Safety and Security as a Product Strategy Panel@GitHub
[Event is at capacity. Please subscribe to the SF Tech Unleashed calendar for future events. We'd love to see you there.]
Security and safety aren’t just compliance requirements; they’re about protecting your product, your customers, and the experiences that build trust. Join product, engineering, and security leaders Savita Kini (AI/ML Product Exec, formerly Cisco, now founding a stealth startup), Chris Butler (Director of Product Management Operations, formerly Google, Microsoft, and Waze), and Wendy Jin (Security Engineering Manager at Airbnb, formerly Intuit and VMware) for a candid conversation.
If you're a builder or product leader who believes that customer trust shouldn't be an afterthought, this session is for you.
What we’ll cover:
- How the definition of security and safety is evolving in the AI era
- Practical advice on prioritizing security and safety in roadmap planning without slowing innovation
- Why specific users, including women, children, and marginalized groups, face the greatest risks, and how leaders can advocate for them even when their voices aren’t in the room
- How security and safety drive adoption and can become your strongest market differentiators
- FAQ from the audience
After the panel, there will be time to network mingle with the speakers and likeminded leaders.
Space is limited. RSVP now!
About the Speakers:
Savita Kini is an award-winning AI/ML product and business executive with 20+ years of experience transforming emerging technologies into market-leading solutions across startups, pre-IPO, and Fortune 500 companies. She is currently working on a stealth, AI-driven startup focused on improving aging and chronic disease care. Previously, she led AI/ML features at Cisco in Speech and Computer Vision that powered new experiences for 100M+ global users. She came to Cisco through BabbleLabs, a Speech AI startup, where she led product and GTM enabling its successful acquisition. A pioneer in Responsible AI, she established new frameworks for AI transparency now adopted enterprise-wide at Cisco. Savita has launched and been involved in Women in tech & AI initiatives in US & India. She actively mentors startups via leading accelerators at Cornell University, Alchemist, and Plug-n-Play. She holds an MBA from Cornell University, an M.S. in Computer Engineering from Texas A&M University, and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Mumbai, with additional AI/ML specialization from Stanford University.
Chris Butler is a chaotic good product manager, writer, and speaker. He brings extensive experience in product leadership and operations from top companies including Microsoft, Waze, KAYAK, Facebook Reality Labs, Cognizant, and Google. Currently, Chris serves as Director of Product Operations for GitHub's Synapse team, where he leads bold experimentation in process automation powered by AI. Previously at GitHub he was the lead responsible AI champ.
Wendy Jin is an Engineering Manager at Airbnb. She leads software development teams, focusing on strategy and empowering them to deliver Airbnb’s internal product for security and trust. Her work at Airbnb includes security observability, AI-driven data security, and cloud infrastructure. She has partnered with Privacy, Data Governance, Product, and ML teams to advance Airbnb’s Data Protection Program, where she introduced AI-driven data classification and advanced machine learning models to strengthen protections, drive policy enforcement, and build defense-in-depth solutions. Prior to Airbnb, she was a Staff Software Engineer at Intuit and an Application and Cloud Security Engineer at VMware, specializing in software security research and engineering. Outside of work, she’s the founder and board member of MusicNBrain, a non-profit organization that empowers the next generation of musicians. She holds a PhD in Computer Science focused on System and Network Security, Privacy from George Mason University and BA from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China.
Christina Hsu (moderator) is the Founder of SF Tech Unleashed, a community bringing together industry leaders to learn best practices to make technology safe and secure. She is currently a Senior Product Marketing Manager at a high growth FinTech startup. As a product marketing leader, she is passionate about storytelling and bringing ambitious people together. She is also a column writer for a leading APAC publication writing about AI's impact on cybersecurity and customer trust and a mentor at StartX, Stanford’s startup accelerator, advising early-stage founders on growth and go-to-market strategy. Before Arta, she led Product Marketing at high-growth tech startups in the US and APAC, including Bluevine and Mozilla. Earlier in her career, she advised Fortune 500 executives on business strategy as a consultant at KPMG. She holds an MBA from Berkeley-Haas School of Business and BA from University of Rochester.
This event is a part of #SFTechWeek—a week of events hosted by VCs and startups to bring together the tech ecosystem. Learn more at www.tech-week.com.