A career accelerator in your inbox.

The Uncommon Executive is a weekly newsletter by Yue Zhao, a product executive with 15+ years of experience leading product & engineering teams across startups and FAANG. She shares her hard-won learnings on career growth, executive leadership, and combating bias. Learn more about Yue at her website or LinkedIn.

The newsletter covers topics such as team values, executive communication, strategy & execution, executive presence, maximizing relationships with managers, and overcoming people-pleasing tendencies.

I post every Thursday at 3:14 pm.

Here are some popular posts:

1. Being Collaborative May Hurt Your Chances Of Promotion

2. How To Anticipate And Come Out Ahead In Reorgs

3. How You Communicate Signals Your Seniority

4. 6 Conversation Starters with your VP

5. How To Fight Your People-Pleasing Inclinations

6. 7 Tactics to Gain Momentum When Transitioning Careers

7. Founder Mode, Innovation, and Why Women Are Well-Positioned To Lead

8. How to Escalate Well

9. Executive Presence - How to Level Up and Express the Authentic you

10. Approaching Bias with Curiosity

11. How to Maximize Your Relationship with Your Manager

12. Overcoming Fear and Reflexive Reliance - Managing the Shadows of Your Superpower

13. How I Transitioned into Management — Twice

14. How to Answer Questions Strategically with Executives

15. 6 Lessons in Leadership from Parenting

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About me

I’m a first-generation Chinese American. I have had a storied career for the last 20+ years that most Asian moms would be proud of:

• I got my engineering degree at the University of California, Berkeley.

• I flew around the world with McKinsey and Company as a business analyst

• I got my MBA at Harvard Business School, co-founded a failed wine startup, and met my tall, dark, and handsome husband

• I landed at Thumbtack as the 1st PM, riding a crazy growth trajectory with them as they became a Unicorn and raised more than $250M while I was there. I went from entry PM to Director in 4 years

• I made a hop over to Meta and Instagram. I led the IG feed and profile teams with 1B+ users, working from the brand-new San Francisco office near Salesforce Park. I also started a family and had 2 beautiful baby boys.

• Post the COVID-19 pandemic and baby haze, I left Meta to become the Chief Product & Technology officer at Fuzzy Pet Health, a series-C startup with $88M+ in funding.

• And now? I’m running my own coaching business as a solo entrepreneur.

All Subscribers Get:

• Weekly post to accelerate your career

• Access to Yue’s Coaching Corner, a kind and supportive community of women and minority aspiring executives.

• Monthly office hours with Yue on top-of-mind career challenges (through the community)

• 1:1 executive coaching (Founding Members only)

Paid Subscribers Get:

• Access to the Full Archives

• Exclusive discounts and first access to Yue’s events, courses, and coaching programs (which pays for itself!)

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Self-Promotion

For more of my work, check out:

• 1:1 executive coaching: https://theuncommonexecutive.com/coach

• The Uncommon Executive Leadership Accelerator for mid-career high performers: https://www.theuncommonexecutive.com/accelerator

• My Live Maven Courses: https://maven.com/yuezhao

• My book: The Uncommon Executive: Breakthrough to the C-suite as a Minority (4.8 stars on Amazon!)

I hope you enjoy what I write, and I genuinely look forward to hearing what you think as well!

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