Based in San Francisco, Gowri Rao is a core member of Egon Zehnder’s Technology, Product Officers and Leadership Advisory practices. Drawing on over 15 years of broad industry experience as a founder, investor, advisor and operator, she leverages her strengths to help clients achieve greater success at the intersection of products, technology, and business.
As a founder myself, I’m passionate about identifying and nurturing tomorrow’s leaders and matching them with companies where they will thrive and make a meaningful impact.
Before joining Egon Zehnder, Gowri cofounded CareerLark, a venture-funded SaaS startup specialized in building culture and productivity tools for modern distributed workforces. Prior to its acquisition, CareerLark’s employee engagement tools were prominently featured on Slack’s app directory and were widely utilized by the startup community. Before that, Gowri spent more than a decade in various product leadership roles including at Twilio where she was responsible for the messaging product line and at Amazon where she led product for the Kindle Direct Publishing platform.
Gowri earned a BSE in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Princeton University and an MBA from Columbia Business School. Outside work, she loves traveling, hiking, and spending time outdoors with her family and volunteering at the SPCA.
