Mounica Veggalam

Mounica Veggalam, Leadership Coach

Most impactful leadership lies at the intersection of:
- Personal growth
- Showing up with strong presence
- Learning to connect and lead other humans

I support leaders to scale their impact and create business results by guiding them through the above areas.

Career and Leadership Coach

Microsoft

I often get asked, “How are you a leadership coach when you haven’t been a manager yourself?”

The leadership I talk about is not strategic or tactical.

It’s self-leadership.

Your career trajectory — whether you reach C-Suite heights, or stay stuck in the middle — it starts with you. With what’s going on inside you.

This is the powerful lesson I realized at Microsoft. 

I observed inadequate leadership, average leadership, and excellent leadership. 

I was in heated design discussion rooms, witnessed managers make technical choices from their insecurities, and noticed the best empathetic leaders lost in overwhelm without any recognition.

I also saw powerful leadership from people who challenged the status quo. And challenged their own beliefs.

They were the people who did the right thing
- even when they’re anxious,
- even when they’re frustrated,
- even when they were at the edge of saying, “screw this sh**”

Your frustrations, disappointments, and resentments are where your growth opportunities lie.

When you understand and transform your inner landscape, your capacity for leadership expands, and you'll see the outside results: the promotion, the better project, and the better titles.

That’s the best way to make an impact in this world.

This is transformational leadership.

If you want to learn to lead your people from the inside-out, reach out and we’ll talk.

I am deeply invested in my personal transformation and leadership. That’s how I’m a leadership coach. That’s how I lead my clients to discover entirely new ways of presenting themselves.

I offer trainings, coaching and deep personal transformation, so you can feel fulfilled in your leadership mission. Send me a private message and we’ll chat.

Software Engineer

Practice Fusion

One of my mentors there asked, “Would you rather teach your kids to be smart or to be kind?”

What if I could do both?

With that question, I realized how starkly I’m drawn to deep philosophical concepts and the nature of the human mind. 

And this realization would set it in years later. But I didn’t know that then.

This internship was my entry into the software engineering world. 

It was incredible, surrounded by brilliant people in the startup culture. This is where I released my first feature into production, had my first exceptional manager, and gave my first talk in front of 200 smart people (I was terrible). 

It paved the way for another incredible role at Microsoft.

I won’t lie— I was arrogant about my IQ and my ability to grasp technical concepts quickly.

But I also had crippling self-doubt and introversion that got in the way of my impact.

Even through all that, a couple of things are common today:
— I value people and human connection. Regardless of my arrogance and self-doubt.
— I’m constantly pushing myself beyond my comfort zone. No matter how scary it is.
— I always look at my side of things. Even when I don’t want to. Especially when I don’t want to.

Today, this helps me serve my clients powerfully, 
— I point to the truth at the risk of them not liking me.
— I can deeply support them in facing the risks and uncertainities.
— I invest time and energy in confronting my beliefs and blindspots, so they don’t have to manage my ego.

It's a deeply rewarding experience.

Software Development Engineer Intern

Life & leadership coach for professionals, leaders and entrepreneurs | Software engineer turned coach & inner-work guide

Hi there! 👋 I’m Mounica. I help visionary tech leaders fast-track their careers so they can create more impact, build stronger teams, and bring their vision to reality, all with joyful life-balance.

I’m a software engineer turned transformational coach. Throughout my career, I was driven and confident on the outside. I achieved accolades, promotions, and patents. On the side, I tried to handle all my dissatisfaction with life through meditation and spiritual studies.

But none of that changed the *experience of life.*

I was always looking into the future for everything to settle down. My conversations lacked joy. I was subtly controlling in my relationships so I didn't break down. I was obsessed with achievement. 

Now I have a general sense of creative joy while taking up big projects. And I'm more present with my family.

It wasn't an overnight transformation (nothing worthwhile ever is). I approach this work from an intersection of developmental psychology (think ontological leadership and Robert Kegan's constructive map) and Eastern non-dual spirituality. 

Here are 3 levels of transformation you can expect through working with me:
1. Embodying your leadership voice & an internal compass, so you show Executive Presence.
2. Holding multiple, often conflicting, perspectives, so you bring a vision you deeply desire to reality.
3. Holding multiple identities, so you find creative joy in every choice you make (and have you ready for non-dual interconnected perception of the world).

This work is not about adding knowledge or skills but creating a *fundamentally different kind of mind* that takes the largest perspective, is more complex, and can handle more uncertainty.

My clients report:
- Influence without losing their ethics or empathy
- Command respect in a room full of brilliant (or skeptical) people
- Have ease, joy, and fun creating the results they want

If you’re curious, send me a DM!

Helping tech managers fast-track their careers with personalized 1:1 coaching.

I help with -
- Making tough career decisions
- Landing the next big role and making a vertical moves
- Transforming into a leader who delivers, impacts, and inspires.

Management skills and Relationships come easy to people managers. But what sets you apart is the Leadership mindset. I help managers become leaders and achieve their career goals along the way. 

The typical titles of my clients include:
- Engineering Manager
- Director of Engineering/Program/Product Management
- PM Manager
- Senior/Principal Engineers/PM

Smartpin

Smartpin is a cloud-native, self-serve asset tracking platform delivering real-time visibility for the physical world—no infrastructure required. Built on a commercial-grade Bluetooth network (80M+ location gateways via Tile, Life360, and Hubble), Smartpin is engineered for scale, resilience, and zero-touch deployment. From hardware to cloud, we’ve rethought asset visibility from the ground up—radically simple to start, infinitely scalable in the field. Next up: Bluetooth direct-to-satellite connectivity and AI-powered insights for operations teams everywhere.

Founding Head of Engineering

Jossie Haines Consulting

Coaching and consulting company on a mission to retain women in tech.

Services include:
- Executive coach empowering women in tech to be heard, lead authentically, and play by their rules! 

- Advisor for technology companies and leaders who want to learn how to use empathetic management principles and inclusive culture-building to retain their top talent and build happier, more motivated teams.  
- Startup technical advisor at the intersection of inclusion and technology. Technology expertise in IoT, Bluetooth integrations, voice assistants, e-commerce, and subscription infrastructure.

CEO/Founder

Ribbiot

Advising Ribbiot on building an asset tracking platform for construction.

Technical Advisor

BarRaiser

I share my knowledge of technology, and diversity, equity, and inclusion to empower BarRaiser to design an interview bot assistant that makes interviews consistent and fair, eliminates bias from the process, and provides equity.

Tile

I was the VP of Software Engineering and Head of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) at Tile, having grown the team by 40% in my first 5 months from 29 to 55.  I led the software engineering organization including mobile, backend, web, platform, data, and QA engineering at Tile.  I was in charge of the web re-platform project modernizing our web stack. 

Have you ever asked your Google Home, “Ring my keys”? That is one of many partner integrations I’ve led with companies including Google, Comcast, Amazon, Intel, and HP. If you’re looking to buy a new Tile on tile.com, you’ve been powered by the e-commerce site that my web team managed ensuring we could bring in millions in revenue. I also drove the DEI initiatives at Tile including developing and implementing a company-wide mentoring program, people leader training, defining the yearly strategy and budget, and working within Tile’s Executive Team to ensure DEI was incorporated in all aspects of our business.

VP of Software Engineering; Head of DEI

- Manage the 7-person remote web team focused on building, managing, and scaling the e-commerce site which handles all of Tile’s direct e-commerce accounting for 30% of overall company revenue. Within 2 months of taking over management of the team, team morale improved significantly, team throughput was at an all-time high, and we implemented efficiency measures to the site that reduced API fees by thousands of dollars, and improved site speed leading to a flawless holiday e-commerce execution exceeding revenue targets by 30%.

- Collaborate with marketing, product, customer care, analytics, and legal teams to ensure we are delivering the best customer experience on the web for our users. 

- Head of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion initiatives at Tile. I work within the Executive team to build company-wide initiatives including creating the DEI roadmap, goals, and metrics, training people leaders, and speaking publicly about the importance of empathy. Focus on developing leaders that lead with compassion, build trust, admit mistakes, measure what matters, find the right level of the process, and are skilled multipliers.  

- Delivered over 40 talks on engineering with empathy, empathetic leadership, retaining women in tech, as well as the Tile architecture and technology over the last 2 years.

- Continue driving partner integration efforts including working with Amazon, Intel, HP, and other major laptop OEMs. Define architecture and long term product vision and strategy for these integrations.

Sr Director, Platform & Web Engineering; Head of DEI

Led the collaboration with Intel to develop technology that enables millions of Intel-based laptops to behave as Tiles without additional hardware requirements; driving the efforts through all aspects of engineering collaborating with Intel and all of the major laptop OEMs to launch these initiatives including building a 5 person remote Windows team to implement our new Tile Windows Application.

Sr Director of Platform Engineering

- Led the development efforts from ideation through the launch of enabling HP laptops to be enabled as Tiles.  Within 3 months of ideation, had partnered with a 3rd party Windows development team to build a Tile Windows Application prototype.  I then brought the work in-house and built a 5 person Windows team to take the prototype to production.  

- Led platform engineering initiatives across the entire engineering organization, including enabling millions of smart home devices to find and ring Tile location finding devices; partnered with Google, Amazon, and Comcast in defining the architecture for ringing Tiles; directed mobile, backend, web, windows, and firmware engineering teams throughout the creation and launch of Tile device location-finding solutions for consumer technology products.

- DEI Lead: Designed, implemented, and led the Tile mentoring program.  67% of the company participates, with 90% executive team participation.  95% of participants have said that the mentoring program has enhanced their Tile experience and has kept them at Tile.

Platform Engineering Director

- Expert technical consultant for Tile’s premium subscription service e-commerce website, from conception through the introduction of software infrastructures. 
- Collaborative partner with marketing, design, and product development teams to identify and deliver solutions to technical and functional requirements of new software.
- Piloted innovative, specialized design and integration of software-driven services, including initiating Stripe e-commerce payment provider and integrating A/B experimentation using Optimizely to analyze performance.
- Translated operational needs into stable, supportable software platforms using Node.js, REACT, and PHP.

Freelance Software Developer

Freelance work focused on building and designing consumer technology, coaching engineering leaders in DEI and leadership, and training small business owners on technology.

Technical Consultant

Apple

Governed engineering teams and furthered strategies for Siri Media Domains (TV, movie, sports, & music) while crafting and launching Siri support on HomePod.

◆ ORGANIZATIONAL IMPACT ◆
🔹 Won Emmy for Siri Apple TV; piloted the crafting and implementation of TV partner onboarding process for recognizing new TV partners and their content in Siri on Apple TV.
🔹 Cross-functional partnership with marketing department to create Siri on Apple TV promotions for customer-facing events.
🔹 Founded and led the Women@Siri professional group focused on meeting with women in tech to discuss technology trends and opportunities.

Siri Domains Engineering Manager

Zynga

Influencer and strategic player to conceive new technologies for advertising use in games, including cross-promotions, third-party ads, and rewarded ads; navigated systems reliability, which generated revenue representing 25% of annual revenue.

ORGANIZATIONAL IMPACT
🔹 Won the Green Beret Award for superior leadership for multiple groups and teams throughout development efforts that drove significant profits.
🔹 Integrated engineered solution across multiple platforms, including social media, web sites, and third-party services, ensuring the successful processing of approximately 2B client/server calls per day.

Director of Engineering

Fabricated software-driven systems, services, and processes that significantly enhanced customer experiences and technology performance across multiple Zynga gaming titles.

◆ ORGANIZATIONAL IMPACT ◆
🔹 Constructed mechanisms to ignite customer engagement and product marketing by crafting and instituting innovative backend services and database architectures, launching enhanced storage systems and support processes, and engineering email management solutions.

Principal Software Engineer

American Express

Piloted a US & India-based engineering team in charge of developing the Interactive Voice Response API for AMEX’s Serve platform customers.

Director of Engineering, Serve Platform

Spearheaded the creation and introduction of systems, products, and features for the CHEFVILLE, CITYVILLE, and CAFÉ WORLD game titles. Provided design support for the storage service for CHEFVILLE, which later became the central storage service for all Zynga games.

Director Of Engineering

Senior Engineering Manager

Executive Coach Empowering Women Leaders to Thrive in Tech | ex-VP of Engineering | Keynote Speaker

Are you a woman manager or director in tech struggling with being asked to do more with less?

I know how hard it can be at times to:

▶ Maintain your professional growth trajectory amidst frequent organizational changes and economic uncertainty

▶ Quickly adapt to shifting strategic goals without losing sight of current projects or feeling like no real progress is being made

▶ Maintain motivation and productivity when there is a lot of uncertainty as well as stagnation when it comes to available opportunities

▶ Balance the increased workload with personal life.

In my 20+ year career in Engineering and over a decade in leadership working for companies like NetApp, Zynga, Apple, and Tile, I've experienced all these challenges.

I know firsthand that being a woman in tech leadership is hard.

​After all, over 50% of women leave tech by age 35.

I was about to be part of this statistic.

When I left Apple in early 2018, I was burnt out, tired of the bias women in tech face, and ready to walk away.

I realized that I'd be unable to change the future and create technology that truly accounts for the needs of everyone.

I couldn't do that.

It empowered me to return and start my mission to keep women in tech.

I joined Tile, launched a mentoring program that empowered seven folks to switch roles within the company, led our DEI efforts, and helped build an amazing, inclusive culture while being a high-performing engineering leader.

I worked with the CEO to create my VPE role and enabled my boss to be promoted to CTO so we could scale the engineering organization from 29 to 55 in 4.5 months in the middle of the COVID pandemic.

I had another realization—while I could do this one company at a time, I wouldn't be moving the needle on my mission.

This led me to become an Executive & Leadership Coach for women in tech.

Through my 200+ hours of coaching, I supported numerous women leaders in tech to:

▶ Deal with being asked to do more with fewer resources while navigating a lot of uncertainty

▶ Master the leadership game, get promoted, and make an impact

▶ Keep their teams motivated and productive through company acquisitions, reorgs, or financial downturn

▶ Reduce stress and more.

So, if you are a woman leader in tech looking for support, schedule a Free Strategy call to explore whether coaching together is a fit.

ONLY 1 Q3 COACHING SPOT LEFT! Book a call today:

📞 https://form.jotform.com/Jossie_Haines/strategy-call-with-jossie

"Working with Jossie has taken me to the next level in my leadership skills." - Lou Collins
Head of Engineering, Wrapbook

Jossie Haines

I spent years thinking "not micromanaging" made me a great leader.

Until I watched a brilliant engineer at Apple feel completely unsupported under my leadership.

A recent coaching client shared an almost identical story. They were so proud of their hands-off approach with their team. Senior engineers loved the autonomy. Junior engineers? They were drowning.

One junior engineer couldn't even start a project they'd been assigned. Weeks of spinning. Growing frustration. Eroding trust.

My client thought they were avoiding micromanagement.
They were actually being an absent manager.

There's this massive gap between micromanaging and abandoning your team. Most of us don't see it until someone fails.

Support isn't micromanagement. 

When we worked through this, we identified three distinct approaches:
→ Senior engineers: High autonomy, strategic check-ins
→ Mid-level engineers: Collaborative planning, regular touchpoints
→ Junior engineers: Structured guidance, frequent pairing

The same "freedom" that empowers your senior folks can completely overwhelm someone new.

My client started having different conversations with each team member. Asked what support looked like for them. Some wanted weekly architecture reviews. Others needed daily standup check-ins. One just needed permission to ask "dumb questions."

The shift was immediate. That struggling junior engineer? Started shipping code within two weeks.

Great leadership isn't having one style that works.
It's having the range to meet each person where they are.

Sometimes the kindest thing you can do is roll up your sleeves and work through something together. That's not micromanaging. That's leading.

What does "supportive" look like for each person on your team?

#EngineeringLeadership #ManagementStyles #TechLeadership

Helping Technology Leaders Multiply Their Impact through Human-focused Leadership + AI | Executive & Leadership Coach | Fractional Engineering & Product Leader/Advisor | ex-Apple, Tile (VPE) | Champion for Women in Tech

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