We will have two guests today (one of them a former CS 179 student and TF) who will share their experiences and insights related to product development.

Hamish Forsyth (CEO) leads OneLeap’s overall development and is responsible for major innovation strategy and capability projects with key FTSE100/F500 clients, often at excom level. He speaks globally on innovation and strategy and has guest-lectured at Cambridge. Prior to founding OneLeap, Hamish was a senior adviser in the UK Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, consulted independently, and was a lawyer and trade negotiator working on international free trade agreements in China and at the World Trade Organisation. He also built several non-profit initiatives in education and human rights fields. He holds an MBA (Dist.) together with degrees in Law and Philosophy. He was a Cambridge Gates Scholar.

Julia Mitelman, Strategist at OneLeap and a former CS 179 TF, develops business strategy and innovation systems. She has founded ventures ranging from talent management to business productivity software; she’s worked with internet TV startup Philo, now one of FastCompany’s 50 Most Innovative Companies; and she ran the Harvard Innovation Lab’s first incubator program. Prior to OneLeap, Julia worked as a Product Manager for Windows 10 at Microsoft. Julia graduated with a degree in psychology and computer science from Harvard University.  In Spring of 2013, Julia was a TF for CS 179 having taken the course a couple of years earlier.

Julia and Hamish made a subset of their slides available to us.