Stefanie Lau is an operational “swiss army knife” for businesses of 1 to 3000. She specializes in organizational strategy & operations, product delivery, scaling/transforming teams, and general strategy execution advisory. For the last 18 years, she built 0-1 products, led operations, and built teams at high-growth technology companies, media organizations, and nonprofits, like Google and The New York Times. She turns vision and strategies into reality, has won rare awards for impact, and led double-digit improvements in org/team performance. She is also a pillar of our Xoogler community, as the Lead for the NY and Women’s networks, forging strong relationships with both members and partners.
Stefanie previously led product strategy execution as Operations Director and Chief of Staff for The NY Times’s flagship News product org, overseeing web, iOS and Android product initiatives and leading critical strategy operations functions for one of the world's most influential media organizations. She led annual planning, reorgs, and oversaw the execution and performance of product initiatives. Her progression through exec and IC roles, including Director of Program Management and Senior Program Manager demonstrates her ability to work at both high and low altitudes.
She led parts of NYT’s recent digital transformation, including AI/ML content targeting and personalization, product integration of NYT Games, and delivering an award-winning user experience design (Fast Company), while ensuring stable subscriber retention amid industry declines at other media companies.
Stefanie has led product management & delivery and user ops for a variety of product types, including: privacy & encryption (VPNs), site reliability (caching tools), AR/VR, ML/AI/NLP, combating disinformation, online safety and civility, wifi & networking, HR systems (hiring, surveys), and product performance dashboards. She’s comfortable ramping up on system architectures and new concepts quickly.
In People Ops, she was both a product manager and the product adoption lead for the 0-1 phase of Google’s ATS system (gHire), winning her an exclusive award, multiple bonuses, and department-wide recognition for her impact.
As User Operations Lead for Google Access (OnHub/Wifi), she built an industry-record breaking, 24/7 customer experience team, demonstrating her ability to build complex, customer-facing support experiences that built brand loyalty and trust. Her work attracted product teams across Google to learn from OnHub.
As product manager at Glint, she internationalized their core product into 44 languages and built new product features, while her consulting work at Jigsaw (Google’s online safety and digital democracy think tank) involved working alongside engineering to build scaled customer experiences for several 0-1 and 1-10 products. She also managed relationships with high-profile partners.
As the lead for the New York and Women’s networks at Xoogler, Stef creates community and familiarity by hosting dozens of events a year: exec/founder Q&As, local coworking, personal development, and socials. In People Ops, she built numerous new programs, including functional training, the BOLD Internship program, and scholarship programs. She also led an internal communications & brand team to communicate shifting strategies to large, diverse organizations and build momentum for org changes.
As Head of Community at Minds Matter of San Francisco, she transformed a high-attrition org (over 60% turnover) to a high-retention org (over 90% retention), and forged long lasting strategic partnerships across San Francisco. She was also the producer of TEDxPeacePlaza in San Francisco’s Japantown, orchestrating the entire production, staff and operations, marketing, and sales.
