Hi, I’m Elena Luneva. I operate at the intersection of people, craft, and business. I help product leaders, founders, and GTM operators sharpen the business side of product, so they can drive growth, influence outcomes, and lead with confidence.

Over the past 20 years, I’ve scaled product and GTM teams as an executive at Braintrust, Nextdoor, LiquidSpace, OpenTable, and BlackRock. I’ve built marketplaces, AI-native platforms, and B2B SaaS products from zero to scale. Today, I advise founders, coach product executives, and teach product managers how to grow their business skills such as GTM, Financial Acumen and Executive presence, effectively. Although I have an MBA and CS degree, I do not think you need either to thrive in the future reshaped by AI. What I do think you need is the curiosity to learn.

Presently f-CPO Madison-Reed, Executive Coach, Advisor, Educator.

Former:

CPO / GM Braintrust

GM Nextdoor

CPO Nuna

VP Product, LiquidSpace

Sr. PM OpenTable

Sr. PM BlackRock

Taught thousands of executives through courses, executive coaching, corporate training, and at Reforge, FirstRound, Berkeley, Sidebar, Enrich, Supra, AI Collective, Industry, PLS

Polly Allen has spent over 20 years building and leading software teams, most recently as a Principal Product Manager at Amazon Alexa, where she guided cross-functional science and engineering groups at the cutting edge of AI. She specializes in natural language applications—search, discovery, understanding, and generation—and in 2020, she led the launch of Alexa’s first automatically generated web content summaries (yes, powered by the same transformer technology behind today’s ChatGPT).

But Polly’s story isn’t just about technology. After years in the deeply technical world, she became convinced that the future of AI shouldn’t be shaped only by coders and data scientists. The biggest breakthroughs will come when product and business leaders—those closest to customers, strategy, and impact—have the tools and confidence to lead AI initiatives. That belief drives everything she does today.

Now, through her company AI Career Boost, Polly helps experienced leaders step into AI roles and lead AI product development with confidence—without needing a computer science degree. She also hosts two podcasts, AI Product Leader and AI Afterhours, where she shares insights, stories, and candid conversations about building the future of AI.