Varun Rajan 0:06

Hey everyone, I'm Varun Rajan. Welcome to the Push Pull podcast where we interview professionals about their career transitions, and specifically the push and pull factors that informed the decisions behind those transitions. Today I am super excited to share with you my interview with Shalini Chander, director of Product at Align Technologies, which is the company behind Invisalign and Shalini is also my cousin. This was so much fun to do Shalini and I have definitely talked about work before, but not quite in this way. I took so many things away from this conversation. so she started off in consulting for pharmaceutical manufacturing sites. and has gone all the way to becoming a software product manager in the space, as the industry transitioned over the last 20 years from a largely analog. Paper-based world to one that is almost exclusively digital. And so she started off doing a lot of like process optimization She has held onto process optimization as a key arrow in her quiver and one of her main value propositions. But as she has moved along in her career, she has gone from someone who cared mostly about process and perfecting that to one as she has. Grown into more management roles and higher up in those companies to one that is really dedicated to being a storyteller. and somebody who is advocating for her teams, whether they're cross-functional teams or development teams, or the actual people that are now reporting into her, as she has been promoted quite a number of times and, been really successful at the places that she's worked. It's really interesting to think about. The motivations that she had earlier in her career compared to later in her career. She likes complexity, especially when it comes to new technology or emerging fields or science. and especially when it comes to making sense out of that complexity when it comes to operations or process, all that kind of stuff. But she doesn't like ambiguity from the perspective of. Am I working on something that's actually going to launch or not? One of the things that I was really impressed by was her constant ability to advocate for herself. She was at some really intense kind of scammy startups early on in her career, and she knew that she wanted to get away from poor treatment and she was very vocal about it. later on in her career, she moved from the marketing organization to the operations organization by effectively. Politicking and also being able to really flex into her strengths while the company was actually going through an acquisition, which is no easy feat, she was basically able to come up with her own role, She has talked about managers that she's had that have left her feeling empowered, and advocated for her as well, and that it informs how she acts as a manager today, really letting her direct reports fail even when she knows that it's coming, and making sure that she goes to bat for them when it comes to promotion time. Without any further ado, super excited for you to hear this conversation with Shalini We're here with Shalini, director of Product Management at Align Technology. and my cousin. give us a 30 to 60-second overview of who you are and what you care about today.

Shalini Chander 3:15

Sounds great. hi everyone. my name's Shalini, mostly from the Bay Area. I majored in biology in college and undergrad, and I think I got it stuck in my head that I needed to follow the track of having a career that related to that as soon as I got out. But what that did was that kind of put me on this really interesting track where I have now worked in pharma, in med device. I've worked for large companies for startups that have crashed and burned. I've been in biotech. I have now been on the health tech side of, software that relates to tech. so across all these industries that I bucket under the umbrella of general health and life sciences. As I've gone through this, it's been really easy to, for me to see the parallel of everything I've worked on has a patient level component somewhere. And I think that's been a unifying theme of what I've done now, where I started, when I was an undergrad and coming out and, starting to look for jobs like everyone else, what was really popular and trendy at the time was to go into consulting, Management, consulting and in retrospect, and I think you realize that even when you start, no one coming outta undergrad has any business saying that they are a consultant on anything, you don't know enough to go and offer value. And so a lot of these consulting firm jobs and roles, if the firms are doing what I think they're doing is they have a bunch of people who are there training. And what I thought was interesting was I went to this company that very specifically did pharmaceutical manufacturing, what was called validation services,

Varun Rajan 4:47

was that right out of undergrad?

Shalini Chander 4:49

outta undergrad. It was, the company was called KMI, and it was owned by a larger company that is still around, called Par xl, which I believe is still a pharmaceutical contract research organization. And then now you're getting into like deep, regulatory compliance roles in the pharmaceutical industry. And our specific company did a lot of. Validation, which is like computer, it is similar to computer systems validation, like doing your, compliance testing and validating that the manufacturing process is what they say it is from a process, steps and safety perspective. and so there was just a lot of manual work at the time that went into how are we going to test this? how do we document and double check all the paperwork around it. I would say that this is not the thing that people dream about as a career when they're a little kid, right? But

Varun Rajan 5:40

Right.

Shalini Chander 5:40

it's only when you go into industry that you realize there's more required layers of what makes up careers and things that have to get done than just the things that you can think about, right? You can't go straight into being president of the company. You have to start somewhere. And I guess you can boil it down into you have to sell it or you have to make it. And all of this leads to towards the supporting how you make it. And so I grappled a little bit at that time with, this is not what I thought work would be, not super interested. But, there was a point in time where I realized, especially later on that first role gave me such a great foundation. And thinking about process and process is really critical. You have to be able to recognize, are we doing something step by step sequentially? Or can we do it in parallel only by understanding it, I think can you then look at it and say, how can we improve it? We're seeing it now with within the news, all this talk about efficiency and how we can, eliminate redundancies and stuff. And I think it's really important to recognize you can't just go in and eliminate, recognize without starting somewhere at the beginning, which is what is the process to begin with. I don't know that's something that I learned academically. Definitely learned it on the job though.

Varun Rajan 6:57

what were the kind of

Shalini Chander 6:58

I,

Varun Rajan 6:59

that, that you had, at this company and were you thinking about process from the perspective of the work that you were doing for your clients or more internally? Was it a little bit of both?

Shalini Chander 7:10

yeah, so the clients were large pharmaceutical manufacturing sites. the products were things like, making, an immunology drug, but it comes out of, plasma, right? And so there's a plasma processing plant. and then you've got these gigantic tanks where you're using to, spin up your, monoclonal antibodies or your pharmaceutical grade reagents that they're making some of the raw materials. And so when we're thinking about the process, at that point, we're thinking about the process of what the, client site needs the manufacturer, at that time, everything was on paper still. and this was a while ago, so we're just starting that switch from paper to electronic systems in industry in general. And so a lot of it was just, print out a document, review it, go in physically and make sure that information of the step-by-step process is being accounted for. and that you could run a test scenario and say, yes, I can check off that all these steps are taking place.

Varun Rajan 8:13

Yeah.

Shalini Chander 8:13

Very old school way of doing it. And maybe for me, this was at the point of it's paper, but starting that transition to electronics. So that was a huge component of it too.

Varun Rajan 8:22

you mentioned that, you realized that this wasn't necessarily for you. how long were you there for? At what point did you realize that this is, I'm not really about this particular, life.

Shalini Chander 8:33

that's an interesting question. this is my very first full-time corporate job after college. And so probably soon, like within the first one or two weeks, you're like, this is not what I thought it would be. It's boring. I'm surrounded by some lifers who only work in this particular field. and it wasn't this, I guess maybe like what you envision career to be when you see like things like corporate jobs and cool stuff on tv, first of all, I'm not driving into a cool high-rise office. I'm going to a manufacturing facility where you and I had to cross railroad tracks, the manufacturing site itself because you manufacturing facilities are very large, massive parking lot, actually on a road with a strip club and multiple manufacturing or automotive facilities around. So it was a very, I won't say rough part of town, but just not this, elegant corner office type situation. And by itself, I only bring that up because when you are very young in your early twenties, this is not the stuff you envision. And so maybe that's part of the oh, this wasn't for me. and I think it probably took me a few months, really to even understand what am I doing? I was not adding value for quite a while, right? So you have to start with the people who work there have to be like, here's a new person who has one. No idea what we're supposed to do for the client. No idea what it's like to have a job, right? So you're not just learning what do I do in my role. you are also learning how to talk to people who, at this point are older than you and talk to people professionally and get trained on that, right? By, by learning what to say or not say. And I think this is, just that general context of you go from college and you've been in school your whole life. You only deal with people your age. You've never really had to speak to an older person who's not a teacher or like a academic, supervisor or a parent, right? And so that becomes a huge difference in how are we, how do you even communicate? And so I think it was just a huge learning curve and lesson to be in that very first position. How do you get professional? how do you sit in a meeting and. you are told that there's no such thing as stupid questions, but you have so many stupid questions. I was 21 and I was just thrown into working with a bunch of guys in their thirties. and they were all very nice people, but they were just in a very different place in life, right? They, many were married and they had, and or they had kids. And they had decided that this was the career that they were gonna work in maybe forever. I know at least one or two of'em actually still works in that field. and that discipline. And I think for me, I was just. Like I just got here. I don't know if I like this. I don't know if I wanna do this. What if I wanna go to law school next? What if I wanna be a marine biologist? And I don't think those things were, those weren't part of the questions that they were asking themselves in life. And so that made how we socialize really different, right? what was important to them was more about stability and like what they were like planning for life. And I was just at that point where you're 21 and just eager to figure out like even like what you're trying to do three hours later.

Varun Rajan 11:41

Yeah, absolutely. and so what, tell me about how you ended up moving on from that company. what were the kind of like decision points you had talked about, do I wanna be a lawyer, like going back to school, what were all of the options that you were considering at the time and what eventually ended up, to you taking the next move that you made?

Shalini Chander 12:01

So I was with KMI for. About a year and a half. I actually have to do some international work with them, I spent time between LA Boston, somewhere else. I went to Italy, I went to Switzerland. and so the a hundred percent travel was awesome. When you're younger, definitely not sustainable if you want to do anything else, right? If you wanna, take classes part-time or, do stuff more socially. And so I think that itself was interesting to watch actually even some of these folks who are, like I'm saying, who are married, who said, I'm gonna just do this career where I'm away from my family five days a week and then still go back and just on the weekends. that was part of my motivation to leave. And so what I did was decided, okay, I'll look for new roles. I ended up taking a job doing the same thing with a pharmaceutical company, which was in Southern California and thought, okay, I'll just have a job and live in an apartment. And again, really young, in life. And it was my really first time,'cause I had gone to undergrad really not too far away from my parents. So this was my first time really going far away, like gonna move to Southern California, get an apartment drive to work. so work there. And the whole plan I had while I was there was, I'll do this for a year or so. And I was gonna start taking classes part-time to get myself ready for graduate school. So that actually worked out pretty well where I worked there for about a year. And then, did the same thing, pharmaceutical validation, manufacturing,

Varun Rajan 13:29

When you went to that company where you were more doing the same role, but in-house for a pharmaceutical company, was that also, intentional? was were you like, Hey, like now I have the set of experience for a consultant, do I wanna go in-house somewhere? wa was that something that you were looking for explicitly or were you just trying to see what was out there and this was the thing that kind of made the most sense?

Shalini Chander 13:50

I don't actually remember. I think I, I think that I probably looked for anything and everything and just got an offer, just went to somewhere where I got an offer. And I'm pretty sure at that point I was open to, I should switch to marketing or sales or something. or I could switch to even industries. I think I was fresh enough where I probably could have tried harder to do anything. just went with the first place. I got an offer, which was in the same group field that I was already in. So just thought, okay, this is a good opportunity to go try this. and yeah, went off and did it.

Varun Rajan 14:23

It sounds like there, there were some element of, you weren't really sure you wanted to do this in consulting. you were looking for a new job generally. you were also open to like moving a little bit further away from home and then, but also being a little bit more stable as to like location and stuff

Shalini Chander 14:37

Right.

Varun Rajan 14:38

you were doing a whole bunch of traveling and wanted to be a little more centered in a location. Is that fair to say?

Shalini Chander 14:43

Yeah. And you know what? yeah, it was definitely move away from the travel all the time, but also move towards like experiencing things like. Having an apartment, paying rent, like living on your own, like really living on your own and not with roommates or like friends from college kind of thing?

Varun Rajan 14:57

Yeah. cool. tell me about grad school. I.

Shalini Chander 15:00

I was working at this company in, Riverside, and I decided to take classes, not apply to business school. And so I was like, I'll take classes in the evening. I'll start getting ready for the GMAT. And so in order to take classes, I approached, I was starting to get all this info for U-C-L-A-U-S-C where I wanted to apply to business school. And I approached uc Irvine and said I'd like to just take some classes, evening classes, finance, marketing, things I hadn't done in undergrad. So I can just get ready to, at least show'em on my transcript and say, got some classes, some good grades. Can I apply to your program with some knowledge? They actually called me. I've also just gotten really lucky on a timing perspective. they said we don't have enough women in our full-time MBA program. I think I was talking to them about their evening program and saying, can I just go part-time just for classes? And they said, they actually offered me a scholarship to go. It was like this, I applied, I had taken the gmat, my scores were good. but they were, I think they were s. A hundred and something people and only five women total in their program. Maybe 10. I don't remember the exact number. It was really small. so I think I remember getting a scholarship actually. and they, I think were just, trying to really diversify their program. and it, so I hadn't been at that. Watson Pharmaceuticals was where I went to work, and my whole plan was, I'll be here for a year, maybe longer. I'll go part-time, et cetera. I think I ended up leaving there in less than a year because I had this opportunity to go full-time for school. that worked out, figured out the process of how to get graduate school loans, how to move down closer to the campus, et cetera. yeah. made the really quick decision that I could transition from working full-time to going back to graduate school and being in business school full-time.

Varun Rajan 16:41

That's awesome.

Shalini Chander 16:42

Yeah.

Varun Rajan 16:43

and so business school, it sounds like you had on your mind for quite some time, given what did you expect in business school? What was it actually like? What were the things that you liked about it? what did you learn during your time there?

Shalini Chander 16:54

I loved business school. I think I, considering that I went to public school my whole life and then I went to uc, Berkeley for undergrad, which is huge. I went to uc, Irvine for grad school and I expected another like large experience, large student population. But I believe that my class was only a hundred and something people. I finally got that small intimate experience of going to school and like your entire class in, in a classroom is your class. and just really got to know a lot of people really well. got to know my professors really well. I think I actually got what you think that movie TV, Hollywood experience is like going to undergrad. I got it in grad school. Like you get to connect with people, grabs a beer after class. and learned a lot. one thing that was really interesting about business school,'cause now when people ask me though, I recommend strongly, and this is where things tie in really well for me in business school, the one thing that really helped me understand case studies and what we're doing was process. and so coming from this whole pharmaceutical manufacturing, literally drawing boxes and saying Step A, step B, step C really helped me to think through, and understand the case studies that we encountered in business school. And I look back at that and say, the one thing that would've helped me, in business school is maybe having worked a little more, taken a step up. in responsibility, gotten a promotion or even changed industry. and so I really recommend to people that work experience is critical before you go to business school and don't shortchange yourself because it's really helpful to have a basis for understanding, how and why things work.

Varun Rajan 18:26

that's super helpful, and it makes a lot of sense. how did you come to that realization?

Shalini Chander 18:31

you go into maybe a company thinking that there is, people who make things, people who sell things. You think marketing's just advertisement and that there's a CEO C-suite somewhere. you don't think so critically about what do these groups do, how do they interact with each other? And so there's probably a huge component to stuff like cross-functional teams or why there are project teams. And those were just things that I learned more academically in business school. I didn't get exposure to until later on in my career.

Varun Rajan 19:02

totally. tell me about wrapping up at business school. What came next? you majored in biology and undergrad.

Shalini Chander 19:07

Yeah.

Varun Rajan 19:08

and you've had a kind of storied career up until this point within what we're calling kind of general healthcare life sciences. did you think that after grad school that was actually going to be the rest of your career? or did it just end up that way, after, just a sequence of decisions?

Shalini Chander 19:25

so my career was the beginning of the end of paper, right? everyone's starting to flip over a computer system. So a lot of what I learned at business school was focused around, information systems. Like how are we going to put people on computer systems, information systems, right? And I had interned in business school my first year. At Sun Microsystems, which was one of the big tech companies, and they were just starting to investigate what could they be doing in life sciences. at that point I went back into a different consulting firm, which, This was now more of maybe the true consulting like that I envisioned, again in pharmaceutical. But now they were doing, consulting to implement all these computer systems. again, huge amount of learning. I went back to traveling full-time, went back and did a lot of international, and, all over the country, which was great. And then I spent about three years there and I actually really loved that job. if you remember, that was when I was in Puerto Rico for about,

Varun Rajan 20:17

right.

Shalini Chander 20:18

oh, about a year. And then I spent a couple months in Ireland. And so amazing experiences. if anyone has an opportunity to have a consulting job that lets you just go be international and just. Experience being there. I highly recommend any opportunity like that, especially when you're younger. this was where my previous process manufacturing experience really helped me to understand then we're doing the same thing but now taking it digital, taking it online, taking it to computer systems and stuff like that. still a heavy manual component. Like we're still doing some testing, we're still getting people off of paper on the computers. that was just that required step of what was gonna happen. I forgot to mention one thing before I went to business school. My very last project with the first consulting firm was actually around getting ready for Y 2K. hilarious in retrospect that we can talk about how that brought the sheer panic to people of getting your systems ready for some potential catastrophe.

Varun Rajan 21:15

so you're at this consulting firm. What were, and you were there, you said, for about three years, maybe a little bit more. did you think that you were gonna be there for a long time? how were you considering your next moves? What were the things that you maybe didn't like about it? and talk through that and then bring us to like the end of wrapping your time up there.

Shalini Chander 21:33

Yeah. Um, one big life change was, I met my husband, and this whole process of you're planning a wedding, but I work in Puerto Rico, oh, I gotta go from Puerto Rico to Ireland this week. we did all that while we were engaged. I got married, in 2005 and then we, I stayed there for another year and the whole year I was spent trying to talk this firm into can I be on local projects? Can I just be West Coast? they were actually super accommodating, but only to the extent that they had stuff available for me and it didn't really work out. I couldn't be on internal projects for them. You gotta be on a billable client facing project. and so I don't, I don't blame them for that. I just, everyone's gotta make that choice, which is, can your personal life survive this? And being newly married, it was not gonna be great for me to be gone, every single week And so from there, the switch had to be, okay, I gotta find something that doesn't involve a hundred percent travel. and this now get got me into this whole idea of Bay Area startup scene, which also I've been hearing all these, you hear these great stories about everyone goes for a startup and you have so much fun, no rules and everything's super successful. so I went to two startups that both went nowhere. after I left the consulting firm, I went to a place for two weeks just hanging out, tried it out, went from there to, a tiny startup, 10 people, in North Base. I was actually taking the ferry from San Francisco. it was in the cervical cancer space. I learned a ton about, the cervical cancer industry, about, the cancer industry in general from a medical device perspective. and for better or for worse, or I guess the pros I learned from it, worked for someone who basically was just fraudulently running the finances of the company. and so there was a lot of weirdness around do we actually have funding to stay in business. my paychecks were sometimes personal checks because there was not, enough money to actually fund the company. So this guy was kinda like having his wife sometimes just write out personal checks and stuff, which is very strange. I left that place very quickly'cause I found out what, when I interviewed my question was, how much runway do you have? Which was the smart thing to ask. What I didn't know was someone could just lie to you and say, we've got, we got 12 to 18 months What I didn't realize, this guy was sitting on maybe three weeks of funding at that point. He was trying to get funding by saying he had existing funding. He was trying to actually, he was just pulling a Theranos saying I got funding. So other people, he was like, mini Theranos dude. like from a funding perspective. so based on that, I won't do any name dropping there.

Varun Rajan 24:04

that's actually really helpful. And I'm sure, I'm sure things are a little bit different now, were there any red flags during the interview process? you asked a question and they clearly lied to you. what are the things you might suggest from like a, verification perspective for someone that is maybe in, the same shoes that you were in at that time, which is okay, I've, I'm making a bunch of choices. You had choices based on your personal life, obviously, and it made a lot of sense, but you also saw this opportunity. with being at smaller companies to be riding maybe like an early rocket ship, and also being able to take on a ton of responsibility at the time. you targeting startups makes a lot of sense given the kind of goals that you had in mind. and so when you get to that point where you're like, I still want to have some level of stability for the next 12 to 18 months,

Shalini Chander 24:51

Right.

Varun Rajan 24:52

how, yeah. how would were you in that place or were you advising someone in a similar position? Tell them about verifying whether they'll actually be able to pay you,

Shalini Chander 25:02

This is tough.

Varun Rajan 25:02

company checkbook.

Shalini Chander 25:03

It's actually a tough question because the obvious automatic answer is ask for proof, right? but this guy showed me proof, and it still turned out to be true. So now it's just more a question of like, how mature can you be in analyzing the evidence? so at the time, the guy showed me a letter of intent for funding from a some third party venture capital company. and then what I didn't know was a letter of intent is to me, I read it as We will fund you. I didn't know that letter of intent means we will fund you based off of contingencies. And so that's just not knowing enough, right? I'm so immature in my career, I don't know anything about how. funding works. And so he showed me a document that's like with a number on it. It's look at this money that we have. What? And so what I would advise people is you have to figure out is that money in the bank? and so I would advise people of, run this past your parents, your peers, and now I think we're in a better place where you can just look this stuff up. I think at the time it was still relatively new. You could get away with a lot of stuff that, of just like pulling stuff over people. my experience there, this was really interesting from a learning perspective because again, I learned a ton about the space I wanted to be in, which was cancer. I learned a ton about what I was supposed to do with a cancer device and how you would sell it, how you'd make it. I inadvertently learned a lot about what goes on in the funding journey based off of seeing how much this guy was kind, trying to pull me in sometimes to help him cover up certain things, right? And so this letter of intent that I saw, I eventually met the guy who was like, The VC rep. I didn't blow the cover on this company. I think I helped a little bit because I'm, I remember talking to this guy. I. And then validating. He asked me like, has X, y and Z been done? And I was like, no. that's never been done. It's not here. And I think that helped him to withdraw his letter of intent to fund. I think I actually, this was so long ago that I don't remember the exact sequence. And but I think there were some components really.

Varun Rajan 27:03

so there was the founder basically did, this is very Theranos, like the things that you are putting your funding in for that we told you that we had in

Shalini Chander 27:11

Yeah,

Varun Rajan 27:12

not in place. And like this person who was attached is essentially like coming in and just like asking around about this thing? was, it got verification that

Shalini Chander 27:21

yeah.

Varun Rajan 27:21

the employees, which wow, that's

Shalini Chander 27:23

ultimately just found out that when you're a company that small, small 10 person company. You got no rights as an employee. You had nothing. I remember like this guy was mean. He would yell at people. it was really demeaning. I pushed back when he treated me like that. and so when I ultimately quit, I just left him a letter. I'm like, I will, I do not accept this behavior. And I, from here is where I went to the place that was the diabetes startup. so I was so excited that I got a more legitimate offer,

Varun Rajan 27:51

Yeah.

Shalini Chander 27:51

that I just, I didn't even tell him in person. I just left him a note. I'm like, don't like the treatment. peace out. got my last paycheck and left. And he was actually very apologetic to me. And he, he made a few overtures over the next 18 months to have people call me to be like, would you like to come back? now we're more stable. And so I just never responded to that. but yeah, definitely a learning of it was really unfortunate, which is, if you are, we, I think we tell ourselves a lot of things like, you don't like your job, just go get a new one. It's really hard if you are being treated badly and you have no other options, it's hard to leave. it's hard to leave stable employment if you depend on the income. Or in this case, unstable employment, for those people who got, left behind. And but yeah, this had to be like a every man for themselves kind of thing.

Varun Rajan 28:33

Gotcha. so then, you have a pretty short stint at this, cervical cancer, med devices place. You transitioned to, a company focused on diabetes. Te tell us about your time there.

Shalini Chander 28:45

Okay. I learned my lesson. I asked the right questions. What series of funding are we on? How do we know it's stable? This time went through a headhunter, so I felt like they're probably on contract. And so I. They could also help me do some of the validation. and so that worked out of getting the offer. ultimately, like the first company, I was only there for two months. The second one I was there for maybe three months or so. when I got the news that they had to, I don't think their, I don't know if their funding dried up or I just got the news that they had to make some cuts on direction. now here's what was interesting. So they let me go. It was very traumatic for me'cause I love the company. I love the people, loved what I was doing. learning about diabetes care, And so when I did get let go from there, I was shocked and I was very just traumatized, right? so had to go back into job hunting mode again. and fortunately I think at this point in time, economy was okay enough where, got a couple offers and decided, and this is where Thatha, our grandfather comes into play. he had given me a book at some point, and it was a book called How to Be CEO. It's one of those little miniature books. I have it, upstairs somewhere, one of those books where it's got one sentence per page, It was something like, wake up early, when, and I remember like, when you're on an airplane, don't watch a movie. Just do work instead. somewhere in this book it said something about, what are the important jobs to have? And it made some sort of like comparison of, sales and marketing are the fun jobs to have, stuff like that, but they're like, you wanna be stable, which means you need to be doing something. operational. I think it may have pointed out like, be in charge of the product or be a product manager. Those are the roles that are really critical where people will never like, get rid of you. and at these two previous startups I had gone into product manager roles. And so when I was looking, I was debating, do I go back into consulting? Do I do some something else like that? and this role with Abbott came along and I got an offer there to go and be a product manager. We all know Abbott, it's a huge old company, so very stable. so decided to take that. and spent about four years there being a product manager in the cardiac space.

Varun Rajan 31:00

the product manager angle is really interesting and it's also like what, it's this is like several years before I even knew what a product

Shalini Chander 31:08

Mm-hmm.

Varun Rajan 31:09

was product management something that was well known at the time. you, you indicated that it was something that felt a little bit more stable or like durable, as a career for you.

Shalini Chander 31:21

I think it was just this idea that it's an operational role, right? You are tied to the product. You are not, you're not as much the fluffy sg and a roles where if a company's gotta make cuts, let's cut our marketing budget first, right? Let's cut our advertising promotional budget first, right? the last thing they would get rid of is the person who's responsible for making and getting the product out the door. theoretically. so I'm always trying to be a little bit like, how do I hedge for risks and stuff? And so the career made sense from a, the role type makes sense from a, this would be a role of importance where this person's crucial to stay in the company. one thing that's interesting is in comparison to what we know now about product management as a career on the tech side, at the time, and maybe still to some extent, product management in the healthcare med device, biotech field was, or at least at the time was under marketing And so it was really like product management, product marketing were the same role, right? There wasn't this big separation. So you are responsible for working with upstream, getting it made and then getting it launched and out the door. and so Abbott, taught me that, right? I think a lot of what has happened in my career that has gone well for me is being able to tell the story. If I learn this and I'm passionate about it, I can tell the story and I can represent my product or my project. coming into Abbott is where I really learned. I'm like, I can tell the story, I can defend my product, I can represent my product and why it's important, right? And I think this was a huge lesson of all of my experience up until now was like learning about process or learning how to make a PowerPoint.

Varun Rajan 32:56

tell me a little bit more about what the role was like. like how many people were you working with, on a day-to-day basis? what was the environment like there? I

Shalini Chander 33:04

so Abbott's a big company. So this was the Abbott Vascular Division. must have been at least a few thousand people just in Santa Clara. I was under the marketing department, which was close to a hundred people. this is a mix of product managers upstream and downstream as well as I think what was called clinical marketing. and then also like your like design group, like your, like your trade show, your events, people, your like graphic design team, stuff like that. almost everyone who was there was in that same exact age range or post-grad school, like age type experience range. so unlike my first job where it was like, Hey, I'm new and there's all these people who have been there for 10, 15 years. This was a huge group of, we just brought in a bunch of product managers and they're all on the exact same level. so we all really learned on the job, I think, about how to be a product manager, When I joined Abbott, they, each product management team was broken into these groups. I, which I guess you could equated to like upstream and downstream, which are common terms, in marketing or product. But there was a third group, and I guess at the time it was called global. but I think you can think of it as like it's in between upstream and downstream, right? So upstream is gonna, work with, r and d development to make something downstream is gonna be like your commercial team in let's say Europe or America, to work with sales launch, get out to doctors, hospitals. This middle group global, which is in the middle, is gonna take it from upstream, help launch it, and then support the downstream groups globally. I started off in downstream and I think for me, I had a boss who came from sales. I come in on my first day and he's here's your computer. You go get out, do sales training, stay in the field with customers and don't come back for two weeks. Come back when you've learned about customers and hospitals and sales reps and how we sell it, right? If you are coming in as a brand new product manager and you're like, I'm going to tell you how it how things work, it doesn't make sense unless you know your customer. and so that was the best gift that he gave me, and I don't actually think everyone got that experience. And so like within my first week there I am with sales reps in hospital. I didn't think that you could do this. I'm in patients hospital rooms, I'm inside operating rooms, like watching these procedures happen. and following re rules and regulations, of course, like I'm either gloved up and I don't go near the patients, but just watching the fact that we can get this close and see the product actually being used to improve patient care was really impressive. Abbott was always reorging and it is actually a positive where like your role changes and it helps to move people around. You learn new stuff. But I flipped through the upstream and then also through that middle global role. And, I just realized I think what I like and don't like about those. and once I went through all three, and I was there for four years, I was like, okay, it is, it's time for a change. Let me see what else I can do. I.

Varun Rajan 35:55

what were the things that you figured that you liked and didn't like?

Shalini Chander 36:00

In medical device. and a place like an Abbott, your upstream component is, it's long term, You're not, and pharmaceuticals even longer. you're not launching for five years, You're going through trials, et cetera. it's not like software. You make it and you maybe get it out the door a month later. It's Hey, we're gonna do this for a few years. and so this idea of launching and being, having a lot of ownership is, it's gonna be far and few in between, right? And so I think I like that commercial side better.'cause I was more like, I'm representing, not so much that I love only commercial sales support roles. It's more so I think I like the ownership, right? I was the face of the product and I really like that part. when you go into upstream, you're, I guess you still are at the time though, I just didn't like the, are we gonna develop something? Are we not? It might take three years. And so it was like very questionable of what is the value for me? But I also, I had value. I just, I didn't really have the interest level to match that at that point. Yeah.

Varun Rajan 36:54

that makes a lot of sense. I actually like this is painting a really nice picture of when you're going from process oriented consultants. Let's see how to get this more efficient as much as possible. You get some feedback like in this product management role where you're like rotating between the upstream, like all the way through to the downstream. Like you're seeing different bits and pieces and you're learning how to be a storyteller over time. And then you're finding that the instances where you get to be a little bit more on the ground with the sales team, those are moments where you able to, where you're able to lean into that storyteller mode a little bit more after having discovered it, and made progress on it. Is that a, is that an accurate description of like how your time over there evolved?

Shalini Chander 37:32

Yeah, I think so. And I, I will say this, I recognize these aspects of the storyteller aspect, maybe yeah. Also in retrospect, I think it was more like then I was just figuring out like, and dislike as opposed to synthesizing it under the umbrella of storyteller. I think that's maybe like I just realized I liked or disliked it, but yeah, I think it definitely like matches with what you're saying on that,

Varun Rajan 37:51

and that's, and that's the point of this honestly, right? Is'cause, because a lot of times I think like when we figure out okay, my time here is done, it's

Shalini Chander 37:57

yeah.

Varun Rajan 37:57

few years, we have accumulated a bunch of feels without really putting like a word to them or articulating them explicitly. But I think it's really, helpful to, to be able to do that just to inform the decisions that we're making next.

Shalini Chander 38:09

Yeah.

Varun Rajan 38:10

but was that, did that inform what you were looking for next?

Shalini Chander 38:15

Yes, And and then of course personally, I had my first child while I was there. So now from a career perspective and for women, and I tell a lot of women this, right? You do have to think about, it's not even just this whole balance, right? Like life balance, you have to think about. sometimes you've gotta game a system of like, how am I gonna time stuff because I need to, have a kid right at maternity leave and then figure out what it's like to have a kid while I'm working, right? and of course, like everyone's options and what they think and what their opinions are gonna be different. But the one thing that, the one thing that's probably consistent for everyone is if you're working, and you have a kid, so you've got some time where you're on maternity leave and then you come back from work, your life is different. and not just your life, you're different as a person. Your life is different. You're mentally and emotionally different and physically. And I do think that you've gotta relearn that. and my recommendation is, yes, you can maybe change jobs, take time off and go to something different later. It is very safe to go back to a familiar environment to relearn it, right? And so part of that is you just gotta figure that stuff out. am I gonna. Am I gonna go back to work after I have this kid? Am I gonna go back to the same job or take time off? and once I go back, like you don't have as much flexibility anymore of, oh, I can work late or I can go in early. Because you're tied to like your baby daycare nanny schedule, or some child related schedule of drop off pickup. and just trying to figure out how do you manage that? How do you show up for work but show up for your family as well? it's not easy. And so I had to build that into, I can't just leave until I, especially once we knew that we were gonna have a baby, right? So it was like, okay, now I just ride this out. take, leave, come back, figure some stuff out.

Varun Rajan 39:58

Gotcha.

Shalini Chander 39:59

Yeah.

Varun Rajan 39:59

So you had this sense of your time there was

Shalini Chander 40:02

Yeah.

Varun Rajan 40:03

you had gotten out of it what you wanted to, that there was more that you wanted from your work, or you had zoned in on the things that you had liked and were chasing that a little bit more. but then you had a bunch of, amazing life changes that were, that, made it so that you couldn't pick up and leave right away. Makes perfect when you did come back to work, what, what did that look like? at what point were you ready? Were you, interviewing a bunch of different places? Like what were the options

Shalini Chander 40:27

Yes.

Varun Rajan 40:28

and the trade offs

Shalini Chander 40:28

So

Varun Rajan 40:29

were weighing?

Shalini Chander 40:30

I, let's see, had baby November and went back to work. I think about April-ish. I just started interviewing at the tail end of maternity leave, knowing that, okay, I wanna eventually go somewhere else. and I had an opportunity. so I went back to work in April and then I left Abbott in August. And so I started a new role in August of that same year. but I made a switch from cardiac to genetics. And actually this actually became really interesting for me. my undergrad degree was in immunology and genetics. not that I remembered that much, but at least it, gave me something for the tie in on this. And so I just thought, it would be really cool if I could go to stay under this health umbrella, but go to a genetics company. The science is so intricate and amazing. and at this point, having been at Abbott in the cardiac field, right when I say cardiac, I was working on things like wires and stents and something called a vegetable closure device, which is related to like post-surgical wound care. And like I was saying, initially it was really cool to be in this hospital setting and say Hey, we're really impacting patient care, but from a technical perspective, I. These are not high tech products. And so I was looking more for something more intricate, And so genetics was, scientifically very complex. And so I was like, this is a cool high tech, like how to step into that high tech world. so that was like my motivational factor of this is the role really like this. I took a huge risk too. I think I went to the startup called ADA and they offered me a role as a contractor and it was gonna be a contract to hire like an you gotta audition for your role. And I was like, yeah, I'm ready. I'm in. sounded like a great opportunity for me to just go and improve myself. And I did so did my 90 days as a contractor and then they hired me full time.

Varun Rajan 42:05

if I'm bringing this back to push and pull factors, your push factors were like, your time here at Abbott was done. You had figured out your likes and dislikes and probably had just like more, dislikes and likes at that point. and you were also excited about a new space that you actually that was like, you were attracted to more complexity, it sounds

Shalini Chander 42:22

right, Yeah.

Varun Rajan 42:23

Okay,

Shalini Chander 42:23

here's some really interesting learning. So from that, at first I was thinking this, like the stuff Abbott, the, what they make is, not technical enough And then you go into a super technically complex space. startup is called Verta. they made was called the verify prenatal test. It is a DNA test that tells, pregnant women or pregnant families that are expecting, as early as 10 weeks, genetic information about their, pregnancy, when you're pregnant, you go through the general testing of is the baby healthy ultrasounds, et cetera, checking for things like Down syndrome, other syndromes, other like chromosomal conditions. and a lot of it is done by a combo of blood tests, but also a late stage ultrasound, right? You've gotta look for physical factors as well as blood factors. This was now looking at genetic factors, that can tell you much earlier in the pregnancy, like at 10 weeks. And the pitch of this is ultimately is, DNA is more accurate, but go in earlier in your pregnancy with knowledge that can help you make, do like planning and decisions, and and this was amazing because being the product manager there, I got to do some really cool stuff. I got to design. The kit that would get the sample from the patient back to the lab that we were running. The kit that I designed was, and so we, we came out with this product in 20, so like 20 11, 20 12. and that was right when this technology took off. And so all the competitors, they copied the kit that I made, the sample shipping kit. And so I, I made the industry standard kit, and

Varun Rajan 43:56

amazing.

Shalini Chander 43:57

this is where I gotta do some really weirdly cool stuff. I got to go to a box ma box vendor to pick out the box and figure out how boxes are made. so like our box got made by the same people who were like making the boxes for big name products. like they made like Tiffany's boxes or they made like NVIDIA's packaging or something. and so then it's funny'cause you go and see this stuff and then you're like, oh, I see why an iPhone costs so much.'cause that box is beautiful. but yeah, so just learning a lot in the, again, learning a lot in your industry space. So I learned a ton about genetics, about prenatal genetics. and th this time also went to a startup that was, I asked the right questions, right? They were well funded. they had a product that they were actually able to take to market, and get some sales out of, and even like medical reimbursement. all good things there. Now, as a startup, a start, every startup has its own dramatics of people who are there. And so they had some of that as well. but overall, really good experience. So a couple things happened here. they're not a tiny startup that also runs this tiny lab. They got acquired by a larger company called Illumina, which is, headquartered in San Diego. Illumina makes the gigantic machinery plus the reagents that you need for DNA sequencing So they're very popular and famous in the, life sciences industry'cause they're very well known there. when they acquired Vata, they left Vata to run, run this independent product. But for me from a career perspective, I. Again, I was a product manager, again, under this whole marketing product manager umbrella. This was interesting. This is where I started thinking to myself, I really like being a product manager. I like the product operations, like working on the kit, working on the form, like deciding what goes into our process. So I didn't love the marketing side as much in terms of I didn't wanna be involved with the collateral, the promotional stuff. And I was trying to figure out how do I keep this job when we've got like a different team, especially with the San Diego group coming in and now marketing's run outta San Diego. and so I made a switch, where I left my role as product manager and I took on a project manager role, but from a responsibility perspective, I got to work on all the same stuff I like doing, which is I like to work on the product. And I worked, I moved over under the operations team, so I made a big switch where I was trying to create my own, role and title a little bit.

Varun Rajan 46:21

Yeah.

Shalini Chander 46:21

I talked to some people and said, how can I just work on the stuff I, which I am really good at, which is the product kind of ownership side, and still do this, but still be based out of Redwood City and not be based outta San Diego. moved over to the operations team, actually,

Varun Rajan 46:36

you came on because this is a new field. There's more complexity here. You're product manager, you're liking the work, and then you're realizing like, oh, okay, going back to your roots a little bit almost that oh, there's all of this like process stuff that I really like, that I'm really good at, like at the ownership side. and then this is like maybe, pulling you a little bit away from like the marketing stuff,

Shalini Chander 46:54

Yeah.

Varun Rajan 46:54

your, I guess the things that you were interested were less about the marketing side, which does sound a little bit different than when you were at Abbott. But there was also like the sense of working on new tech that like pushed you away, right? It sounds if we're applying that same upstream downstream framework, like some of the downstream stuff was like less interesting to you at this company.

Shalini Chander 47:12

it is fair to say that, but I think actually what's interesting is it's not, I think at Abbott I thought, oh, I might like downstream better than upstream. But I think it ultimately had to do with, more so the fact that I had, more responsibility on the downstream side. And so one of the responsibility is too ambiguous and I can't assign a process or sequential or steps factor. that's challenging for me. upstream at Abbott was like, let's just do a bunch of research and like maybe make recommendations, on what we might do next. But I was like, that's really ambiguous for me. And I think like at that point in my career, I just, on the junior side of being a product manager, I just needed more direction and more concrete. these are the various things you gotta work on as opposed to like, you figure it out. and then even with Abbott on the commercial side, I think there was just more like responsibilities of let's manage the product, right? you're gonna speak for the product, you're gonna train doctors. And so I. I was like just busy doing that and I felt like I understood my product and I could speak to it. So then we come up with a ADA where being that it's a startup, I am both upstream and downstream at the same time. And I loved it. But I love the operational side of stuff. I liked where it's not overly ambiguous, right? So the marketing part here became, I think, a little bit more ambiguous because especially after the acquisition, working on the product supporting like customer support, packaging, supply chain, that made more sense to me.'cause I was like, I know what needs to get done here. And so when I switched over to the operations team, I basically just took my job, I took my work with me. I was like, Hey, I'll change my title. I'll be a project manager under operations and I'll even pick up some supply chain analytics type of work,

Varun Rajan 48:49

I think it's really impressive that in the midst of an acquisition, you're able to essentially create a new role for yourself. it sounds like holding onto a lot of the same responsibilities, but like flexing into the spaces that you're more comfortable with but it is also very impressive that like in the midst of a, an acquisition, you still had built up the trust and goodwill to be able to figure out how can I create something a little bit new, stay in Redwood City, in the Redwood City office, while under this management. I'd love to know what was that conversation like of being like, Hey, I don't think I wanna be under the marketing org anymore. I wanna work in operations. How do you navigate that conversation without making people feel some type of way, oh, Shay doesn't wanna be with us anymore, what's going on?

Shalini Chander 49:31

So I will admit that. sometimes you shoot yourself in the foot when you have these conversations, right? Because, you're trying to balance this whole idea of I would like your advice, but I wanna be honest. And you never know with someone that you don't know well, like how honest can you be? and so it does come across exactly like how you said, one person I went to a couple different, VPs or something and even though they seem trusting, like one person definitely went straight to my manager and they're like, she's trying to leave her department. and you never know when this stuff is gonna back stab you, right? the lesson learned is you have to position it as, I'm just trying to learn, right? I'm just seeking some input and trying to learn. and I have certainly, I'm making it sound like I, I learned and it was a positive learning. It was, I'm sure some of it was dramatic at the time because there was some, like I said, there was some startup level dramatics of, even if you talk to a person and just say, I'm just networking to how to build a good relationship. Someone else doesn't like that person. And so you talking to this person is seen as bad by this other person, right? it comes from a place where other people are super insecure and so the lesson though, I think to try to prevent for that is to always position everything as I'm trying to be neutral and just hear from other people's experience and just gain all their insights so I can have the most information to make a decision

Varun Rajan 50:45

and that ended up, working out for you there, even though it seems like there, there may have been some

Shalini Chander 50:50

yeah.

Varun Rajan 50:51

political blowback.

Shalini Chander 50:51

I took a risk of if I switch into ops, I may not be able to go back to product or to product marketing. it may be a career change, right? And at some point I knew that I was changing the track. I was on. Here's a couple interesting things. I had been under the marketing department and so every year, we got our standard, here's your annual bonus. under operations you get a smaller bonus. And so my boss comes up to me, he's marketing gets paid more. I'm like, oh, I didn't know these things. Let me go back to that department. This sucks. I'm doing the same work and I'm getting paid less like this. my salary didn't get reduced. It was just more like some of this like extra factor of you don't get the visibility, you're not the celebrity in the company anymore. You're not speaking for the product.

Varun Rajan 51:32

Yeah. Okay. Interesting. tell me about the job, when you transitioned over to operations.

Shalini Chander 51:38

I loved my boss. He is a delightful man. so we're still in touch. I think this was for me maybe the beginning of recognizing stuff like when someone who's just gonna support you and recognizes that you're good at what you do, and they continue to let you do that, right? He was like, you've got great ideas. Run with it. And so this, I think helped me to get past my own insecurities of oh, what if I'm not good at certain things? and really feel like I could find the freedom to say, but let me do well at the things I'm really good at and acknowledge that there's other areas that I'm always gonna have to learn, so I really enjoyed that. learned a lot about. The supply chain analysis side of things. Like how do you know when to, How do you know how to plan for sudden increases in volume, there came a point, I'm doing this role and I'm thinking more about career. I'm having these talks with Illumina's, HR and my boss I think that was where there was a little bit of a block. They're like, you can move up in ops, but if you really wanna work on the product, you're gonna have to move back into the product team or the marketing team. they were somewhat willing to let me design my own job description, but they weren't willing to really say we'll help you design a career pathway that lets you rise up in the way you want to. And I think that's fine and fair. They get to decide. and so my decision was like, all right, then, it's been, I guess six years at that point. and it's been enough time, it's time for me to go and pursue that, which I need to pursue.

Varun Rajan 52:57

So this is really interesting. So your, like this transition that we're talking purely one or maybe more centered around, okay. So you had made this transition from like product management within the marketing team to one that is still very much product ownership but centered in operations. it sounds like questions you were asking was like, okay, how do I advance in my career now? And then they didn't have a ladder for you really. And they were like, we'll let you do whatever you want it sounds like there was no way for them to really support you in advancement in a way that made a lot of sense. There wasn't like a, Hey, I'll do X as a project manager under operations for this amount of time. If I knock it out of the park then like maybe I'll get a raise or whatever. But like I don't get a promotion with more responsibility unless I like go back into product management what I can do there.

Shalini Chander 53:47

Yeah.

Varun Rajan 53:47

we'll let you do whatever you want, but like we're not creating a new ladder for it.

Shalini Chander 53:51

Exactly. And so my options were limited, I think, at the company. Like I could have stayed. but I think there was just no real career advancement pathway at all for me that we could really figure out that would benefit. Me and the company. And so I think that's a fair decision. and so when I started looking around, I was relatively transparent with him where I'm like, Hey, it's probably then time for me to move on. I said, but, not from a place of oh, I hate my job, or I hate my people. it's actually a very healthy discussion. so I was really grateful for his support. when I went and took this role with the line, I think what I told myself was, again, throughout the resume, I started interviewing. Let me check out what's there. went back to looking at product management roles.'cause I realized oh, this whole super nebulous, carving out your own role may not be the right method. because it sounded like it was too nebulous for everyone and maybe even for me. and this role comes along at a line and it's under product management slash product market, product management under the marketing team. And I was like, all right, maybe it's time for me to just say there's gonna be some pros and cons, but this is maybe the better track for career and advancement. And I wanna get back to like basics of like stuff I know and I'm good at. this role came along They had me be a so product manager under marketing, but upstream and on software, which, now this is for Invisalign. This is basically the software platforms that all the dentists will use to prescribe Invisalign. What was exciting for me was finally getting to be like a PM on something that was more tech forward. different PMs on the actual physical Invisalign as a med device. and so I was on the software side and so actually I've been in that role ever since. I've gotten lucky on two fronts here. one the product manager department that I was in, which was under marketing, made its way and moved over to be, go away from product marketing to being really product management, like tech product management. there was a series of let's merge departments until we just moved over and they're like, product is now under like chief product officer, which is also It development, which is I think to some extent, at least for me, benefits me. That's where I wanna be. Really learn to love the product management side of software. Love working with my development teams. I love fighting with my development teams too. It's actually given me a lot of energy. But what I tell people, I think this is where I've learned the most about storytelling, and this is where it's really come in, like really it's all come together for me. you've got process, you've got your doctor slash patient customers that you can still really care about. you gotta represent voice of all of your customers, internal and external, back to each other. So as much as I gotta defend, why are we doing something?'cause the customer wants it to develop it, I gotta go back and defend development back to those customers and say, this is how and why we decided to do stuff, how we decided to make stuff, how we decided to prioritize stuff. and I think that I've really just come into that niche of loving my product, loving my teams and storytelling to make sure that we are all aware of what's happening and like what the changes are and how the impact is. And so I've actually really taken on that role of storyteller probably as the most critical, facet of what I do here. And I think here for me has been really successful. I've taken a couple jumps up in responsibility and scope and title and promotion.

Varun Rajan 57:07

tell me about how those came about. Did you have to fight for them? You obviously joined this job. knowing that you were pivoting back into an official like product management title, it sounds like the company also shifted to prioritizing product management

Shalini Chander 57:22

Right.

Varun Rajan 57:22

a discipline that, people in tech might be more familiar with. You're also working on the software. at what point in time are you seeing those advancements? Are you getting people under you? Tell me about your trajectory there so far,

Shalini Chander 57:36

the pathway I wanna be on is in that product org pathway, right? Head of product, VP of product, chief product Officer. I was like, where I envision, my pathway, I will say this. I didn't have to fight as much. He, I asked for it, I asked for a promotion, and I justified why I deserved my first one.

Varun Rajan 57:52

when you were making the pitch for your first promotion here, was it a pitch to take on more responsibility in terms of more teams and direct reports? what did it actually look like here and is So when I'm thinking about product management ladders, right? Like I, I have a very specific framework just having worked in tech for basically my whole career, which is there's the individual contributor track, right? Where like you can go from senior to staff to principal, and then there's the kind of like group product manager, director of product, like that kind of thing. Did you know that you wanted to be on more of a management track? You mentioned CPO, VP of product, head of product. At what point in your sense of I want advancement, which is why you came back to product management, right? because those structures are a lot more conducive to allowing you to advance. did you have a sense that you wanted to go up as like an IC ever, and then center that back into just discreetly what were you actually advocating for when it came to yourself? Getting into the associate director

Shalini Chander 58:54

I actually always thought you had to go people manager. it wasn't until more recently that companies I think are starting to say, we can split this and say we can give you an IC track or people manager track. It always seemed it always seemed like the IC track caps out somewhere. whereas people manager lets you go higher.

Varun Rajan 59:11

Mm-hmm. managers.

Shalini Chander 59:12

being said, I actually like people management. here's the thing. I have always been someone who I think we learn from people. I am one of the few in favor of let's all be at least hybrid in the office. I feel like the benefits of learning from each other come from in-person interaction. I've had four people at the line who I've gotten all of them promoted, or I have helped to get them all promoted. They were all wonderful and it was all about helping to shape them, into getting them to tell their own story of this is why you deserve it. So going to my first promotion at Align, I did go and ask for it, but I think there was a couple of things, right? so when I launched a, I had a really successful launch, but there was also a, like team effort where I really showcased that, when someone else dropped the ball, I was able to step up, take ownership, run with it, solve for a bunch of problems that occurred, and really take responsibility to say like we cleaned up for it, but also humility because. There wasn't, I think I had an opportunity to basically say, this person isn't doing their portion, so I'm gonna clean up for them and take credit. And I think what I did was to not take credit for this other person, really bring it back and say, this is team there, here were the problems. But as a team, we resolved them. And I think that this is partially where people acknowledge that. They're like, we know that you cleaned up, so we know that you did the work. but we also like that you did not throw someone under the bus. And I really feel strongly about this, right? You do as much as you can to help and you do as much as you can to retain some level of humility on this. and so I advocate for that, right? Which is you never know, like you definitely don't wanna see someone else get credit for your work, but I don't like the idea of shamelessly taking credit away from someone either.

Varun Rajan 1:00:57

Yeah.

Shalini Chander 1:00:58

helped with my first promotion. I think I really, I both, I showed that I was responsible. I had been performing at that level, and then I went and asked for it. So I think the second one was more of they said the same thing to me, which is they're like, you have been performing at this level, had already been managing one to two people. So just like increasing like your, your team size at that point. And I think they were showing and noticing that I was willing to go in and help do things that were beyond the scope of my role. It was, let's help. Other development, let's help with, other third party initiatives, stuff like that. making sure that people are coming together, I think. And so they were like, you've got that skill, which is what positions you as a leader in general,

Varun Rajan 1:01:37

What are the things that you find difficult about the advancement? And I'm curious in particular about, obviously there's like delegation and like trusting your team and being a manager, obviously comes with its own challenges, but I'm curious if there's anything that you've had to give up or sacrifice in terms of day-to-day work that you might enjoy doing and stuff like that.

Shalini Chander 1:02:02

you get really comfortable owning it and being the storyteller. Which means you're also the subject matter expert. Like in my case too, right? Like a lot of what I've done in my career has been, your training individual doctors or groups and stuff. I'm like, this is how you use this. And so of course you're the expert. When you have a team, you gotta start having them do that, right? And it's, it is faster for me to go and be like, lemme just do it for you.

Varun Rajan 1:02:23

Yeah.

Shalini Chander 1:02:23

you're messing this up. Let me go train that doctor. I'll step into this meeting, I'll tell you how it's done. You have to step back. And so this part is where again, like I learned from failure and I want to catch them before they fall, but you have to let them fail. like sometimes, right? Like you have to, I wanna make sure they don't completely mess up in front of people. So it's all about if you're gonna present, let's practice your presentation. But to some extent, I gotta let them fail and have people bitch about them so that I can come back and be like, we have to learn a lot. The worst is when you have someone who's amazing at their job and you're like, I've got nothing critical to tell you because you're so good at it. It's like, how's this person gonna advance and learn? You gotta give trust. You have to make room for a lot for letting people make mistakes and learn from them and then be there to help them learn from it.

Varun Rajan 1:03:07

So you're thinking like next steps should you stay at Align, obviously are like senior director or like mo moving up the, like in the, within the product organization. what are you excited about? What are you looking for next or what are you looking to do next? I guess is a

Shalini Chander 1:03:23

I've been going through a lot of, talks lately in events that are all focused on, AI and healthcare, AI and tech. And we're hearing the same message over and over again, which is what the benefit is gonna be of the future state. AI is gonna help you cure disease by finding the right mechanism of like cell pathway or like the right medication for this particular thing, what we're not talking about. Is, I think yet, how are we gonna day-to-day execute? Today we're talking about what AI is gonna do in the future. We're not talking about what are we gonna do with it today. And I don't mean just the basic, let me use chat GBT, but I'm really just talking about the complexity of the changing strategy, right? Like we're in a world right now where what you learn about your customers a year ago is now different, a year later. Like they're purchasing decisions, their motivations, what drives them is different year after year. So a few years ago we were talking about, how the new customer is very socially conscious, right? But with what's happening now politically, we may be moving away from that and ping ponging back to something else. And so I think it's really about how can we stay on top of customer motivations when Politically, economically, socially, like people are changing so rapidly that we gotta stay on top of just like motivational trends.

Varun Rajan 1:04:36

that's all of the questions that I have. Are there any last words of wisdom that you wanna share with the listeners of the Push Pull podcast?

Shalini Chander 1:04:44

I think everyone, everyone should just be focused on becoming a storyteller. you have to be known, right? So this idea of storytelling being a subject matter expert, like you gotta be recognized for that, which means you gotta set up those one-on-ones with people that you don't know, with your skip levels, with random people, other departments. You can't just do your job, you gotta do those extracurriculars. Like you gotta set up some lunch and learns like, I learned something, let me teach you. If you find a new cool vendor, bring them in, have them do a lunch and learn, or have a society like work with you to educate people. Now, it's not easy. You need permission. it's not like people are gonna make the time for it all the time, right? And so a lot of it's like you gotta be willing to do that slow burn of, I'm just gonna really talk about this until I can get some buy-in. And so you gotta have some patience for that. But it does go back to. The effort that you need to spend to doing more than just doing your job, right? You can't just be like, oh, I'm doing my job. Because if that's the case, your execution has to also go really well. you have to have automatic success right away. I think it's more important that if you launch something, it doesn't meet your KPIs. That you're able to go back and say, let's share my learnings. Like I was able to analyze what went wrong, let me share what I did, recommendations for next time, and maybe get management back on board. But either way, what you're doing is you're socializing your learnings and getting more attention on yourself at that point

Varun Rajan 1:06:06

yeah, it's a, it's actually really similar to what I think a lot of founders do nowadays, which is building in like you're suggesting that people do that same thing, whether it's teams like, obviously for. Product people. I think it comes a little bit more naturally, but either way, it's be public about the things that you're working on. and if they don't go well, it's okay, here's what I learned. And, like ba basically add value, additional value to everybody at the company, wherever possible.

Shalini Chander 1:06:32

Yeah. And it's exhausting, if your day job is 60 hours a week, you don't have the time for the other stuff, right? So you have to balance within your own life of like, when do you have the time to do the extra drive to do this stuff? But I think this is where it also ties back together, right? Again, your storytelling about yourself at that point. And you're also, I think, like being transparent about your mistakes and fails so that you can say, Hey, let's collectively learn from this. always learn to advocate for yourself, for your people, for the people who can't, and tell that story about what's important.

Varun Rajan 1:07:00

Cool. Awesome. Okay. Thanks Shay.

Shalini Chander 1:07:04

Thank you. Okay. We'll see you at the next family reunion.

Varun Rajan 1:07:07

Yes. See you at the next family reunion.

1:07:15

it's so funny because Shalini and I definitely talk work from time to time, but I learned so much about her that I never knew before. in this format of getting to talk to her. And I was super impressed by so much that she's done for herself and how she's explored different roles in her careers. there's definitely a lot of great advice that she leaves towards the end of our conversation about how you can advance in your career, if you'd like to do that at the company that you're at right now. A lot of it is, yes, going above and beyond the scope of your role. but more importantly, it's about. Kind of building in public within your company. Tell everybody what you're doing, what you're launching, what you're learning, uh, and how you're failing. And try to do that in ways where you can get more and more people on board. It's very important to be visible, and, I think that's incredible advice. If you guys like this conversation, please leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Give me a thumbs up. if you're watching this on YouTube, hit the subscribe and follow buttons wherever you can. And if you have any questions or requests, you can always hit me up directly at Varun. That's V-A-R-U-N, at push pull podcast.com. Thank you.