Her Story
About Silky
I am a Senior Lead Product Manager at PayPal, where I work on monetizing datasets for our merchants in terms of advertising. This means any merchant can advertise using PayPal transaction data to our partners, or on PayPal, Venmo, Honey, and all our subsidiaries. I have been in product management for the past 13 years. Before PayPal, I spent 6 years at LinkedIn leading different global products, some in AI, some in agentic AI, and some in ads business. I also worked in ed tech industries before that. My typical day involves road mapping, consulting, and aligning with stakeholders through huge cross-functional engagement, stakeholder management, data analysis with data scientists, and conveying the objectives of the work or product we are launching to leadership. My most notable professional achievement is helping other product managers land in product management roles - I have helped more than 15 individuals succeed in this field. I grew up seeing my father work in the tech industry for 33 years at multinational companies, which inspired me to step into this field. I came to California from India for my master's studies and have stayed in the States to continue my career.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Silky
01What do you attribute your success to?
I would say being calm in chaos is what's helping me to go through this and be able to execute on any of the job responsibilities I have as a product manager. The role of product manager in itself is really, I would say, sometimes very thankless, as well as there's too much scrutiny. It is never a dull day in product management for a product manager, so being calm and handling all the stakeholders, understanding their perspectives and their point of view, and then making a decision based on data, but also based on your own experience and gut feelings, is what I would say.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
I would say that, get the work done. No matter how much hassle you face, just focus on the execution, and the rest will fall or follow you, or fall in the right place.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
To young women coming to this field, I would say that, don't get overwhelmed with all the competition and AI in this. You don't have to be really proficient and professional and so well-versed in this field to actually get into this field. Whatever you have, start searching for the job if you don't have one, and start focusing on the execution, and then everything else will follow you.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
Challenges, I would say, is obviously getting the alignment with, because the product management job is really to align with almost all of the main stakeholders in any company. Getting the alignment and approval from all of the main stakeholders, from their point of view, from their capacity resources, is really challenging. Overcoming that can really help anyone succeed in this role, but it's not easy.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Personal values - I would say the value is really that there should be work-life balance. Not too much into this is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life. That's not what I get out of any job. That's not how I look at any job. And that helps me professionally to focus more on what I'm going to deliver. The value which I thrive under is really the people here and the encouragement which I get from our leadership during my work, so the positive reinforcement, I would say, is really what I value in a company.
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