About Me
Hi! I'm Ayesha Shakya and I am a Product Manager with over a decade of experience working in technology, design and media. I am based in New York City.
I currently lead Product at Malala Fund where I oversee product strategy and development to optimize the user experience and growth of Malala Fund’s website, email newsletters and digital campaigns. Leading a team of designers, developers, writers and editors, I use technology, visuals and human-centric storytelling to highlight Malala Fund on the web, redesign their digital presence and showcase the impact being made on a global scale.
My career has centered around building multi-platform digital experiences that are user-centric, solution-oriented and highly impactful and has taken me across continents, from Singapore, Nepal to New York City. My work has been featured on The New York Times, HuffPost, PBS NewsHour, Vanity Fair, Mashable and more and has won a New York Emmy Award and a Webby Award.
My multidisciplinary background, coupled with my communication and creative skills, have led me to build a very unique career in Product Management.
Resume
Work experience
Malala Fund
Product Manager
New York, NY
January 2020 - Present
• Led the complete overhaul of the company’s website involving the design and maintenance of over 100 web pages, resulting in a 60% increase in site traffic and a 30% increase in end of year fundraising.
• Oversaw the redesign of Assembly, Malala Fund's digital publication, by overseeing user research, design and development, and implementing SEO best practices and user-friendly design, resulting in a nearly 30% increase in site traffic and 300% increase in site submissions.
• Increased donations from major donors by 150% by leading strategic alignment with executive leadership on optimizing web-based products.
Malala Fund
Digital Producer
New York, NY
January 2019 - December 2019
• Led production of Malala Fund's first-ever video series, increasing YouTube subscriber base by 29%.
• Managed partnerships with content creators for an International Day of the Girl fundraising campaign on YouTube, raising over $50K.
• Built Assembly's email newsletter, increasing total number of subscribers to over 12,000 and winning a Webby Award for Websites and Mobile Sites Email Newsletters.
• Led production of live conversation between Malala Yousafzai and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, garnering nearly a million views across all social media platforms and reaching over 4 million people globally.
Meta
Coordinator
New York, NY
June 2017 - December 2018
• Measured engagement metrics for news initiatives and programs from 500 news partners and journalists, supporting the growth of the Meta Journalism Project globally
Nepali Times
Product Manager
Kathmandu, Nepal
November 2013 - June 2016
• Led a team of journalists, designers and engineers to use video, audio and social media in building innovative multimedia products for nepalitimes.com, leading to a 50% increase in subscriptions.
• Built interactive web projects with engineers for nepalitimes.com during critical news events using HTML, CSS and JavaScript and a custom content management system.
• Partnered with the editorial team to help optimize Nepali Times across multiple social platforms to drive audience growth and advertising revenue.
Projects
User Experience Researcher
New York, NY
June - December 2017
• Conducted research on user behaviour on Instagram Stories with over 40 news publishers and creators.
• Published “Tap for News”, a set of guidelines laying out best practices on creating engaging and insightful news content for Instagram Stories.
The Wall Street Journal
User Experience Researcher
New York, NY
January 2017 - May 2017
• Led three rounds of user testing on the What’s News app, The Wall Street Journal’s news digest app. Findings from the user testing sessions contributed to improving personalization of the WSJ app.
Education
New York University
Master of Arts, Digital Communication and Media/ Multimedia (Studio 20: Digital First Program)
New York, NY
2016 - 2017
Nanyang Technological University
Bachelor of Engineering, Information Engineering and Media
New York, NY
2009 - 2013
Awards/ Honors
• Extraordinary Ability EB-1A Green Card
• 2023 Webby Nominee for Charitable Organizations/ Non-Profit Websites and Mobile Sites for Malala Fund Annual Report
• 2022 Anthem award for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and Community Engagement for Assembly
• 2021 Webby Honoree for Charitable Organizations/ Non-Profit Websites and Mobile Sites for malala.org
• 2021 Webby Honoree for Diversity & Inclusion Websites and Mobile Sites for Assembly
• 2020 Webby Award for Websites and Mobile Sites Email Newsletters for Assembly
• 2020 Telly Awards, Silver Winner for Series: Social Video for Malala Fund's Roll Call
• 2018 New York Emmy, Public/Current/Community Affairs: Series for Finding Sanctuary
Skills
Product skills: Product strategy and roadmap development, Agile development methodologies, Design and UX principles, A/B testing, User research and data analysis, Cross-functional team leadership.
Tools: Photoshop, Premiere, Figma, Zeplin, G Suite Apps, Asana, Monday.com, UserTesting, Contentful, Squarespace.