The Women of Hopper: International Women's Day 2023
In honor of International Women’s Day, we’re celebrating the women of Hopper by spotlighting some of our amazing female leaders!
Brianna Schneider - Wed Mar 08 2023
Today marks International Women’s Day. We wanted to take the time to commemorate some of our fabulous female tech leaders at Hopper – and celebrate their greatest accomplishments as well as share their top advice for women in technology.
One particular point of pride at Hopper is the scale of our female leadership – an unfortunate rarity in the travel and tech landscapes. Hopper’s male-to-female ratio is 60:40, and many of those women are leaders in the company, including Head of Flights Marketplace, Head of Price Freeze, Head of CX, Head of Hotels Marketplace, Head of Homes Marketplace, and many more. Notably, our GM of Fintech, Ella Alkalay Schreiber, was just named to Business Insider’s 100 People Transforming Business.
To hear more insights, join Hopper’s Head of Price Freeze, Anwesha Bhattacharjee, and Director of Software Development, Anne Raby, at Women Techmakers Montreal on April 15th!
Meet Some of Hopper’s Female Leaders!
Ella Alkalay Schreiber - GM of Fintech
Tel Aviv, Israel
How did you first get into your current field?
I first entered the field of data science in Israel, at Outbrain, the world’s leading performance-driven discovery and native advertising platform. I was a data scientist in the recommendations group, where we served personalized content recommendations to over 500 million unique users. The transition to Hopper from there was an organic one, as Outbrain’s recommender systems are similar to the algorithms at the core of Hopper’s fintech product offering.
What’s your proudest accomplishment working at Hopper?
Over 40% of the company’s revenue is now generated from Hopper’s fintech offerings, whereas in early 2019 almost 99% of revenue was generated from just flight bookings. These fintech products, including Price Freeze, Cancel for Any Reason and Flight Disruption Guarantee, are dynamically-priced flexibility products that offer customers peace-of-mind when planning and booking their travel.
The success of these fintech products has led to the next stage of Hopper growth: Hopper Cloud. Through this B2B distribution initiative, travel partners are able to integrate Hopper’s fintech features, which are proven to drive material revenue while Hopper takes on all financial risk. Hopper Cloud is already on track to make more revenue this year than all of Hopper did in 2021.
And we’re just getting started. The fintech team at Hopper is world-class, and I am so proud to work with such driven, talented, and dedicated people. They are truly key to the success of these products.
What advice do you have for women looking to grow within the company they work for?
Don’t compromise and strive to be the best in your field. Focus on delivering results, always keep learning, and work backwards from the company’s critical path and goals.
What’s your favorite thing about working for Hopper?
We have unbelievably smart people here who are passionate about the work they do and the company’s mission. It’s a highly innovative environment which fosters a lot of creativity and going after big ideas.
We thrive at identifying hard problems, with significant potential upside, going all in, and accomplishing our goals. The Hopper team prides itself on turning ideas into successful new businesses and products that truly transform the travel industry.
Isabela Ozamiz - Software Development Manager, Capital One Travel Portal
Toronto, ON
What’s your favorite thing about working for Hopper?
Autonomy and ownership! I've been given amazing opportunities to prove myself here at Hopper and seeing the direct impact my work has on customers has been the most rewarding part of my job.
What advice do you have for women looking to grow within the company they work for?
Don't be afraid to seek mentorship from others. Chances are someone else has been through or felt what you are feeling before and will be willing to help you.
What’s your proudest accomplishment working at Hopper?
Creating and launching the Capital One Travel Portal with my amazing and talented co-workers.
How did you first get into your current field?
I decided to take a 4 month internship in software after my second year of University and fell in love!
Mariana Mazzero - Senior Software Engineering Manager, Growth
Miami, FL
How did you first get into your current field?
I have been using computers since I was a little girl, mostly for design and art-related things, yet I was always interested in technology. I tried a design-technology oriented degree in University, but didn’t like it. I finished that year and switched to Computer Science and absolutely loved it!
What’s your favorite thing about working for Hopper?
There is no red tape and we work fast. I love that when we iterate over products, it’s never just a Product decision, the engineers contribute with ideas and brainstorming sessions. I have never worked in a team so collaborative where we all have the same goals and care deeply about the features we work on.
What advice do you have for women looking to grow within the company they work for?
Imposter syndrome is something we all have. I think that rather than trying to get rid of it, we should try to manage it and flip it as positive talk towards ourselves. This not only helps with combatting that feeling, but also helps you grow as a professional and a human!
What’s your proudest accomplishment working at Hopper?
Growing the team to a full roster of super-talented engineers and supporting their career goals. I got support for 4 promotions for Top Tier engineers who had been in the same positions for years!
Anwesha Bhattacharjee - Head of Price Freeze
Montreal, Canada
How did you first get into your current field?
I graduated out of my doctoral program and started as a Data Scientist in travel. Very quickly, I realized, the work I was doing was impactful for customers, but I could do so much more if I could manage the end-to-end execution and delivery of the ideas I was helping validate. That's when I realized — product is my passion. A senior (female) executive took a chance on me when I negotiated into a data PM role, and here I am, 5 years later, still in product and finding new challenges to solve every day!
What’s your favorite thing about working for Hopper?
Hopper has an incredible product-led culture. If someone is genuinely passionate, wants to learn every day, be among high performers constantly and grow their product skills exponentially, that’s Hopper. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is whether we make our customers happy and save them money. It has a lot of tangible impact on a large group of people. And the best part? All I have to do is show up to work, do my best, stay passionate, and deliver.
What advice do you have for women looking to grow in the company they work for?
While there is no formula to personal growth, here are a few reminders that have served me well: Ask for more at work, but don’t wait for someone to give you more. Find your own avenues to seek out more to do. When you see a problem, solve it. Find others who will help you solve it. Don’t make it someone else’s problem. Ask for help and invite feedback from those you trust. No one is perfect, no one expects you to be perfect. The more you can accept constructive criticism without taking it personally, the faster you grow. Be firm and direct. There is nothing more efficient than getting to the point fast. If your brand is to get the job done, beating around the bush won’t get you there.
Lexi Caron - Head of Hotels Marketplace
Boston, MA
How did you first get into your current field?
Early in my career, I tried out a few different roles across business and technology. I realized I wanted a role where I could use technology to drive impact and thought impact investing would be the best way to do this at scale. After a couple stints in venture capital and feedback from other investors, it was obvious that I prefer to be the one building things, and that’s what led me to product management.
What’s your proudest accomplishment working at Hopper?
My proudest accomplishment at Hopper is building the Hotels Marketplace team. When I took it on in 2021, we were just a team of five: four engineers and myself as the product manager. Now, we have an incredible 30 person org including engineers, product managers and leaders, and product designers. This team has helped grow Hopper’s hotel business 800% in that time.
What advice do you have for women looking to grow within the company they work for?
Start doing the job you want today. You can usually start to incorporate the work you want to do into your day-to-day, even if it’s just in a small way. For example, if you’re an engineer who is interested in product management, offer to help out with your PM’s experiment analysis. Then, it’s easier to make the case for why you should transition to that role full-time, since you’ve already stepped up and started contributing in that way.
What’s your favorite thing about working for Hopper?
My favorite things about Hopper are the ownership each team has over their area and the ability to drive massive impact for customers and the business.
June Yuan - Lead Product Manager - Super App
Austin, TX
How did you first get into your current field?
I had been working in the financial service industry for 5+ years, and I wanted to get into product management. I knew that it was going to be a hard sell given my background at the time so I taught myself SQL as it is a desired Product Manager skill set. Later on, an opportunity emerged from a personal connection, and my SQL skill really paid off during the interview process. That’s how I got my first PM role.
What’s your proudest accomplishment working at Hopper?
Pulled the whole team together and launched a record-breaking Travel Deal Tuesday Sale. I am so proud of our teams for delivering our most ambitious sale yet. Everyone came together, and we shipped so many new features with a tight timeline.
What advice do you have for women looking to grow within the company they work for?
Ask for feedback proactively. Every piece of feedback, especially ones coming from subject-matter experts, is an opportunity to hone your craft and take it to the next level. Get in the center of action and chime in. If you have an idea and can back it up with facts and data or if you have an opinion about a decision, don’t self-censor and quietly lean back. Be present and speak up.
What’s your favorite thing about working for Hopper?
I really enjoy the high level of ownership and autonomy I have in my work as Hopper puts a lot of trust in its people to do the right thing. Also, I love that I’m surrounded by coworkers with a strong bias for action. We get things done!
Anne Raby - Director of Software Development - Programmatic Merchandising
Montreal, Canada
How did you first get into your current field?
By a non-linear path, after completing a Bachelors in fundamental mathematics, I realized that I wanted to solve more concrete problems than what I could work on in a Masters. I discovered programming through electives in University and completely loved them. I moved on to complete a Bachelors in Computer Science part-time. I have been oscillating between Software Development and Site Reliability Engineering ever since. Always loved solving puzzles and complex problems – the more complex the problems got, the more I realized I needed more people to solve them efficiently which sinuously got me into leadership!
What’s your favorite thing about working for Hopper?
Besides the smart people… Quickly seeing the results of my work have an impact on our customers and the company.
What advice do you have for women looking to grow within the company they work for?
Find a mentor, seize the opportunities, try out new things, and don’t hesitate to look outside your current company if your talent is not getting recognized.
What’s your proudest accomplishment working at Hopper?
It’s a tough tie between growing amazing people and creating innovative products from zero to something big. Hotel Price Freeze from nothing to what it is today with an awesome team.
In the works. Personalized Product Feed recommendations from 0 to what it will be in a couple of months, with again, another amazing team. All the people that I have hired or interviewed that are now in leadership roles or that grew in their careers.
Melany Rozo - Senior Software Engineering Manager - Cars
Colombia
What advice do you have for women looking to grow within the company they work for?
Have a lot of ownership of the things you are working on, if you act as the owner of the things you and your team do, you’ll be able to become a reference for others, and you’ll learn to deliver true value to the product and its users. I would also say, pairing with people outside your team and being curious about what’s happening around in the company will help you grow and take on opportunities that you may not have known of otherwise.
What’s your favorite thing about working for Hopper?
You are immersed in an environment where you never stop learning. I've been at Hopper for a bit more than 3 years now, and I learn something every single day from coworkers, from the industry, and from the business.
We’re always looking for amazing talent! If you’re interested in joining our team, please visit our jobs page.