Perfecting the Pivot

For Hitee Chandra Jha, the journey to becoming principal product manager at Zendesk was anything but a straight line, or “anything but linear,” as the School of Computer Science alumna would more aptly put it. 

At Zendesk, Hitee helps customers adopt, purchase and maximize the use of their suite of software.

“We think about product managers as a sort of mini-CEO of your product,” Hitee explains. “You are responsible for its success, but you rely on your teams.”

As a growth product manager, Hitee’s role often requires her to identify the next big opportunity for Zendesk, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company that creates products built for customer support, sales and communications. The role and the industry at large has become particularly intriguing as AI transforms customer support, says Hitee. But it’s not just about the latest bells and whistles.

“Our goal is not to deliver a feature. Our goal is to deliver a feature and make sure that new customers and existing customers are adopting it.”

It’s an enjoyable challenge for Hitee, whose guiding principle around product and experience has “always traced back to the why behind technology, not just the how,” she says. After obtaining a computer science degree, Hitee spent her early career in software engineering roles. There, she learned to answer the why: Why does a technology work?

But, “there’s always been this curiosity of why are we building this, and how do we do it better?”

Hitee realized that when it came to fulfilling work, she was missing the user perspective. It was that curiosity that brought her to Carnegie Mellon University to pursue her master’s at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute. 

Putting the Human in Human-Computer Interaction

One of the elements that drew Hitee to CMU was the HCII’s unique dual-degree program with the University of Madeira in Portugal. As part of her capstone there, she had the opportunity to apply her classroom learnings directly with a Portuguese company to create real-world solutions.

“We had to deliver an actual solution to improve their business and help with their growth,” Hitee says. That hands-on, embedded project with real-world stakes was a valuable experience that informed her career path.

But it wasn’t just the capstone. Hitee found she loved the interdisciplinary nature of her program and time on campus.

“The program brought together software engineers, designers, researchers, project managers — people from all of these different backgrounds working together,” she says. 

It’s an experience she often thinks about in her day-to-day work, where her role spans multiple departments, teams and disciplines.

A Pivot to Product Management

After completing her master’s program in 2011, it’s no surprise that Hitee’s career pivoted towards product management. While she initially explored roles focused on improving user experience, she found that these roles answered some, but not all, of the “why” that drives customer behavior.

Finding product management as a career path was a Goldilocks moment. A blend of her technical background, user understanding and collaboration, product management encapsulated her favorite parts of previous roles while integrating her HCII experience.

“Product management gave me the platform where my technical skills connect with users in the right way, but also understand the aspects of business,” Hitee says.

She led product teams across startups and enterprises, including LegalZoom and LiveNation. Along the way, she noticed a gap: The tools companies build and the stories they tell customers don’t always align. That realization pulled her deeper into the niche of growth product management.

Those stories, she realized, are essential, driving everything from purchasing decisions to long-term brand loyalty. To bridge the gap between the products and their marketing, Hitee dove deeper into analytics and marketing, carving out her newfound path.

Focusing specifically on products that aid a company’s growth can be a high-pressure pursuit. Still, Hitee thrives in cross-functional work where she might meet with sales, legal, marketing, finance, IT and engineering teams in a single day. At times, it’s not so different from learning with her classmates at CMU.

Her role at Zendesk means working with a variety of industries externally as well. She’s charged with creating the right tools that entice everyone — from large enterprises to mid-sized telecoms to small businesses — to use and continue using Zendesk. 

Full Circle

While Hitee lives in Southern California with her family, she’s found time to return to campus. In the past year, she’s appeared as a guest lecturer for the HCII master's program as well as on career panels. 

Returning to speak “felt like a full circle moment,” Hitee says. “I was so excited to come back and talk to people in my program.”

It was on campus, she says, where her technical grounding, UX mindset and passion for collaboration all converged, shaping her career as it is today.

The same curiosity that brought Hitee to CMU continues to drive her today. As AI reshapes customer experience and product management itself, she sees opportunity in the unknown.

“So much of this work is building in areas that never existed before,” she says. “That’s the exciting part, imagining what comes next.”