I've spent 15 years building products that serve millions of people — from launching BBC iPlayer and BBC Earth, reaching 63% of the UK population weekly, to scaling Newsela as Director of Product to 40M students across 90% of US schools. When the pandemic hit, our team delivered 4x user engagement in a single month without dropping the mission.

What I learned across those years is that nobody teaches the hardest part of product leadership — the moment your startup instincts stop working and you need an entirely different mental model. I built these frameworks under real pressure, in real organisations, with real consequences.

My training in Mathematics at Cambridge gave me a first principles lens that shapes how I approach every mental model I teach — breaking problems down to their foundations rather than borrowing frameworks that were never designed for your context.

I now advise and invest in early-stage ventures through Luxo Beta and Zulu Group, and mentor founders across Techstars and global incubators. I host the Samira Stalks podcast, reaching 60,000 listeners in 150 countries.

I teach because the inflection point is navigable — if someone shows you what's actually happening. That's what this session is for.