Working together
I lead product strategy and development, bringing together customer needs, technology and commercial choices to create new offers and grow existing businesses.
That work can involve entering a market, developing a new product or reconsidering an established offer. I help make the choices concrete: which customers to focus on, why they would choose us, how the business creates and captures value, and where to invest first.
I've led Product and Design at Go1, led product delivery across SEEK's international portfolio and led operations at Rex Software. At Smiling Mind, I lead product strategy and develop the commercial model for its emerging school offering. I bring a creative approach to the options, commercial judgement to the choices and practical experience leading the work through to delivery.
Layla has a rare blend of strategic foresight, commercial acumen, and customer-centric thinking. She understands how to help SaaS businesses grow sustainably without compromising profitability, culture, or product quality. Think high employee retention. High customer satisfaction. Low churn. Manageable tech debt. A culture of experimentation. Layla brings all of these together naturally.
Wilson Wong
CDO/CTO Executive Advisor
SEEK
Product and strategy leadership
My focus is executive product and strategy leadership in established organisations, with responsibility for product direction, commercial choices and the teams that deliver them.
That includes developing new propositions, rethinking an established offer, and deciding where a business has the opportunity to create something distinctive. I like staying close enough to the work to test the thinking and take responsibility for what follows.
Advisory and board contributions
I also bring an executive product and commercial perspective to selected advisory and board work. My contributions have included strategy development, digital product direction and examining technology opportunities and their consequences.
A useful conversation might begin with a specific decision, or with a possibility that hasn't yet been given enough attention.
Speaking and conversation
I speak about product strategy, creativity, technology and the human choices that shape what gets built. The talks draw on my own work and experiments, including what I've learned when an idea met a customer, a team or a constraint I hadn't understood properly.
Explore speaking topicsWhat people say
Layla demonstrated exceptional capability in fostering collaborative and innovative organisational culture, while also bringing strong strategic focus to product and operational leadership. Her work significantly strengthened cross-functional capability across the business. She is a highly professional executive who seamlessly integrates people strategy with product strategy, making her an impactful leader in any organisation.
Meghan Bach
Group Chief People Officer
Rex Software
She has an uncanny ability to distil complex commercial problems down to their key components and create strategies that deliver measurable outcomes. She is equally effective at building stakeholder alignment around a shared vision and translating strategy into execution.
Gregan McMahon
CEO
Layla was a respected and highly successful leader who brought together designers, developers, and marketers to build and grow a new multi-million dollar business within Envato. She understands how to build both great teams and great products. More importantly, she understands people, and how to help them perform at their best for themselves and for the business.
Adam Noonan
Head of Growth
Envato
Some of the thinking behind it
The essays offer a fuller sense of how I think, including the experiences that changed my mind.
Start a conversation
If the work here connects with an opportunity or question you're considering, I'd be glad to hear about it.
Tell me a little about what you have in mind, or the piece that brought you here.
I'm based in Melbourne, Australia.