About Me
Hi! I'm Ayesha Shakya and I am a Product Manager with over 10 years of experience in building and scaling digital products and experiences. I have honed my skills in leadership, product, design, and have led cross-functional teams through the entire product lifecycle, from concept to launch.
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.
Resume
Work experience
Malala Fund
Product Manager
New York, NY
2019 - 2024
Responsibilities:
-
Became first Product Manager at Malala Fund, managing the Product team including 3 UX/UI designers, 2 engineers and a project manager to ensure growth of Malala Fund’s web and mobile suite of products.
-
Spearheaded interactive sessions with senior leaders to define business needs and synthesize findings into clear product vision and delivery roadmap.
-
Oversaw user research to identify user needs and incorporate UX/UI feedback into the development of digital products.
-
Led quality assurance and monitored technical issues for the engineering team to fix.
-
Led weekly status meetings with technical and non-technical stakeholders to discuss product feedback and evaluate product development bottlenecks and backlogs.
-
Established and rolled out better internal communication systems and agile processes for improved collaboration and alignment across cross-functional teams.
Key Achievements:
-
Led the complete overhaul of malala.org, from conception to launch, involving the design and maintenance of over 100 web pages, resulting in a 60% increase in site traffic.
-
Oversaw the redesign of assembly.malala.org and its email newsletter, and conducted user research with the goal of creating a Gen-Z centric visual language, resulting in a 21% increase in site traffic.
-
Led development of digital fundraising web products, increasing conversion rate by 20%.
-
Built Assembly’s email newsletter using Mailchimp and HTML/CSS, increasing total number of subscribers to over 12,000 and winning a Webby Award for Websites and Mobile Sites Email Newsletters.
-
Mentored and trained 8 junior staff members, supporting their career growth and development.
Meta
Coordinator
New York, NY
2017 - 2018
Responsibilities:
-
Measured the impact of programs and events under the Meta Journalism Project.
-
Conducted interviews with news partners and performed a segmentation analysis to inform measurement strategy.
Key Achievements:
-
Tracked engagement metrics for news initiatives from 500+ global partners, supporting the growth of Meta Journalism Project across US, EMEA, LATAM and Asia.
-
Utilized data from partner interactions and audience analysis to inform the H2 planning process, including content focus for programs, training initiatives, and opportunities to strengthen relationships with publishers and journalists.
Nepali Times
Product Manager
Kathmandu, Nepal
2013 - 2016
Responsibilities:
-
Led a cross-functional team of journalists, engineers and designers to incorporate multimedia and develop interactive features for nepalitimes.com.
-
Formulated and implemented social media strategies, while monitoring traffic and engagement metrics to optimize performance.
Key Achievements:
-
Boosted subscriptions by 50%, establishing Nepali Times as a premier digital-first news platform.
Oversaw an 8x increase in audience engagement on social platforms.
Projects
New York, NY
2017
Education
User Experience Researcher
-
Conducted research to enhance engagement on Instagram Stories and developed "Tap for News", a comprehensive set of guidelines outlining best practices for creating engaging news content on Instagram Stories.
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
Skills
Skills: Coaching and Mentoring, Communication Skills, Active listening, Empathy, Scrum, User Research, User Testing, Cross-Functional Leadership, Waterfall, Agile, Product Vision, Product Strategy, Roadmap, OKR’s / KPI’s, Stakeholder Management, Design, MS Office & Google Suite, A/B Testing, Data Analysis, Strategic Direction, Mobile App & Web Dev, Customer Journey Mapping, User Experience (UX), Collaboration, Miro, Wireframing, Prototyping, Content Management Systems
Tools: Google Analytics, Asana, Monday.com Slack, Figma, Adobe Creative Suite, Zeplin, Contentful, Squarespace
Tech Stack in which my Engineering counterparts utilize: HTML, CSS, JavaScript
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