Empowering small businesses to reclaim time and accelerate growth through AI-powered automation | Inventor | Keynote Speaker

I lead enterprise AI adoption — turning ambition into execution.

With over 25 years guiding organizational transformation across industries, I’ve seen how the best processes, approaches, and technology fails without alignment, clarity, and a clear path to measurable impact. My work focuses on helping enterprises define what AI should do for their business, not just what it can do.

I specialize in building frameworks for responsible, scalable AI adoption that connect strategy, operations, and people. This includes:

Designing AI adoption roadmaps aligned with business goals and governance

Translating technical possibilities into clear, actionable business outcomes

Building cross-functional alignment between leadership, operations, and IT

Coaching teams to develop AI literacy and operational confidence

Heidi 💡 Araya

Valpak

Product Manager, Neighborhood Insights

Auth0

Led the agile product operations team, partnering with peers and C-suite to create a culture of experimentation, customer feedback loops, cross-functional collaboration, and iterative delivery of strategic initiatives

Product Manager for internal systems, using quantitative and qualitative data to develop solutions enabling us to scale collaboration, workflows, and data-driven decision-making

Led Miro implementation, achieving 100% adoption in under 3 months

Developed recurring user-experience survey, leveraging Looker for data visualization, driving evidence-based

Director, Agile Product Operations (Business Agility)

Led the agile product operations team, partnering with engineering and product leadership teams to enable scaled remote-first product teams across multiple time zones, establishing clear communication patterns and autonomous decision-making frameworks

Combined user interview insights with quantitative metrics to inform the design of a new PDLC and organizational planning process, increasing targeted outcome delivery by ~60%

Product Manager for internal systems, developing tools and process solutions to maintain adaptability while aligning company strategy to team-level execution

Partnered with Sales leadership to design and implement a streamlined system for capturing, prioritizing, and monitoring customer feature requests

Senior Manager, Agile Product Operations (Business Agility)

Built and led the first agile coaching team, introducing experimentation and a user-centric agile product development approach in a high-growth SaaS startup

Developed user-friendly workflows and standards that decreased onboarding time and increased cross-team collaboration - making it easier for remote teams to find information and work together effectively

Developed and launched an integrated solution between Jira and Salesforce using third-party APIs to streamline support escalation workflow, reducing response time by ~60%. Earned company’s Hall of Fame award for business impact

Partnered with Customer Success and Product Security leaders to develop and implement revised SLAs for customer support and product security escalations

Agile Practice Leader

InVision

Guided SaaS product teams in adopting agile practices to achieve more impactful product results

Initiated paired programming adoption, reducing the product engineering team's cycle time by 81%

Facilitated agile ceremonies, including daily stand-ups, sprint planning, reviews, and retrospectives

Agile Product Delivery Coach

New York Life Insurance Company

Led cross-functional technical teams to develop user stories, story maps, and healthy customer feedback loops

Optimized reporting processes, saving scrum leads 5 hours weekly through Jira dashboard implementation

Improved quarterly planning alignment with strategic organizational goals

Scrum Master / Product Delivery Project Manager

Nielsen

Led organization transformation of 43 globally distributed teams from waterfall to agile methods, increasing release frequency from semi-annual to bi-weekly

Developed and launched a training portal, enabling operational excellence and strategic alignment

Agile Transformation Program Manager

Led requirements gathering and product ownership for internal tool modernization initiative, collaborating with data scientists and end users to define both functional and non-functional requirements

Developed comprehensive user flows and acceptance criteria, translating complex statistical requirements into clear user stories and test cases

Business Analyst/Project Manager

Restaurant Magic Software

Led all teams responsible for customer implementations, training, and customer support. Fostered a culture of innovation, cross-functional collaboration, and customer-centricity

Created implementation guides, service descriptions, and best practice documentation for clients and internal teams to use during the implementation process and for post-implementation support

Custom Reports Product Manager, partnering with teams and customers to collect feedback, analyze usage patterns, and develop user-centric solutions for the flagship SaaS product

Head of Customer Success

Partnered with customers throughout implementation, from planning through completion

Enhanced release process to improve customer experience and feedback loops

Revised QA testing processes to improve defect catch rate by 39%

Simplified implementation process, leading to ~50% reduction in duration

Implementation Project Manager / Business Analyst

Geac

Led a team of technicians for 5 different point-of-sale systems, ensuring consistency in support

Trained customers on new flagship products, ensuring smooth adoption and satisfaction

Developed training manuals and call-center wizards to improve consistency in customer experience

Senior Customer Support Technician, Product Specialist & Training Lead

My approach pairs decades of operational experience with data insights to create solutions people actually use and value. The impact is clear and repeatable - more strategic outcomes while improving responsiveness to customer and market changes.

Involving people in solutions affecting them isn't just good practice - it's good business. When we design solutions to align with how people actually work, change happens faster and lasts longer. 

I believe that fostering a culture that values diversity, equity, and inclusivity is critical to innovation and solving the most challenging problems. I champion these values not only as guiding principles for team dynamics but also as essential components of organizational success in today's global and multifaceted marketplace.

taplio

The Battle

Heidi 💡 Araya

Cristin Hernandez

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