VP OF PRODUCT

From across the floor — your craft for the rest of us is that you write the brief in the meeting before the meeting, so we walk in already aligned and pretending to disagree only on the margins. I have stolen this trick. I will keep stealing it. Congratulations, VP. Design owes you the next three rounds at the Christmas party, minimum.

Boss — the only thing better than having you as a manager is having you as a manager who can now finally fix the org-chart thing I have been complaining to you about for two years. Looking forward to the first all-hands in the new role. From the team you built: thank you for staying. The other companies trying to hire you all year did not know you were never going to leave us, and we are not telling them.

From Customer Success — Imani, the single best thing about working with you is that when something we surface from the field is real, you act on it before the meeting is over, and when it is not real, you tell us, kindly, why. That is a rare combination, and it has made a measurable difference to how the field team feels about being heard. Thank you for caring about what we see. Onwards, VP.

Imani — saw the announcement on LinkedIn from Berlin this morning. About time. I will say what I have said to anyone who has asked me in the last four years: she is the best product person I have ever worked with, full stop. Congratulations from afar. Drinks on me when you are next on this side of the Channel — I owe you for the strategy memo you talked me through in 2022, which I have, frankly, still not paid back.

Imani — I have sat in many promotion debates over the years, on both sides of the table. Yours was, I think, the shortest in my memory. The conclusion arrived before the conversation did, and the only real question was why we had not done it eighteen months ago. Congratulations on the new role, and on the team you have spent seven years quietly building toward this. The board is, for the record, delighted.

From one of your oldest external partners — Imani, the way you run your roadmap reviews has shaped how I run mine, and I am not too proud to admit it. Two of my own product leads have asked me, separately, to send them the format. Congratulations on the elevation. Berlin and London both raise a glass tonight, and the next time you are over for the offsite I am taking you to dinner. No agenda. Just the wine list.

Imi — your mother and I are sitting in the kitchen reading the email together. Mum has read it three times. I have read it twice and pretended not to be crying. We are very proud. (Mum says: do not work too late this week. We know you will. We love you, sweetheart. Call us Sunday.)

Imani — I have been waiting to send this email for at least three years. I knew it was coming. So did everyone else who has ever sat across a table from you. Drinks Friday — I will pay this round; you can pay them when you have settled into the new title and forgotten what an IC paycheck looked like. Love, pride, and the same advice I gave you on day one of the Cambridge MBA, which still applies: do not let the title do the work the person should be doing. You never have. You will not start now. xx S

Imani — five years across the aisle from you. Every roadmap we've shipped, we shipped because you fought, kindly and exactly, for the version we'd be proud of in three years rather than three weeks. I am unreasonably glad to share an exec table with you now. The platform team voted, unprompted, to send champagne to your desk on the first of September. I tried to talk them down to flowers. I lost.