Diverse Product Leaders: Zabrina Hossain
“As an individual contributor, your impact comes from the product(s) you manage directly. As a leader, you need to learn how to develop strategy and to build teams as you increase the size of the product portfolio you have an impact on.”
Zabrina is a product leader with over 15 years of experience. She is currently the Head of Product at Carbon6, a rapidly growing Toronto startup aimed to help entrepreneurs succeed. Previously, Zabrina was at Shopify leading the Multi-Channel team, working with partners such as Google and Facebook. She has also worked at Bitmoji, which was acquired by Snap, Wealthsimple, and has spent time working at startups in Amsterdam and Boston.
She also spends time with startups as an angel investor and advisor. In 2016 she co-founded APM Canada, where they are on a mission to create community and learning experiences that increase talent quality and capacity while improving access to Product Management for underrepresented and marginalized groups.
You can connect with her through @techmomdiary on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Yue Jiao (YJ): As a starting point for our conversation, I’d love to hear about your journey into product management and how you landed your first product role.
Zabrina Hossain (ZH): Well, it was a long time ago and product management was not as well known or as popular as it is today. And I'll be honest, I didn't know that's where I was gonna end up. I was working at Rogers as a business analyst developing our ad product. I had this educational background that was a mix of computer science and political science. So like the social and engineering skills.
I had this amazing mentor. He was leading the engineering team and he took an interest in me, by observing my work. He was rebuilding the team in a new way to build mobile products. This is the year after the iPhone came out and the year that the iPad was announced. He came to me and as he's building this team and essentially became my sponsor. He was like, “Z, I need to build a team for mobile apps. I've seen how you work, and I think you could be a great mobile product manager. Do you wanna do it?”
I'll be totally honest. I did not know what a mobile product manager was. I knew that you have to somehow get apps out the door, but I didn't know what it was, but it sounded really exciting. I said, yes, and I learned by doing. He gave me that opportunity, support, and also that mode of confidence that I could do it.
YJ: How did you develop as an IC in your early days?
ZH: In any role and in any craft, I think it is really important for the individual to take on a learning and growth mindset. Do not wait for someone to teach it to you. Do not use the excuse that you are too busy to develop yourself.
While I didn’t know everything there was to know about being a product manager, I knew I needed to learn it. I found resources and started trying things to see what worked. There is a process of trial and error and you find what works, and that is the same when you get to a leadership role.
Always be learning. Always be growing.
YJ: It’s great to hear that your career started from some aspect of mentorship! I think mentorship is really important, especially for early-career PMs or people who are looking to transition into product.
ZH: Absolutely. Mentors help you to learn and grow and mentees should be providing value to them as well. That turns it into a really positive flywheel.
When looking for a mentor, I would suggest building relationships and finding ways to provide value. It might be something as simple as sharing some information or news that would be relevant to the person. Or it might be offering to help take something that they need to get done.
YJ: That's really cool! How would you describe your experience going from an individual contributor to a product leadership /people manager role?
ZH: It’s a big shift to move from an IC role into a leadership role. It's really not clear and most people don't understand the path. I definitely didn't. As an individual contributor PM, you make a lot of assumptions going into leadership. You think that you are going to keep doing what you were doing, but faster, better and bigger. But what does that even mean?
A lot of the time an assumption is made that you need to take on direct reports and that makes you a leader. But that is something that people rush into without taking the time to think about what it means to lead someone, support them and grow them.
To move into product leadership, you are going to work on skills that are new and different from what made you successful as an IC. As an IC your impact comes from the product(s) you manage directly. You will eventually max out on the number of products you can personally manage and sustain. As a leader, you need to start learning how to build teams, strategies and increase the size of your portfolio and impact.
As a leader you also have to connect the dots in a larger system. You have to understand your company strategy, users and products even more deeply than you did as an IC. You have to understand where the company and market is going to be in a number of years and drive positive outcomes. It's really connecting those dots and thinking beyond what I'm building in the next six months, but rather what is it that our users and ecosystem needs in three to five years.
Start working with leaders and ask them how they are thinking about strategy. Ask if you can help them. Maybe you can help document a new strategy concept, maybe you can help draft the board docs. Start mentoring junior PM’s even if they do not report to you. Go back to the principle of learning by doing that you used early in your career, but apply it to strategy and leadership.
YJ: I’m sensing that mentorship was an important theme in your career growth. Diving a bit deeper, I'm curious to know what approach you took to seek out mentors. And, what are some approaches you've taken to mentor others that helped you become a better leader?
ZH: Community is important. Join one or start one. Share your knowledge to help others. You will learn so much and find mentors and peers through that journey.
I co-founded APM Canada with amazing product leaders. APM Canada focuses on building a community and learning experiences that increase talent, quality and capacity while improving access to product management for underrepresented or marginalized groups.
Through building the program and graduating over a hundred PMs into the Toronto ecosystem, I also got to learn from all of these product leaders. I learned so much while mentoring. I would teach some sessions and attend others that were taught by different product leaders. There are so many different ways to do something, and hearing their experiences and case studies was incredible. We would also get into pretty fun debates, which the APM’s love as well. They could see that there are multiple ways to approach a problem.
Product can be a lonely job. Find, join and build community. It is so fulfilling and helpful to your career.
YJ: Amazing, thank you so much for sharing! Building communities to help early-career PMs is a great segue into the next topic, which is being underrepresented in product, especially product leadership.
Looking back at your first PM experience and, and where you are today, what advice would you give yourself? And also, what are some hurdles that you had to overcome about being underrepresented in product leadership?
ZH: When I first started in product, I was often the only woman on an entire team, not just in product. I worked extra hard because I wanted to prove that I brought value and deserved my seat at the table. I was pretty intense.
As my career progressed and I became a mom, I realized that mothers were underrepresented as well. When I first joined Shopify, my son was 15 months old. I joined this amazing company filled with incredible talent. I was so beset with imposter syndrome that I didn’t tell anyone I had a child for months. I did not have any examples of women in tech that were moms to look to at the time, and I thought I would be perceived as less effective.
Well I was 100% wrong. When I told my boss that I had a kid, he was surprised. Not because I had a kid, but because it took me so long to share. He was so inclusive and welcoming to the whole me and I learned that Shopify was too.
Well after that, I decided that I wanted to be the example that I did not personally have. I started talking about my son and bringing him to the office for child-friendly events and sometimes when I had a meeting but no childcare. I remember distinctly one time giving him some snacks and putting him on a comfy sofa and then taking an important meeting with my boss.
Being so open about being a mother led to women reaching out to me to ask questions and for support. I was able to help them by talking to them as they were making important decisions about their careers and families. They had the same worries I had when I started my family, and I was so grateful to be able to share my experiences and hopefully help in some small way.
My advice would be to bring your whole and authentic self to work. Find a work environment where this is welcome. Companies should be competing for your talent. There are so many great places to work, don’t settle for a place where you have to hide yourself. It will impact your work and mental health.
YJ: Thank you for your insight! My last question to wrap up our conversation, from your perspective, is what's one thing people should be more aware of.
ZH: Don’t forget to enjoy your career! We spend such a great deal of our time and energy on our careers. It should be a fun and exciting journey as we grow and evolve.
Hustle culture used to tell us that we have to work 100 hours a week, every week to get ahead. We know better now. I know that I am more creative and drive better outcomes when I sleep well and spend time with my family. If you drive yourself at an unsustainable pace, you will burnout. If you burnout it is bad for you and your company. I still work hard and care about my work. But I take care of myself too.
So remember to prioritize yourself and your self care. Your selfcare could be a bike ride, time with your family, video games or anything else.
And lastly, don’t compare yourself to anyone else. Everyone’s situation is different. So learn from everyone, but only compete with yourself. Create your own mission statement, set your goals and product manage yourself into a fulfilling career as you grow into leadership!
This interview is a part of our Diverse Product Leaders miniseries, led by Yue Jiao.
Don’t hesitate to reach out to Yue or Clement with feedback, questions, or nominations for other product leaders to interview!
