In product management, empathy is usually framed as understanding the user. We run interviews, map journeys, and obsess over customer pain points. But great products aren’t built by user empathy alone.

They’re built by teams that understand each other.

In reality, product leaders sit in the middle of competing pressures: customers asking for solutions, engineers navigating technical complexity, and businesses pushing for speed and growth. When empathy only flows toward the user, teams often end up frustrated, misaligned, and building features that look good in theory but fail in practice.

This talk explores why empathy is one of the most powerful, and misunderstood, tools in product leadership. Drawing on lessons from building software in the complex world of healthcare technology, she’ll show how empathy for users, engineers, stakeholders and systems transforms how teams make decisions and build products.

Because the most successful product teams don’t just understand their users. They understand each other.