24. Alexandra Leisse: From Singing Opera to All Things Product

Alexandra Leisse and Lauren today discuss her journey from pursuing music professionally to becoming VP of Product at VIBBIO. Alexandra has her master’s degree in opera and stage performance from the University for Dance and Music in Cologne, Germany. After finishing school, she worked as a soprano at theatres and concert halls all over Germany while also starting up her own little web development agency.

Since then, she’s moved to Norway and has gone on to find roles in user experience design and has spent over a decade in product related roles. Today, she’s the VP of Product at VIBBIO where she rebuilt the engineering team from the ground up, redesigned the application UI, and took full ownership of VIBBIO’s product strategy, in addition to her contributions to building the company itself. 

She’s the founder of Rails Girls Oslo and self-identifies as a ‘web rebel’. 

Today Lauren and Alexandra discuss the highlights of Alexandra’s musical career. She goes back in time to tell us about building her first website in 1995. Alexandra shares about the opportunity she saw in combining community building in the Linux world with social media. And soon landed a role as a community manager and has been in Product ever since!

She wears many hats at VIBBIO today, a startup, where the leadership is made up of all women!

Alexandra shares incredible advice for folks curious to enter tech and how to discover your passion and find your strengths within the industry. 

“Don't listen too much to what others think you can do and what others think that you're capable of. Because you don't really know that you're not capable of doing it until you've tried doing it...”

Resources:

Rails Girls Summer of Code

Connect with Alexandra on Twitter: @troubalex

We Belong Here Podcast: 

Follow Lauren on Twitter @LoLoCoding 

WeBelongPodcast.com website

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts 

Subscribe on Spotify 

LoLoCoding.com 

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