Product Leadership in 2026: What Changed, What Didn't, and What's Next

For this ProductTank Denver Leadership Series panel we’re bringing together senior product and AI leaders from AI-forward companies across the Denver/Boulder ecosystem to discuss what’s actually changing inside modern product organizations.

We’ll explore questions like:

• How has AI already changed the day-to-day reality of product management?
• Which PM skills are becoming more valuable, and which are becoming less important?
• How are product org structures, collaboration models, and leadership expectations evolving?
• What does “AI-native” product development actually look like in practice?
• Where are PMs overusing/underusing AI today?
• How have hiring practices and candidate expectations changed due to AI?
• Where do these leaders believe the discipline is heading over the next 2–5 years?

This won’t be a surface-level conversation. We’ll drill down to practical insights, real-world examples, and forward-looking perspectives from leaders actively building and scaling AI-powered products and teams. Come ready to collaborate and ask questions.

We’ll be hosted by Ibotta in their beautiful new downtown location (16th and Market), with food and drinks, complete with a killer rooftop patio. We’ll start off with our typical networking followed by the panel discussion.

About the panelists:

Jake Werlin - VP of Product Management at Ibotta, with prior work in SaaS CRM and STEM-based education. Jake’s secret sauce is a pragmatic, product-first leadership that pairs in-house ML and targeted modern AI tools, to turn AI insights into scalable, production-grade, customer-centered outcomes.

Summer DuBois-Lenderman - VP, AI Strategy at Kinective and Founder of local group AI Pioneers Club, formerly VP of AI at Meet the People and RADaR analytics. Summer’s secret sauce is rapidly turning cutting-edge I into practical, secure and scalable product and operational solutions by combining hands-on implementation knowledge graphs/agents, strong governance/compliance, and change-management that educates and brings the whole organization along.

Jeremy Olken - VP, AI Products at GMR Marketing, formerly a Sr. AI PM at Addition and founder/freelancer. Jeremy’s secret sauce is translating AI into practical, leader-focused strategies and hands-on workflows while building community connections to drive real organizational adoption.

Jodi Mesa - CPO and Co-Founder of Luster, formerly VP of product at Spekit and Head of Product at Ibotta. Jodi’s secret sauce is combining hands-on product craft with systems-level operational thinking – building frameworks, design systems, and model-specific tooling that empower curious, cross-functional teams and agents to rapidly and safely ship customer-centric AI solutions.

Michael Rodriguez - VP of Product at Candidly and Council Member at Supra, formerly a VP/CPO at Telemetry, House Canary and IBM. Michael’s secret sauce is treating AI as an organization-wide product, building shared knowledge bases and reusable systems, upskilling teams, and empowering smaller, cross-functional groups to rapidly translate AI capabilities into practical discovery, development, and business impact.

Whether you’re a PM, product leader, founder, designer, engineer, or simply trying to understand where the discipline is headed, this session is designed to help you understand the “real” state of product in Denver/Boulder, and think more clearly about the future of product work in an AI-native world.

This will be a collaborative conversation between the panelists as well as the audience, as we’ll have plenty of opportunities for questions throughout. So, come ready to learn, challenge assumptions, and ask questions.