Tony Leach

“Tony has an incredibly sense of what it takes to lead a product that provides real value to the customers AND to the business. Balancing those two things is much easier said than done, especially in a larger organization. When I was a UX Designer at PayPal, I interacted with him on a daily basis to understand the company objectives, customer needs and to get feedback on our proposed solutions. He was always easy to work with and demonstrated a great trust and respect for the various disciplines that make up the team. I'd also like to point out that he was often in the observation room during our Usability sessions to get a first-hand understanding of customer reactions, usage problems and adhoc insights from the session conversations - something more product owners should be doing. And finally, no matter how crazy some weeks (or months) got, he always kept a level head and never let the weight come down on the rest of us, which allowed the teams to continue to focus on our work. I hope to cross paths again someday :)”

“I highly recommend Tony. He blends a deep understanding of business/market drivers, how that connects to experience, how that gets developed and how it needs to ship. He knows when/how to make trade-offs on execution or to fight for something more broadly strategic. He's an encouraging partner for experience design teams: a great coach/ally/supporter/enthusiast. He focuses on the right things. I've had the opportunity to work with him closely during the design, development and roll-out of an overhaul of PayPal Here. Tony has been able to pull a lot of threads together well in leading product on this effort. He's got a clear understanding of the emerging mobile point of sale (MPOS) space, including what PayPal would directly brand and the larger connection with 3rd party developers. He's an effective manager of a far-flung global effort, with ambitious stakeholders and never enough supply of talent to feed those ambitions. He gets platforms (API/SDK), which is needed broadly in this space. Tony is a strong advocate of effective collaborative/iterative processes and will want to steer things back on track when teams or orgs get mindlessly stuck in the muck. He's got a bright, bright future. I'd love to work with him again and think that any organization considering bringing him onboard should.”