One of the most valuable aspects of attending a Reforge Career Accelerator Program is the expertise that our program hosts bring to the live events every week. All programs are led by our Executives in Residence, who have decades worth of invaluable insights they earned by pioneering many of the frameworks discussed in the programs. These are some of the tech industry's sharpest minds on Growth, Product, and Marketing.
We are excited to welcome our newest EIRs Ravi Mehta and Adam Grenier for Fall 2020. Also returning are Bangaly Kaba, Elena Verna, and Fareed Mosavat, who received rave reviews from Spring 2020 participants.
Ravi Mehta, former Chief Product Officer at Tinder
Ravi joins Reforge as an EIR and will host Product Strategy.
Before Reforge, Ravi previously served as the Chief Product Officer at Tinder and was the Product Director for Youth Engagement at Facebook. He also led the Consumer Product team at TripAdvisor, and was an early member of the Xbox team. Ravi is an angel investor and strategic advisor focused on helping consumer tech companies scale. He regularly offers his advice about product leadership on his personal website ravi-mehta.com and is one of the most insightful mentors on that topic. In Ravi's own words:
"Product Management is one of the most challenging careers in technology, but with the right frameworks and support, it's one of the most rewarding. Product Leaders can impact millions of lives with the products they help build. I've been coaching PMs and scaling organizations for over a decade, so I've personally observed the need for a solid Product Strategy course. When Reforge asked me to join them this Fall, it seemed like a perfect fit. I'm looking forward to meeting the participants and helping them accelerate their careers."
Adam Grenier, former Head of Growth Marketing at Uber
Adam will host Experimentation + Testing and Marketing Strategy this fall.
One of our newest Reforge Executives-in-Residence, Adam most recently served as the VP of Product and Marketing at Lambda School. He was formerly the Head of Growth Marketing at Uber, where he built the global marketing team and infrastructure from the ground up. Before that, he led mobile marketing at both HotelTonight and Zoosk and was also an EIR at First Round Capital. Adam began his career in the agency world, working with clients such as Microsoft, Budweiser, Sun Microsystems, and more. Here's what Adam had to say about Reforge:
"I could not be more excited to join Reforge and the EIR team. I'm passionate about coaching promising talent, and Reforge is THE place where the next generation of tech leaders are honing their skills. Marketing Strategy and Experimentation have been cornerstones of my career, and I can't wait to dive into those topics with participants this fall."
BANGALY KABA, FORMER HEAD OF GROWTH AT INSTAGRAM
Bangaly Kaba is back for his second season leading Retention + Engagement Deep Dive and Growth Series.
Previously, as Instagram's Head of Growth, Bangaly helped the social network surpass one billion monthly active users, making it the fastest growing app in the world. Known for his deep user empathy, keen business intuition, and rigorous strategic thinking, Bangaly developed Adjacent User Theory, which focuses on evaluating maximal product-market fit and building for the next set of users. Bangaly is no stranger to the classroom and began his career in education. He taught in Washington, DC public schools and was Dean of a Swiss boarding school. Here's what previous Reforge participants had to say about Bangaly.
"I was expecting the host to be more of a facilitator and moderator - little did I know Bangaly would be dropping knowledge every class!"
"Bangaly blew me away by not only being an expert but also genuinely caring about coaching and about people. It's not easy to be 100% remote and stay switched on all the time. Bangaly did a superb job in all sessions."
ELENA VERNA, Head of Marketing at Miro
Elena returns to lead Monetization + Pricing Deep Dive.
Elena Verna brings over a decade of experience in monetization, pricing, and revenue growth to Reforge. Formerly the SVP of Growth at SurveyMonkey and Malwarebytes, Elena currently leads Marketing at Miro and is one of the most sought after growth advisors anywhere. She brings a breadth of experience across freemium, self-serve, and free-trial subscription models for both B2C and B2B. Elena doesn't just lead Monetization + Pricing, she also helped create it along with Experimentation + Testing Deep Dive. The energy she brings to live sessions is off the charts, and her positive attitude is practically contagious. Here are a couple rave reviews about Elena.
"Elena does a great job to steer the conversation and add her experience. She was excellent at bringing all of the parts together and in sharing her very inspiring career story & tips.”
"The highest ROI I got was a 20 minute Office Hours I had with Elena. The fact that we had a shared framework from the course meant we were able to have an extremely productive conversation. I took notes, turned it into something to share with my team, and now look like a genius. Having access to Elena felt like cheating."
FAREED MOSAVAT, FORMER DIRECTOR OF GROWTH AT SLACK
This Fall, you can join Fareed for Advanced Growth Strategy.
Fareed Mosavat was most recently a Director of Product at Slack, focused on growth in the freemium, self-service business. Previously, he led growth and product teams at Instacart, Zynga, and other startups. He has been a regular guest speaker at Reforge over the past few years and is known for his terrific humor as well as his deep knowledge of growth. Fareed is one of Silicon Valley’s foremost experts on product-led growth in both consumer and bottoms-up SaaS companies, and has a deep background building and leading experimentation teams. Participants loved Fareed and had the following feedback.
"Fareed was great and made the weekly online sessions very welcoming so people felt comfortable participating. I love his enthusiasm and his responsiveness to questions."
"My expectations were exceeded by the level of commitment from Fareed and the guest speakers. The in-class conversations were engaging, and there were some opportunities to address new topics outside of the live sessions."
"Fareed did an amazing job steering the conversations and discussions. Regardless of the guest, you could count on him to make the content relevant and tie it back to our course material."
We are so honored to have such an incredible group of leaders with us this Fall. I’ve seen firsthand that they are talented teachers who are passionate about sharing their expertise with the Reforge community.
If you are interested in learning directly from Ravi, Adam, Bangaly, Elena, or Fareed, you can apply to Reforge’s Fall 2020 programs here.
You can also apply to join Reforge as a future EIR.