Keeping Our Humanity in Tech: Julia Austin on Why It Pays to Put People First in Product Development

In this episode of the WLEI Podcast, we speak with Julia Austin about what the lean product and process development principle “Put People First” looks like in practice.

An executive fellow at Harvard Business School, Julia is an executive coach with experience leading successful product teams in tech at companies like Akamai Technologies, VMware, Inc., and DigitalOcean. She is also author of the book, After the Idea: What It Really Takes to Create and Scale a Startup.

My conversation with Julia explores: 

• How to create effective collaboration across people and teams to support an excellent product or service 

• Where leaders and teams struggle in product development in 2025 

• How leaders can support people to drive high-performance 

• Standout moments of people working together vastly improve a product and service 

• How to leverage AI while keeping human beings at the center of work design 

• Why a culture of care and respect builds teams of responsible experts