Tess Fenn, Director of Brand Experience & Strategic Relations at Product.ai
Director, Brand Experience & Strategic Relations

Tess Fenn

Director of Brand Experience & Strategic Relations · Product.ai

Sixteen years of building brands from zero, mobilizing exceptional talent around audacious missions — and showing up for the people who make them real — co-founded a games-for-good company at 23, produced the first U.S. presidential campaign ads ever focused on climate change, built recognition for Latina founders the industry kept overlooking. The sector changes. The conviction doesn't. Now the connective tissue between Product.ai and the outside world.

Nearly 250 Alpha Team members — not recruited, recognized. A brand-experience layer where belief becomes belonging. Partnerships across civic, AI, and academic worlds that compound over time. A network where people self-identify as part of the mission, even when they're not in the room — because she made sure they knew they belonged there.

LinkedIn → HPY Hour (podcast) → Savia Lotus Award →
Tenure
Founding era · since April 2025
Based
Los Angeles · via NYC
Owns
Community sourcing · Brand experience · Partnerships
Prior
hpy · Savia · Beem · Global Gaming Initiative
16+yr
Mobilizing stakeholders across public + commercial sectors
2011
Co-founded Global Gaming Initiative (games-for-good)
~250
Alpha Team members hand-curated — domain experts, AI practitioners, and engaged consumers
2
Graduate degrees — Social Innovation (NYU) + MSW (USC, paused — framework applied to community work)
About

A community architect who turns missions into movements — co-founded a games-for-good company at 23, now builds the cultural pull that draws exceptional people into Product.ai's orbit.

23
age when she co-founded GGI
2017
NYU Gallatin MA awarded
~250
Alpha Team members hand-curated
2
graduate degrees — storytelling + social work
The range

01 · Connective-tissue role

Community Sourcing

High-stature, mission-aligned people brought into the community through a deliberate playbook — not a casual hand-raise. People trust the people she brings in because they trust her judgment.

02 · Connective-tissue role

Supporting the Network

Once people are in, she advocates for them at the career level and the project level — introductions across the community so the network self-extends instead of running through one hub.

03 · Connective-tissue role

Scouting & Sensing

Tracking what's moving in the LA AI ecosystem and curating the conditions where signal emerges — founder summits, coffees, in-room experiences. Together: an external read on the world.

04 · Brand-as-experience

Brand Experience

Concepts and curates how Product.ai brings the brand to life. Each event series has its own distinct feel; the office itself is an expression of the brand. Brand-as-experience, not event production.

05 · Org-to-org

Strategic Partnerships

Institutional, org-to-org relationships — not individual sourcing. Three tracks live today: civic, AI ecosystem, and educational. The foundation for partnerships that scale over time.

06 · A practiced craft

Sensitive Communications

Subject-matter investment over pattern-matching; change-management sequencing when a message is delicate. Small-scale diplomacy treated as a discipline.

Marquee stops

A 16-year arc from games-for-good to the AI-commerce frontier.

2025 → Now · Product.ai
Product.ai
Director of Brand Experience & Strategic Relations
Joined in April 2025 with one conviction — community is the foundation, not an afterthought — and built the proof. Hand-curated nearly 250 Alpha Team members: domain experts, AI practitioners, and engaged consumers who co-create the product and share in the economic outcome. Invite-only, three tiers (Trust Architects · Builders · Insiders), and the front door to full-time careers at Product.ai. Runs the brand-experience layer and institutional partnership stack alongside the sourcing engine — carrying the story credibly into the outside world as the company moves toward its consumer launch.
Nearly 250 hand-curated members · founding era
Before Product.ai
2024 → 2025 · hpy
hpy — mental-health technology
Communications & Growth Strategist · HPY Hour co-host
Drove brand voice and community engagement for a mental-health-tech company; a campaign she led reached a 28% positive response rate and became a cited reference. Co-hosts HPY Hour, a podcast on the emotional layers of healing alongside therapists and innovators.
Modern healing · literacy work
2024 → Present · Savia Ventures
Savia Lotus Award
Advisor to Fund Manager · Savia Lotus Lead
Co-founded the first-of-its-kind recognition for top Latina climate founders in Latin America — a grant plus exclusive networking with leading investors and advisors. Tackles a real gap: only 6.9% of Q1 2023 funding went to female entrepreneurs. Now advises the Savia Ventures fund manager directly.
Climate × Latinas in tech
2020 → 2023 · Beem
Beem — Web3 video + events for creators
Head of Community & Impact → Director of Communities & Impact (US)
Built community architecture from the ground up for a Web3 creator-rights platform — WAU grew 25–40% under her community programming. Founded Film3 LA, a recurring meetup community for filmmakers and creators exploring Web3 tools. This is where the discipline of deliberately designing trust and belonging sharpened into a craft.
Web3 creator community · Film3 LA founder
2020 · Backroads Pictures
Backroads Pictures — documentary film, TV & branded content
Producing Director of Impact (Contract)
Developed impact campaigns for feature-length documentaries that became, in the words of the EP, "entire movements that continue to sustain to this day." The pinnacle: a series of climate-focused short documentary films for the 2020 Biden-Harris campaign — the first time in U.S. history that a Presidential Campaign commissioned and aired ads focused on climate change.
First presidential climate campaign · movements, not just films
2018 → 2019 · Clear Films
Clear Films Productions — HOMEMADE
Impact Producer
HOMEMADE is a durational documentary following Force Reconnaissance Marine Adam Sorensen and his family through the challenges of life after combat. As Impact Producer, built the partnerships and resource networks to compel critical conversation and social progress — turning a film into infrastructure for its community.
Veteran mental health · film-as-infrastructure
2017 → 2018 · Desai Foundation
Desai Foundation — NYC
Director of Partnerships & Development
Led institutional partnerships and fundraising for a global public-health and women's-empowerment foundation operating across the US and India.
Global public health · institutional partnerships
2011 → ~2017 · Global Gaming Initiative + Jukko
Global Gaming Initiative / Jukko
Co-founder · Mobile-games-for-good company
Co-founded GGI at 23 years old — a first-of-its-kind mobile-games-for-good company — and spun out Jukko, a B-Corp ad-tech platform. Production work spanned gaming, music, theater, film, and international campaigns for Activision, Toyota, and Best Buy.
Founder at 23 · B-Corp
2015 → 2017 · NYU Gallatin
NYU — Gallatin School of Individualized Studies
MA · Social Innovation & Digital Storytelling
A custom curriculum drawing on entrepreneurship and business ethics, corporate social responsibility, and technology + human-centered design. Thesis "ArtLives" on the artisan economy and consumer education, with field work in rural India and Colombia.
Three-school custom MA
2011 → 2014 · NCompass International
NCompass International
Production & Experiential Marketing
Produced world-class gaming and live events at scale, including Call of Duty: XP (2011) — 12 acres, 7,000 gamers, and at the time the second-largest livestream in history behind only the royal wedding. Campaigns for Activision, Toyota, and Best Buy.
COD XP · world-class scale at 23
2010 → 2011 · Culture Project
Culture Project — NYC
Marketing & Development Associate · Production Coordinator
Coordinated arts-activism programming connected to the UN General Assembly and produced theatrical works in NYC. This is where the connector identity took its first real shape.
UN-level convening · career start
The through-line

From an artisan-economy thesis to the AI-commerce frontier — one mission, many vehicles.

At NYU Gallatin, Tess spent two years developing a global marketplace to make the artisan economy a fair win for everyone involved. The custom three-school MA was assembled around one question: how does consumer education break the cycle that keeps the world's most historic art-makers in poverty?

That thesis didn't ship as a marketplace. It shipped as a movement-building discipline. Games-for-good, B-Corp ad-tech, creator rights, mental-health literacy, climate funding for Latina founders, stigma work — each was a different vehicle for the same underlying engine: trust, belief, and translation.

The deeper purpose — older and broader than any one job — is to help people feel seen in their human experience and connected to something bigger than themselves. Product.ai is the current vehicle. The purpose is the through-line across every chapter before it.

Product.ai feels like a deeply aligned continuation of that quest at a much bigger scale, and I feel thrilled that my work now continues that mission. Tess, on the artisan-economy thesis becoming the mission
Operating code

Principles that show up across her sourcing, her events, and her support layer.

01 Engine

Trust, belief, and translation — that's the engine.

She helps people understand why the mission matters, why their perspective matters to it, and why being close to the work means something for their own.

"People trust the people I bring in because they trust my judgment. I don't treat introductions casually."

02 Mode

Out in the world, then back, then out again.

Out for events, scouting, and partner spaces; back to translate what she sensed into signal; out again. Getting stuck in one mode is what kills momentum.

"In the office: focus and coordination. In the world: events, supporting our people in their own spaces, scouting talent."

03 Frame

Frame inversion as the conversion move.

Instead of "would you join us," it's "from your point of view as a founder, what would this look like?" Their work first; the real moment is the event, not the ask.

"Their work first, ours second. The conversion moment is the experience — not the pitch."

04 Investment

Subject-matter investment, not pattern-matching.

She does the homework to hold the conversation herself rather than pattern-matching "impressive person." Earned credibility beats borrowed credibility.

"My ability to be at depth with somebody is what makes the introduction stick."

05 Multiplier

The network must self-extend, not run through me.

Connecting people in the community to others who can elevate their work — the discipline against hub-and-spoke fragility.

"If everything routes through me, I'm the bottleneck. The system has to work without me in every conversation."

06 Focus

Know where your lane ends.

She's owned interpretation, GTM framing, and event logistics in prior roles. Here she deliberately doesn't — which frees her to hyperfocus on relationships.

"I create signal; I don't conflate creating it with interpreting it."

Programs she runs

Five programs the company runs because she runs them.

Most relationship work sits inside private threads. What's visible: programs that wouldn't exist on the calendar without her.

Alpha Team

Sourcing + Experience

Recruitment, curation, hosting, and brand experience — this layer is hers.

Nearly 250 hand-curated members — domain experts, AI practitioners, and engaged consumers who co-create the product and share in the economic outcome. Three tiers: Trust Architects, Builders, Insiders. Invite-only. Tess owns the sourcing, curation, hosting, and brand-experience layer: in-person ask, reciprocity sequencing, frame inversion, channel escalation, high-signal event as the conversion moment. Not a hand-raise form — a craft.

Product.ai Labs

Community-powered

The community she builds is what makes Labs possible.

The Alpha Team members she recruits, curates, and hosts are the people in the room that make Labs sessions possible. No community, no Labs.

Golden Hour

brand-as-experience

The high-signal event series where belief becomes conversion.

Product.ai's flagship brand-experience event series — the room where exceptional people encounter the mission and decide they belong to it. Each Golden Hour has its own distinct feel; the curation, the energy, and the details that make it so are hers to design. The conversion moment for the Alpha Team sourcing playbook.

Internal Culture Program

culture + belonging

The in-house ritual where the work meets a shared identity.

Talent-adjacent culture and belonging work — explicitly not conventional HR. The current signal of a culture-leadership trajectory.

Institutional Partnerships

3 tracks live

Org-to-org relationships across civic, AI ecosystem, and educational.

Local civic leaders, AI-ecosystem organizations, and university AI clubs cultivating talent. The foundation for partnerships that scale over time.

Published thinking

What sits on the open web from the 16-year career.

Spotify · Podcast 2024→

HPY Hour — co-host

"Exploring the human side of healing — therapists, mental-health innovators, and wellness experts on the tools, techniques, and personal journeys that shape their work." New episodes bi-weekly.
Savia Ventures · Award 2024→

Savia Lotus Award — co-founder & advisor

Co-founded the first-of-its-kind recognition for top Latina climate founders in Latin America — a grant plus exclusive networking. Now advises the fund manager directly. Only 6.9% of Q1 2023 funding went to female entrepreneurs — this award exists because of that gap.
MINDS Foundation Ongoing

LA Leadership Council member

Combating mental-health stigma globally. "A connector and global human-rights advocate who facilitates empathy and understanding around topics that often leave us speechless."
LinkedIn · Case study 2025

How hpy achieved a 28% positive response rate

A mental-health brand-voice case study — the campaign work that proved community-as-foundation rather than community-as-marketing-surface.
NomadX Foundation Ongoing

Storyteller Database — featured profile

Recognized as a global movement-builder with 16+ years of cross-sector mobilization across gaming, music, theater, film, and international campaigns.
LinkedIn · Announcement 2025

On joining: community-as-foundation

"Community architect and social psychologist focused on deliberately designing trust and belonging — community as the foundation rather than an afterthought, with users as co-creators and advocates."
What sets her apart

Six combinations rare individually. Unusual to find in one operator.

Founder background inside a community role

Co-founded a venture at 23. Most community leads have never had to make payroll or pitch investors. Her sourcing reads founder-to-founder, not recruiter-to-prospect.

The mission-first arc, many chapters deep

Games-for-good → B-Corp ad-tech → creator rights → mental-health tech → climate funding → stigma work → AI commerce. Same engine, many vehicles. The pattern is the credibility.

Two graduate degrees, both in service of the work

NYU Gallatin (Social Innovation + Digital Storytelling, 2017) plus an MSW at USC (paused) — the clinical framework informs how she designs trust, belonging, and community health.

On-camera and podcast competence already shipping

Seven years of public speaking and on-camera experience; currently co-hosts a podcast. The host and moderator role is a stretch from capable to distinctive, not from zero.

Knowing exactly where her lane ends

She knows where interpretation, framing, and logistics belong to others — and doesn't cross those lines. That's how she keeps her hyperfocus on relationship depth.

Subject-matter investment beats borrowed credibility

She does the homework to hold a high-context conversation herself, rather than pattern-matching impressive people — which is what lets the introductions she makes actually stick.

Every claim on this page is independently sourced — talks, programs, and career history are publicly verifiable. See the record →
The through-line

Tess turns missions into movements — a network where people self-identify as part of it even when they are not in the room. That is the cultural pull Product.ai is building its consumer-launch era on.

Product.ai builds with operators like Tess — and with a community of people who shape what we ship. See open roles →

Get in touch with Tess See the team