Product Rising Sustainable Ambition And The Power Of Storytelling With Julie Wenah
Mar 10, 2026
Julie Wenah, a legal and tech executive who blends civil rights, policy, and storytelling, talks about building civil rights into product design and why AI needs fairness infrastructure. She discusses sustainable ambition, redefining success away from productivity metrics, and how storytelling and creative practices ground long-term, justice-focused product work.
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Build Fairness Infrastructure During The AI Window
- The current AI window is an opportunity to build fairness infrastructure before regulation fully lands.
- Julie emphasizes creating new products with marginalized communities, not only patching bias in existing systems.
AI Unlocks Creative Access For Marginalized Builders
- Novel tech democratizes creation, unlocking creativity and access for communities previously excluded.
- Julie worries about accountability and reskilling incentives, but celebrates access as a primary win given her own background of limited opportunity.
Scale Accountability With Embedded Product Tools
- Scale accountability with embedded tools that guide engineers during PDP rather than relying on a few experts.
- Julie built Project Height at Meta and the Digital Civil Rights Coalition built an MVP product-development tool to operationalize civil rights checks.
