EMPOWERED

CHAPTER 76Leader Profile: Avid Larizadeh Duggan

Path to Leadership

I first met Avid back in 2001, when I was running product at eBay. I received a call from a friend I had worked with at Netscape, and he told me just to trust him and hire this person because he was sure she would become an exceptional product person. I did trust him, and he was right.

Avid studied engineering but wanted to learn product. After rising through the product organization at eBay, she decided to get her MBA at Harvard. Afterward, she went back and forth between the venture capital world—mostly at Google Ventures—and leading tech product companies, most recently at Kobalt Music.

Along the way, she's invested and advised several strong product companies, and has been a leader for Code.org (the organization helping women and minorities learn to code).

Because of her contributions to technology and beyond, she was recently awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE).

Leadership in Action

Avid's own words follow.

My leadership philosophy in an innovation‐driven context can be simplified into three main components: (1) trust and safety (2) freedom and autonomy, and (3) culture and purpose.

Trust and Safety

A leader is not supposed to have all the answers, but is supposed to ask the right questions, and more important, create an environment where the right questions are surfaced.

To do so, a leader ...