Lance Willett

Lance is a Chief Product and innovator with over 24 years of experience. He uses his experience as a hands-on developer and mixes it with executive leadership to inspire his organizations to execute and build unique products. He started his career path as a Web Producer and opened the Simple Dream Web Studio company, where he developed simple, attractive, and easy-to-use websites and web applications. After that, he was a Web Developer as an independent contractor for a Photography company and developed Web applications and UI.

Lance became a product professional when he started to work at Automattic as Product Group Lead and led a team to work on various web design and development projects for WordPress.com. After a few years, he reached new positions and responsibilities within the same company and became Director of Product Operations and supported product teams and senior leaders to craft high-quality, engaging, and customer-centered experiences for people using WordPress.

Today as Chief Product and Technology Officer, he is Tumblr’s head of product, engineering, and data science organizations, responsible for the overall product strategy, technical direction, and business growth for one of the web’s most recognized social blogging platforms. He is an Executive Council Member at Collaborative Gain, a community of leaders who help build better, more customer, centric companies.