sapna
01What do you attribute your success to?
I am super passionate about my career growth in general. Self-drive, and I always look up to successful leaders to learn from them and see what changes can I make, and how can I do more.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
Network is key to success. I wish I realized it before.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
When I guide and coach folks, I tell them to think through short-term, long-term, what is it that they want to achieve, and work backwards from it. Are they really enjoying the work that they are doing? And if not, then what is it that they would enjoy and put their mind into it. Having guidance, having the right network is critical nowadays.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
There are pros and cons of Gen AI today. All of the org structures are flattening, so how do you think about the growth. This is a hot field, learning about this opportunity, and figuring it out, like, more and more, how to weave this into your daily life is something new we have to catch up to.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Authenticity is important to me, like if folks are authentic, what we are doing, and expressing is transparent to the customer. Respect to one another and supporting one another. Those are some of the values that I care about.
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