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# The product leaders you need to hear  in Amsterdam this May
- URL: https://www.productledalliance.com/the-product-leaders-you-need-to-hear-in-amsterdam-this-may/
- Published: 2026-05-11T17:37:15.000Z
- Updated: 2026-05-11T17:37:15.000Z
- Description: Two days. Europe's greatest product minds. One city.
- Author: Amelia Wilson
- Tags: Product-Led Growth, Product Strategy, Careers & Development, Articles

AI has changed the product job. 

The expectation that product teams act like business owners – not just feature shippers – has changed the job. 

The relentless pace of customer expectations, the pressure to prove ROI, the challenge of staying aligned across engineering, design, and the rest of the business while somehow still moving fast: all of it has changed the job.

And most of the advice floating around on the internet hasn't kept up.

That's the gap that the [**Product-Led Summit**](https://world.productledalliance.com/location/amsterdam/?utm%5Fsource=ghost&utm%5Fmedium=resources&utm%5Fcampaign=content) on **May 28 & 29** is designed to close. 

At the Postillion Hotel & Convention Centre in Amsterdam, we’re bringing together product leaders from Heineken, Shell Recharge, Air France-KLM, Booking.com, Coca-Cola HBC, and plenty more – for two days of sessions, panels, interactive workshops, and the kind of honest conversations that only happen when the right people are in the same room.

Here's who's taking the stage – and what they're bringing with them.

## Ezgi Göçücü – Senior Product Director, Digital strategy and operations, Sitecore

**Session: *Beyond the hype: AI in enterprise product management***

[Ezgi](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ezgigocucu/) has spent years inside Sitecore – one of the world's leading digital experience platforms – working at the intersection of product strategy, content operations, and AI innovation. She's led teams building some of Sitecore's most ambitious product bets, including AI-assisted capabilities that sit at the heart of how enterprise marketers discover, manage, and deploy content at scale.

Her opening keynote tackles the question LinkedIn can't stop asking – is AI killing product management? Rather than debating it in theory, she's going straight to Sitecore's lived experience: what they tried, what worked, what didn't, and what caught them off guard. 

Spoiler: PM isn't dead, but the way it works is changing fast. This session will show you what that looks like inside a real enterprise.

![zgi Göçücü – Senior Product Director, Digital strategy and operations, Sitecore](https://storage.ghost.io/c/06/40/064053a7-301f-45ab-974f-9f6baeaffcc5/content/images/2026/05/Ezgi-Go--c--u--cu--.png)

## Andreea Cuibar – Global Digital Product Manager B2B, Coca-Cola HBC

**Session: *In a world full of ideas, build at least a landing page***

[Andreea](https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreea-cuibar/) brings over a decade of digital industry experience, with a background spanning L'Oréal and The Heineken Company. She now leads B2B digital product management at Coca-Cola HBC, one of the world’s largest bottlers and vendors of Coca-Cola products.

Her session is for anyone who's ever had a great idea and then watched it die before it started. The argument she's making: it's not a skills gap holding most products back, it's a culture gap. Corporate product thinking trains us to plan before we build and align before we act – and in a world where a working prototype can be live in an afternoon, that instinct is often the very thing that kills a good idea. 

Expect practical examples, a live demo, and a direct challenge to the traditional PM playbook.

![Andreea Cuibar – Global Digital Product Manager B2B, Coca-Cola HBC](https://storage.ghost.io/c/06/40/064053a7-301f-45ab-974f-9f6baeaffcc5/content/images/2026/05/Andreea-Cuibar.png)

## Pranav Pathak – Director of Product, AI & ML, Booking.com

**Session: *Delivering exceptional customer experiences in a digital age***

[Pranav](https://www.linkedin.com/in/pranavmpathak/) leads product strategy for the machine learning systems that power personalization, ranking, and GenAI applications across Booking.com – one of the world's top ten internet companies. With a career spanning Goldman Sachs, Flipkart, and Booking.com, he's a practitioner who lives at the intersection of product and data science, and he's helped build AI infrastructure that most organizations can only dream of.

His session explores what it takes to deliver customer experiences that stand out in a world where consumers have more information and choices than ever before. Pranav will dig into the key factors that drive exceptional digital experiences – understanding customer needs, using tech to enhance interactions, and building a customer-centric culture that sticks – with real-world examples and practical takeaways you can bring back to your team.

If you want to know how the best digital products in the world are thinking about ML and personalization right now, Pranav is the person to listen to.

![Pranav Pathak – Director of Product, AI & ML, Booking.com](https://storage.ghost.io/c/06/40/064053a7-301f-45ab-974f-9f6baeaffcc5/content/images/2026/05/Pranav-Pathak.png)

## Marcel Semmler – Chief Product Officer (Global), Bauer Media Group

**Session: *Business builders will win: The end of product delivery as we know it***

[Marcel](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcelsemmler/) is one of the more provocative voices in European product leadership – and that's no bad thing. As Global CPO at Bauer Media Group, he leads product, UX, and technology teams across Europe with a philosophy that's pretty direct: your product is only as strong as the company behind it, and the era of product delivery as an end in itself is over.

His talk is a reset for experienced product leaders – and it doesn't pull punches. The operating model most product teams were built on is quietly collapsing: AI is already taking over PRDs, research synthesis, alignment, and even prototyping. What's left is the tricky part – ownership, revenue, and trade-offs that actually impact the business. 

Marcel's argument is that being "product-led" will increasingly mean being commercially accountable, and this session is about what that shift demands of you.

![Marcel Semmler – Chief Product Officer (Global), Bauer Media Group](https://storage.ghost.io/c/06/40/064053a7-301f-45ab-974f-9f6baeaffcc5/content/images/2026/05/Marcel-Semmler.png)

## Sakshi Dhakad – Director of Product Management, Mendix

**Session: *Pause, pivot, prevail: How to win in the age of AI disruption***

[Sakshi](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sakshidhakad/) brings six years of consulting and product experience to her role at Mendix– the low-code platform that helps enterprises build and deploy applications. She's a sharp analytical thinker with a reputation for cutting through assumptions and grounding product decisions in real user and customer research.

Sakshi's talk challenges product leaders to step back from the AI hype, reassess where they actually create value, and figure out how to build sustainable relevance in an era of non-stop change. Attending is the easy part – she'll be the first to tell you the real work starts when you get back to your desk.

![Sakshi Dhakad – Director of Product Management, Mendix](https://storage.ghost.io/c/06/40/064053a7-301f-45ab-974f-9f6baeaffcc5/content/images/2026/05/Sakshi-Dhakad.png)

## Alberto Segura – Director of Product Management, Printify

**Interactive roundtable discussions**

[Alberto](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alberto-segura-10/) leads product at Printify, one of the world's largest print-on-demand platforms, where he's responsible for managing a product organization that serves an enormous and diverse merchant base at scale.

He hosts one of the mid-afternoon roundtable discussions – a smaller, more candid format designed for real conversation about whatever's actually on your mind. If you've got a product challenge you want to think through with someone who's been in the trenches, Alberto's table is a great place to be.

![Alberto Segura – Director of Product Management, Printify](https://storage.ghost.io/c/06/40/064053a7-301f-45ab-974f-9f6baeaffcc5/content/images/2026/05/Alberto-Segura.png)

## Anurag Chitlangia – Senior Product Manager, Uber

**Interactive roundtable discussions**

[Anurag](https://www.linkedin.com/in/anurag-chitlangia/) brings the Uber perspective to the roundtables – which means he's seen product management at one of the most operationally complex, global-scale technology businesses on the planet. That kind of experience makes for unusually revealing and practical conversation.

He joins Alberto Segura, Hande Bodart, Ezgi Göçücü, and Andreea Cuibar for the roundtable format – expect candid discussion and real-world perspectives, not polished keynote answers.

![Anurag Chitlangia – Senior Product Manager, Uber](https://storage.ghost.io/c/06/40/064053a7-301f-45ab-974f-9f6baeaffcc5/content/images/2026/05/Anurag-Chitlangia.png)

## Hande Bodart – Senior Product Manager, Sitecore

**Interactive roundtable discussions**

[Hande](https://www.linkedin.com/in/hande-karadeniz/) is a core part of Sitecore's product team, focused on the technical and operational realities of building enterprise content products. She's a practitioner with deep platform knowledge and a collaborative, no-nonsense approach to problem-solving.

She joins the roundtable discussions to bring a grounded, enterprise-product perspective to what are designed to be some of the more interactive conversations of the day.

![Hande Bodart – Senior Product Manager, Sitecore](https://storage.ghost.io/c/06/40/064053a7-301f-45ab-974f-9f6baeaffcc5/content/images/2026/05/Hande-Bodart.png)

## Chiara Piccolo – Head of Product, Marktplaats

**Panel: *The search for product-market fit 2.0 – finding demand in saturated categories***

[Chiara](https://www.linkedin.com/in/chiarapiccolo/) leads product at Marktplaats, the Netherlands' largest online marketplace – a platform where finding product-market fit isn't a one-time achievement, but an ongoing discipline in an environment crowded with competition and shifting user expectations.

She joins Stan Minasov and Folkert de Vries on the closing panel of day one, exploring a question that's quietly becoming one of the most urgent in product: what does product-market fit even look like when every category is saturated? And how do you find genuine demand in that environment, rather than just carving out a smaller slice of the same pie?

![Chiara Piccolo – Head of Product, Marktplaats](https://storage.ghost.io/c/06/40/064053a7-301f-45ab-974f-9f6baeaffcc5/content/images/2026/05/Chiara-Piccolo.png)

## Stan Minasov – Chief Product Officer, AppMagic

**Panel: *The search for product-market fit 2.0 – finding demand in saturated categories***

[Stan](https://www.linkedin.com/in/stan-minasov/) is Chief Product Officer at AppMagic, the mobile intelligence platform that helps product teams understand what's actually happening in app stores – downloads, revenue, market dynamics, competitive positioning. It's a vantage point that gives him an unusually data-rich perspective on how apps find, lose, and sometimes reclaim their product-market fit.

He joins Chiara Piccolo and Folkert de Vries for the product-market fit panel to bring that market intelligence lens to one of the biggest strategic questions in product right now.

![Stan Minasov – Chief Product Officer, AppMagic](https://storage.ghost.io/c/06/40/064053a7-301f-45ab-974f-9f6baeaffcc5/content/images/2026/05/Stan-Minasov.png)

## Folkert de Vries – Global Director of Product Management, AkzoNobel

**Panel: *The search for product-market fit 2.0 – finding demand in saturated categories***

[Folkert](https://www.linkedin.com/in/folkert-de-vries-19004a6a/) leads product management globally at AkzoNobel – one of the world's largest paints and coatings companies, operating in a category that couldn't be more mature. Finding new demand inside an established, competitive market is less of a theoretical challenge for Folkert than a daily reality.

His experience bringing product thinking into a traditional industrial business makes him a distinct voice on this panel – and someone who's likely to challenge assumptions that others in the room didn't know they had.

![Folkert de Vries – Global Director of Product Management, AkzoNobel](https://storage.ghost.io/c/06/40/064053a7-301f-45ab-974f-9f6baeaffcc5/content/images/2026/05/Folkert-de-Vries.png)

## Sneha Divakar – Director of Product Design, Comviva

**Session: *Scaling success: Strategic approaches to growing your product dream team***

[Sneha](https://www.linkedin.com/in/snehadivakar/) leads product design at Comviva, a global technology company focused on mobility and digital financial solutions. She works at the intersection of user experience and product strategy – a vantage point that gives her a sharp view of what it actually takes to build and grow the kind of product team that can deliver at scale.

Sneha’s session is a practical guide to building high-performing product teams. She’ll explore actionable strategies for attracting, hiring, and retaining top-tier product talent in a competitive market, moving beyond traditional recruitment methods to focus on culture, empowerment, and continuous development. 

If growing or reshaping your team is on your mind for the year ahead, this is the session to catch.

![Sneha Divakar – Director of Product Design, Comviva](https://storage.ghost.io/c/06/40/064053a7-301f-45ab-974f-9f6baeaffcc5/content/images/2026/05/Sneha-Divakar.png)

## Suneal Rao – Director, eCommerce, AI Products, and Data & Analytics, The Heineken Company

**Session: *Know your customer: Redefining product ops metrics for internal and external products***

[Suneal](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sunealrao/) has worked across both consumer-facing and internal product contexts, which gives him an unusually sharp view of how the metrics that matter shift dramatically depending on who you're actually building for. 

At The Heineken Company, he leads across eCommerce, AI products, and data and analytics – a remit that spans both internal tooling and external-facing products, and has sharpened his view on why the same metrics framework can't serve both. 

His session explores how customer type should shape the way product ops measures performance: from adoption and enablement signals for internal teams, to growth, retention, and revenue metrics for external users. You'll leave with a clearer lens for designing analytics and reporting that fit your model – and a stronger case for proving product ops impact in your organization.

![Suneal Rao – Director, eCommerce, AI Products, and Data & Analytics, The Heineken Company](https://storage.ghost.io/c/06/40/064053a7-301f-45ab-974f-9f6baeaffcc5/content/images/2026/05/Suneal-Rao-1.png)

## Avantika Bansal – Head of B2C Products / Global Project Lead, Shell Recharge Solutions

**Workshop: *Restoring trust in product teams – why clarity keeps speed alive***

[Avantika](https://www.linkedin.com/in/avantika-bansal-64577a6/) has over 19 years of experience in tech and product management, and a clear philosophy: a successful product isn't the responsibility of product people alone – it takes a whole village. At Shell Recharge Solutions, she leads the B2C product portfolio with a focus on products that enable cleaner transportation – work that carries real-world weight and demands real-world rigor.

She and Sweta Nanda co-lead the day-two morning workshop, built around the four pillars of Clarity Framework – process, ownership, accountability, and proactivity – that together keep speed alive as organizations scale. 

As complexity creeps in and strategy drifts, product teams tend to either become risk-averse or bet big without direction. This workshop is about breaking that pattern: restoring trust between product, leadership, and the wider organization, and giving teams the clarity they need to actually move.

![Avantika Bansal – Head of B2C Products / Global Project Lead, Shell Recharge Solutions](https://storage.ghost.io/c/06/40/064053a7-301f-45ab-974f-9f6baeaffcc5/content/images/2026/05/Avantika-Bansal.png)

## Sweta Nanda – Group Product Manager, Shell Recharge Solutions

**Workshop: *Restoring trust in product teams – why clarity keeps speed alive***

[Sweta](https://www.linkedin.com/in/swetananda/) is a Group Product Manager at Shell, working alongside Avantika on the EV charging product side of one of the world's largest energy companies. She brings a practitioner's perspective on managing complex cross-functional product work inside a large organization.

Together with Avantika, she leads the day-two workshop introducing the Clarity Framework – and making the case that process, ownership, and accountability aren't bureaucratic drag, they're the things that fuel momentum and restore the trust every product organization depends on.

![Sweta Nanda – Group Product Manager, Shell Recharge Solutions](https://storage.ghost.io/c/06/40/064053a7-301f-45ab-974f-9f6baeaffcc5/content/images/2026/05/Sweta-Nanda.png)

## Thalles Silveira – Product Manager, Freight Logistics Systems, Air France-KLM

**Session: *Beyond features: Leveraging AI to unlock unseen value in your product portfolio***

[Thalles](https://www.linkedin.com/in/thalles-silveira/) works in one of the more operationally demanding product environments you'll find anywhere – Air France-KLM Cargo, which moves over 1.1 million tons of freight to 350 destinations every year. Bringing AI to bear on freight logistics systems isn't a thought experiment at Air France-KLM; it's a real product challenge with real supply chain consequences.

His session explores how AI can reveal value in a product portfolio that isn't visible through conventional analysis – and argues that simply adding features is no longer enough to get there. The real advantage lies in embedding AI strategically to redefine what your products are for: unlocking new business models, anticipating market shifts, and surfacing patterns no one thought to look for. 

You'll leave with a practical roadmap for identifying high-leverage AI opportunities and building a product strategy that goes well beyond incremental improvements.

![Thalles Silveira – Product Manager, Freight Logistics Systems, Air France-KLM](https://storage.ghost.io/c/06/40/064053a7-301f-45ab-974f-9f6baeaffcc5/content/images/2026/05/Thalles-Silveira.png)

## Andrew Shaw – Chief Product & Technology Officer, Candid

**Panel: *Bridging the divide – mastering cross-cultural alignment for global product success***

[Andrew](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashaw1/) brings an international perspective to one of the thorniest operational challenges in product: getting teams who think, communicate, and prioritize differently to pull in the same direction. He's worked across Adidas in Germany and OLX in Amsterdam, and has just been appointed CPTO at Candid – the platform-based marketing and communications group operating across the Netherlands and the UK.

He joins Angad Abrol for the day-two afternoon panel, exploring the practical strategies for cross-cultural alignment in global product organizations. This is the kind of session that tends to resonate long after the summit is over.

![Andrew Shaw – Chief Product & Technology Officer, Candid](https://storage.ghost.io/c/06/40/064053a7-301f-45ab-974f-9f6baeaffcc5/content/images/2026/05/Andrew-Shaw.png)

## Angad Abrol – Vice President of Product, Growth, FarEye

**Panel: *Bridging the divide – mastering cross-cultural alignment for global product success***

[Angad](https://www.linkedin.com/in/angad-abrol-05005b77/) leads product growth at FarEye, the logistics software platform that helps enterprises like DHL, Walmart, and Domino's optimize last-mile delivery. That's a global-by-definition business, which means Angad deals with the realities of cross-cultural product work every single day.

He joins Andrew Shaw on the cross-cultural alignment panel to share what he's learned about building products and teams that work across borders – and what tends to go wrong when organizations underestimate the challenge.

![Angad Abrol – Vice President of Product, Growth, FarEye](https://storage.ghost.io/c/06/40/064053a7-301f-45ab-974f-9f6baeaffcc5/content/images/2026/05/Angad-Abrol.png)

## Why Amsterdam, why now

The conversations happening in Amsterdam this May aren't the kind you'll find in a webinar or a LinkedIn thread. They're the ones that happen when experienced product leaders are in the same room, talking honestly about what's actually hard.

AI is changing what product management looks like. Customer expectations are rising. The pressure to be a business builder – not just a feature factory – has never been more real. The speakers above have navigated all of it, and they're coming to Amsterdam to share what they've figured out.

Two days. Some of Europe's best product minds. Conversations you won't have anywhere else.

Will we see you there?

👉 [**Secure your ticket**](https://world.productledalliance.com/location/amsterdam/register?utm%5Fsource=ghost&utm%5Fmedium=resources&utm%5Fcampaign=content)

[![Product-Led Summit, May 28 & 29, 2026 in Amsterdam – Grab your pass today](https://storage.ghost.io/c/06/40/064053a7-301f-45ab-974f-9f6baeaffcc5/content/images/2026/05/data-src-image-40c08890-4e4f-4c88-8420-c4e203da4940.png)](https://world.productledalliance.com/location/amsterdam/?utm%5Fsource=ghost&utm%5Fmedium=resources&utm%5Fcampaign=content)

*The Product-Led Summit Amsterdam takes place May 28–29, 2026 at the Postillion Hotel & Convention Centre, 9-11 Paul van Vlissingenstraat, Amsterdam. It's co-located with the* [*Product Operations Summit Amsterdam*](https://world.productledalliance.com/location/popsamsterdam/?utm%5Fsource=ghost&utm%5Fmedium=resources&utm%5Fcampaign=content)*.*