Meet Kaiz, a Mentor at The Commons and Product Manager at Google.
To summarize Kaiz's career path in one line: Western University Chemical Engineering / Ivey HBA → Management Consulting @ McKinsey → B2B Ops @ Wealthsimple → MBA @ HBS → Product Manager @ Google.
Describe yourself with 3 emojis
⚽️ I play and watch a lot of sports (especially soccer!)
🤹🏽 My focus has always been around balance - this means keeping many balls in the air all the time!
🧩 I love crosswords / board games / trivia
Current role & location?
📍Product Manager in New York City (but most of my team is located in California)
We're so happy you're part of The Commons! What has been your favorite part about being a mentor?
Meeting other community members - I love the opportunity to connect with other amazing people who share similar interests and who are working on super cool stuff!
Has there been anything unexpected that you’ve gotten out of being a part of The Commons community?
Two friends I met through The Commons who have helped me build an HR-tech startup in the new employee training space!
Tell us about your current role at Google!
I am a Product Manager at Google in the Display Ads space - I help small and medium size businesses (especially those who don’t have the capabilities or resources) to automate and optimize their marketing. The team’s main objectives are to build and grow a cohesive ecosystem of advertisers and publishers, while driving revenue for Google.
What's one of the coolest projects that you've worked on?
Project Objective: Expanding a partnership between Display Ads and Search Ads to share marketing dollars to help SMBs achieve their objective
Project Overview: Growing the ~$500M product by 3x through better performance, improved customer education and adoption, and increased sales partnerships.
Your Role: Product Manager - responsible for overall product vision and the success of the partnership
What made it so interesting? This project requires full partnership between so many different teams - engineering, product, sales, UX, user research etc. It’s amazing to have the opportunity to work with each partner towards a common vision!
What advice would you give to your former self at the beginning of your job search?
Take a test-and-learn approach to life! If you think you might be excited about a certain space or idea, test it however you can – talk to people, do an internship or side hustle, or build something and see what happens! Life is just a long series of experiments to find something you love to do – look at failed “experiments” as opportunities to learn and grow.
And now, a few of your favourites:
📚 Book: Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein - it's a book on the benefits of being a generalist (at least early in your career)
🎨 What you're doing outside of work: Building an HR-tech startup to help make new employee training more experiential / fun / awesome (reach out if you want to help!)
🌟 A CEO or leader you admire: Sal Khan (Khan Academy) - a leader who has always stayed true to his original mission to provide a free, world‑class education for anyone
➕ A handy shortcut: all Gmail shortcuts (will save you HOURS!)
Join our Product Strategy Sprint to get 1:1 access to mentors like Kaiz.
.svg){kind=small}
