Product + Tech: Healthy Tension in the Age of AI

NOTE: You need to purchase a ticket at our Eventbrite official website. Product + Tech: Healthy Tension in the Age of AI Tickets, Thursday, October 22 • 6 PM - 9 PM | Eventbrite

Join PMA.LA and the CTO Forum for an insightful evening exploring what happens when Product and Engineering don't immediately agree, and why that tension can sometimes lead to better outcomes.

Through real-world examples and case studies, we'll explore how productive tension, healthy debate, and adversarial collaboration can strengthen decision-making and help teams build better products.

You'll hear examples of moments when the Product and Engineering partnership was challenged to reach a better outcome, along with the processes, conversations, and lessons that helped teams move forward with a shared vision.

During the conversation, we'll explore:

• How Product and Engineering teams can work together to bring roadmaps to life.
• How leaders balance demand management with executive communication and storytelling.
• The productive tension between business priorities and technical realities.
• How ‘shared visioning’ can help Product, Engineering, Business, and IT leaders align around better outcomes.

Come ready for a practical conversation about navigating disagreement, building stronger partnerships, and turning productive tension into better products.

Panel

• Patria Cabral, Head of Product, PayJunction
• Christopher Daden, Chief Technology & AI Officer, Criteria
• Saydulu Kolasani, Chief Digital & Technology Officer, AXS

Moderator

• Oded Noy, CTO - Crexi, Co-founder and chairman of CTO Forum

Bios

Patria Cabral | LinkedIn
Patria Cabral is the Chief Product Officer at PayJunction, bringing extensive Product leadership experience across startups and large enterprises, including Western Union. At PayJunction, she is leading a Product transformation focused on leveraging AI to improve intake, requirements gathering, prioritisation and Product-to-Engineering workflows. Her experience spans Product strategy, organisational transformation and cross-functional collaboration, bringing a practical perspective on how Product and Technology leaders can navigate competing priorities, embrace emerging technologies and build stronger partnerships to deliver better outcomes.

Christopher Daden | LinkedIn
Chris Daden is the Chief Technology & AI Officer at Criteria, a global Talent Success platform operating at the center of the Future of Work. Criteria helps organizations measure real talent signals through more than 80 million assessments delivered worldwide in over 25 languages, enabling fairer, more predictive hiring and development decisions. Backed by over $65 million in private growth equity investment, Criteria works with 4,000+ leading global organizations to move beyond static credentials toward dynamic, skills-based insights that reflect true capability and potential.

Saydulu Kolasani| LinkedIn
Saydulu is the Chief Digital and Technology Officer at AXS, a global leader in ticketing. At AXS, Saydulu is leading technology, product, data, and AI strategy; transforming a fragmented landscape built through 10+ acquisitions into a unified marketing, commerce, data, and enterprise platform foundation while driving the carve-out from AEG and building mission-critical technology for the LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games

Oded Noy - CTO - Crexi, Co-founder and chairman of CTO Forum
Oded Noy is a technology leader and board advisor to SaaS companies. Noy currently serves as the CTO of Crexi, transforming the world of commercial real estate. In his private equity work as an active senior operating partner and board member, he has participated in multiple acquisitions and exits. He is a founder and managing partner for 12 years in the early stage fund Amplify.LA. He is co-founder and chairman of the CTO Forum. He holds 7 technology patents.

Our Sponsors
We’re grateful to Mission Cloud and QA Wolf for their generous support in making this event possible. Your partnership helps us bring the community together and drive meaningful impact.

Mission Cloud, a CDW Company, is a leading AWS Premier Tier Services Partner specializing in cloud migration, modernization, and generative AI. As an elite, born-in-the-cloud managed services provider, Mission Cloud serves as an external engineering arm for businesses looking to optimize their AWS infrastructure, reduce cloud spend, and accelerate digital transformation.

QA Wolf is an innovative AI-native QA platform and service that helps software teams ship better applications faster by taking automated testing completely off their plate. Combining autonomous AI agents with an ultra-fast parallel infrastructure, QA Wolf delivers 100% flake-free, end-to-end test coverage for web and mobile apps, allowing engineering teams to deploy code with total confidence