Managing Your Career like a PM, and How to succeed at AI Transformation

ProductTank Oxford is back for another evening of great company, drinks, and insights at the King's Arms in central Oxford. Join us to hear how to accelerate your personal career development as a PM, and learn what to do, and what not to do, when attempting an AI Transformation.

6:00pm Doors open
6:50pm Welcome
7:00pm Managing Your Career like a PM
7:45pm Break
8:00pm AI Transformation - What Not to Do (and What to Do Instead)
8:45pm Wrap-up
8:50pm Close (but you're welcome to stay for drinks, food, and networking!)

We hope you can join us!

Managing Your Career like a PM

PMs are experts at creating roadmaps and strategic plans for their products—in this interactive talk, you'll learn how to apply those mechanisms to your career and assess your PM skills.

James Gunaca has a 20+ year career in Product Management and Digital Marketing, working as a Product Leader at companies like Amazon and ExpressVPN across the United States and Europe. He’s built and led multiple Product teams and now helps Product Managers build better PM careers.

AI Transformation - What Not to Do (and What to Do Instead)

The launch of large language models in 2023 brought AI into the mainstream, triggering a wave of enterprise transformation and innovation. Today, organisations of all sizes are racing to adopt AI, often starting with high-potential use cases, but quickly encountering the messy reality of implementation.

In this talk, we’ll share practical lessons learned from collaborating with enterprises navigating the complexities of AI adoption. While many transformation plans look good on paper, they tend to unravel when confronted with real-world challenges. We’ll explore the common pitfalls that derail AI initiatives—and offer strategies to overcome them from our experience.

Dr. Shahzia Holtom is a distinguished executive leader and non-executive director with over 15 years of experience driving innovation, AI, and data excellence across global commercial and public sector industries. Shahzia recently joined an AI Startup as CTO, and was previously Global Head of Technical Excellence at Microsoft, where she led transformational initiatives for the consulting division with more than 8000 employees across 35+ countries.

Martina Hodges-Schell is a product leader, transformation coach, and founder of Northshore, where she helps ambitious organisations drive meaningful, customer-centred transformation. With nearly 30 years’ experience across consultancies, startups, and Silicon Valley companies, she has led high-impact product, design, and innovation teams.

A pioneer in integrating UX, Lean, and Agile practices, Martina is known for bridging strategy, design, and execution to deliver breakthrough products and lasting organisational change. She has partnered with leading global brands to launch new offerings and scale modern product development practices.

Martina is also the co-author of Communicating the UX Vision: 13 Anti-Patterns That Block Good Design and a certified Equus Coach®, supporting leaders to develop authentic, effective leadership.