Bryan Dsouza is a man of faith, family, and fun – stepping off the beaten path and venturing out onto the road less traveled, to experiment with emerging trends & technologies. He trusts that his career can be effectively guided by doing good work with good people to deliver a good purpose. Today he serves as the Head of Marketing for AI/ML, Mobility & UX at Aptiv.
Bryan grew up in Dubai in the 1980s in the decade following the birth of the U.A.E. The city was beginning its transition into a global center of trade and influence. Something that significant becomes part of you, at least through osmosis, and it’s fair to say that it was Bryan’s first hypergrowth experience.
His mom was a teacher and his Dad ran a shipping port in one of the seven Emirates. Dubai was a melting pot of cultures and he learned from an early age that his perspective wasn’t the only one. As a kid he enjoyed playing basketball, helping others succeed to help himself and the team succeed. He still hates ball hogs. The seeds were planted for him to one day travel abroad to learn from other cultures and join a competitive team.
Champlain College had a business and science program in Mumbai and Bryan set off to India for his undergraduate studies. He wanted to experience an unconventional higher education system without having to put the significant capital up to study in the U.S. At Champlain, he obtained both quantitative and qualitative skills to start a career in business.
He stayed in Mumbai to take a role in talent development & strategy at the Tata Group, owners of more than 100 brands including Jaguar & Land Rover. There he engaged with executives, compiled market trends, developed insights into skill development, and executed programs and strategies to help position the Tata Group as one of the best places to work in Asia..
Next, he traveled to Phoenix, Arizona to get his MBA at the Thunderbird School of Global Management where he focused on Strategy & Marketing in an effort to continue leveling up. An aspiring jet-setting consultant, he prepared to help clients across the world solve the biggest problems. Well, at least that was the plan.
Loft9 hired Bryan as a Senior Consultant where he focused on product management, program management, processes & operations working with one of their top clients: Microsoft. In Redmond he began to work more deeply alongside Microsoft’s Strategy & Operations team, building relationships with his counterparts. When they offered him a position as a Senior Product Manager in their online commerce group, he couldn’t say no.
Microsoft was Bryan’s rocketship. Around the time he joined the company in 2012, Steve Ballmer was stepping down and there was a massive cultural shift from a sales-centric organization to a customer-centric organization led by new CEO Satya Nadella’s renewed vision. Being in a few rooms with their new leader and watching him work was extremely influential in developing Bryan’s own leadership style and work ethic. He is still close to his General Manager from that time period, Mike Novasio, and colleagues Jeff James, Karin Moore & Chad DeVries.
There was a new function taking shape inside of Microsoft, Product Marketing, and Bryan wanted to give it a try on the Office 365 team as a Senior Product Marketing Manager where they built out an e-commerce platform that redefined how Office 365 was monetized and purchased. They launched Microsoft Teams, which has now become the bread and butter for the group, and they also launched Microsoft 365, the group’s first-ever bundled offering with Office 365, Windows, and Dynamics 365.
Finally, he joined Microsoft Azure as the group was beginning to scale in a Product Marketing role focused on open source & AI, both net new areas for the company that helped Bryan hone his Product Marketing, GTM, and Monetization skills. On the side though, Bryan had been advising & mentoring startups and one of his mentors challenged him to try operating in an earlier-stage environment. Throughout his time at Microsoft, he never really liked working on fully baked stuff, preferring to stay on the bleeding edge of markets and trends, and so he took on this challenge with both hands.
He joined Grammarly during the pandemic to help them scale their Product Marketing team focused on Grammarly Business developing GTM models, monetization strategies, promotional frameworks, and more. By launching Grammarly Business, he was able to bring intentionality and large-scale thinking to this new product and segment by fostering thought processes that challenged the status quo.
During the pandemic, his family also moved to Boston to be closer to his sister and her family. Soon after the move, and leveraging his AI & ML Product Marketing background, he received an amazing opportunity to join Berkshire Grey to help them position their emerging robotic technology as the Head of Product Marketing. He helped them monetize and market their robotics business and was even promoted to CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) while they operated as a public company following a SPAC offering. Today, Berkshire Grey is at the forefront of robotic technology in the supply chain industry, and Bryan attributes this to the intense focus of the team on impactful business use cases that leverage emerging technology – and not the other way around.
Finally, Bryan joined Aptiv where he is helping push the future of autonomous driving at the frontier of emerging markets & technology. He serves as the Head of Marketing for the AI/ML, Mobility & UX Group which includes a wider scope of Customer Marketing while still exercising his passion for Product Marketing and GTM. Bryan works cross-functionally to develop the positioning, messaging, value proposition & GTM strategy of Aptiv’s next-generation, AI/ML-enabled Advanced Safety and User Experience platforms, tracking and identifying key insights within their competitive and market landscape, and observing customer behaviors to better align their product roadmap and customer pursuit strategies.
Curiosity as a Guide to Find the Path Forward
One of the trends that stands out from Bryan’s career is how he has consistently jumped to the front end of emerging trends. What’s his secret??
First, he avoids herd mentality when making career decisions. By following the herd you are usually stifled by background noise and, most importantly, he’s seen herd mentality lead to over hiring. When there’s over hiring you know what happens next.
He’s also quick to point out that you shouldn’t change direction when you see a trend. Just go where the learning is expected to be the most ripe. Bryan encourages people to chase functional & vertical learning. For example, Berkshire Grey gave him the opportunity to work in robotics for the first time and he learned a lot about demand generation as a first-time Chief Marketing Officer beyond his previous Product Marketing scope.
Bryan likes to say that “you learn something twice. The first time is when someone teaches you and the second time is when you teach it to someone else. It’s the second time that drives home the deeper learning”.
Networking with empathy and authenticity has been a critical part of Bryan’s career success. He seeks to better understand people’s careers, motivations, and lives while being careful not to make the mistake of trying to copy someone’s journey. He calls this “compounded anthropology”.
When he is interested in a topic or trend, he will reach out on LinkedIn to experts individually to ask questions and learn more. Networking to Bryan is 1:1. He’ll look up someone’s title and find people who have been in the function for a while. He’ll reach out to connect, thank them for connecting, and lead with authenticity about what he finds interesting about their career. 8/10 times people are willing to chat and tell him about themselves.
It’s all about triangulation – reading, asking, observing, and learning. If there’s one takeaway? Reach out! Put yourself out there! Learn something! Otherwise, what’s the point? Amen to that Bryan.
3 Career Insights / Learnings
Collaborate and Help Others Succeed – “I’ve never seen someone fail because they are trying to help others succeed. Fight the forces, urges, or an environment that pushes you to be selfish or cunning or hide work or act individually. Collaborate to succeed”
Choose Your Manager Wisely – “If you don’t have chemistry with your manager, say no to the job. It can be hard if you’ve been recently laid off or are just coming out of school, but heavily vet this. Life is too short to live with insanity”
Invest in Relationships – “Measure how successful you’ve been in a job with how many relationships you’re carrying forward from that experience. I’ve never been asked in an interview ‘Which relationships are you most proud of from your last role?’ Employers only ask about projects. Isn’t that crazy? Staying in touch with former trusted colleagues has added immense value to my career”
Bryan loves working with startups and bringing his unique brand of authenticity to every conversation from casual intro calls to helping startups scale, monetize, or lend his deep industry experience from the many miles he’s traveled.
He’s deeply guided by his Christian faith, in a complicated world where Sunday can feel very far from Monday for some, and aspires to mirror Satya Nadella’s work-life harmony. He would love to one day explore serving as an Operating Partner (or a Venture Partner) at a venture capital firm helping their portfolio companies succeed and have an impact on the community. Currently, he enjoys operating as a Core Partner with Underscore VC in his spare time for the last few years. He treats them like family.
Leaders who are all very different but have influenced him through direct lessons and osmosis include Mike Novasio at Microsoft who taught him attention to detail, Karin Moore at Microsoft who taught him empathy, Sid Malhotra at Grammarly who taught him pragmatism, Angela Whiteford at Berkshire Grey who taught him about servant leadership, and Lily Lyman at Underscore VC whose humility and approachability as a class-act leader inspires him in how he nurtures relationships.
If you want to learn more about Bryan, you can find him in Boston with his wife and two young kids after recently returning from paternity leave, serving in his local church community at New Life Community Church, advising startups at Underscore VC, Y Combinator, Madrona Venture Group etc., building GTM and customer strategies at Aptiv, experimenting with producing music on Logic Pro X, or on LinkedIn. Thanks for sharing your story and what drives you, Bryan. We’re excited to see all the people, teams, trends & technologies you continue to influence in the years ahead!