Cedric Strickland, in practice.
Product leader building billion-user products at Google and Microsoft since 2013, today Head of Product for Gmail Enterprise & AI, and founder of Neua, an independent applied-AI product lab.
- Role
- Product & AI Executive
- Based in
- Seattle, WA
- Currently
- Google · Neua
The short version.
I'm a product executive and computer scientist. Since 2013 I've built products that reach billions of people (Windows at Microsoft, Gmail Enterprise and its AI roadmap at Google) by pairing strategy with machine learning and shipping the result.
At Google I have end-to-end accountability for roughly a third of Gmail engineering; I wrote the foundational product requirements for Gmail as a channel for AI agents and helped land Gmail's part of Gemini Spark, Google's personal AI agent for consumers, and Google Workspace Studio. Before that I set product strategy across a 60-person cross-functional Windows organization at Microsoft and managed a team of product and program managers; earlier, as a senior product manager there, I built the machine-learning release system behind Windows. At Neua I run an independent applied-AI product lab.
Formation
I've been working since high school. Notre Dame was paid for by the Gates Millennium and QuestBridge scholarships and by whatever jobs fit around class, campus venue promotions, a stadium concession stand, a restaurant's marketing and IT, and two summers teaching math through a Texas State outreach program. My professional career started in 2013, at Microsoft. But the habit started earlier: work out what the job actually needs, then go build it. That hasn't changed. It's also why I wrote and illustrated My Black Job, a book about the range of careers a Black kid is allowed to imagine, and why I taught software management at the University of Washington.
Professional Journey
Head of Product, Gmail Enterprise & AI
- Set product direction across a 90+ person cross-functional organization at six global sites, with end-to-end product accountability for roughly a third of Gmail engineering: the Gmail service, Gmail Enterprise, and compliance; 28 launches as PM of record since 2023
- Gmail product lead for enterprise moves onto Google Workspace, including Meta's, the largest competitive migration in Workspace history; product sponsor for accounts totaling 250,000+ seats, including Zillow and Sutherland
- Led the Gmail side of Google Account username change (US, March 2026): 30,000 changes a day at peak with 90% user satisfaction and 12% lower account abandonment; co-authored Google's developer guidance for affected platforms. 2026 Google Tech Award
- Wrote the foundational product requirements for Gmail as a channel for AI agents and helped land Gmail's part of Gemini Spark, Google's personal AI agent for consumers, and Google Workspace Studio
- Gmail product lead for the coworker agent introduced at Gemini at Work 2026: its mailbox, its identity, and the controls that decide what an agent may do with a person's mail, in alpha across 200,000+ seats
- Shipped enterprise trust capabilities for Gmail's largest accounts: an admin API that closed a five-year-old enterprise blocker across 23+ organizations and 1M+ seats, an inbox-protection framework adopted by two of the world's largest companies, 50 MB attachments (unblocking 37 enterprise deals), and delegated Gmail on Android and iOS for every Gmail user
- Build working prototypes, from a Gemini policy agent that cut policy-lookup time 80% to a Chrome extension that resolved a P0 escalation in under 24 hours; presented "Reimagine email: Introducing AI power for Gmail" at Google Cloud Next '26
- Washington chapter lead, Black Googler Network (200+)
Product Manager Lead, Gmail Consumer Growth & Premier Experiences
- Hired into Gmail consumer growth and Premier Experiences; took on Gmail's global regulatory program, then the Gmail service, the organization that runs Gmail behind every client, setting compute and platform policies worth up to $10M a year
- Led regulatory product design for Gmail, Chat, and Groups under the EU DMA, DSA, and German FCO Case B7-70/21: negotiated or redesigned 108 product experiences for compliance and shipped 7 DSA launches, protecting an estimated $18B in regulatory exposure; wrote the first implementation of the Groups controls, which its engineering team refined and shipped
- Authored the 2023 Gmail iOS review and the consumer-satisfaction roadmap behind it, starting with notifications: iOS user sentiment rose more than 20% in 2024, and its inbox work laid early groundwork for Gmail's AI Inbox (announced 2026)
- Shaped how Gmail's features scale across Google's paid tiers, from small businesses to Google One consumers
Founder
- Run an independent applied-AI product lab shipping 6 live products, with 7 more in beta or development, on a shared platform of 54 in-house packages
- Architect and write the platform: a TypeScript monorepo of 54 shared packages, Cloud Functions with Firestore and Postgres services, and the CI, quality-gate, and release tooling that makes shipping at this cadence possible for one person working with agents
- Built Neua Nexus, an agentic team workspace where human teammates and AI operators share the same queue
- Built Vibe Check, a code-analysis toolchain that gives AI coding agents production-readiness feedback loops, distributed through an MCP server
- Founded Neua Publishing House and released its first title
Principal Product Management Lead
- Directed product strategy for Windows release management, growth, and platform security across a 60-person cross-functional organization; managed a team of product and program managers, hiring and promoting PMs
- Led the Windows supply-chain response to Executive Order 14028, keeping Microsoft eligible for US federal contracts
- Owned the backend build and publishing stages of the Windows Update delivery pipeline, growing Windows Update for Business to 150M+ commercial devices (+25% year over year)
- Cut toil 40% and increased release agility 2.5x with Release365, an intelligent rollout portal
- Delivered Microsoft Teams Rooms to Surface Hub customers
Adjunct Professor, Software Management
- Rebuilt and taught CSS 566: Software Management
- Taught 30+ graduate professional students through the full program
- Partnered with businesses to source the practical capstone program
- Research focus: how GenAI changes software work, from practitioner opportunity and human-in-the-loop practice to workforce upskilling
- Shipped production applications to partner businesses
Senior PM, AI & Machine Learning
- Rolled out semiannual Windows 10 releases to 900M+ active devices, across a 40+ person cross-functional team
- Built the ML rollout and experimentation platform for OS releases, cutting recurring engineering cost 90% and rollout cycles from weeks to days
- Increased incident detection 10x with ML anomaly detection
- Shipped an on-device reboot-scheduling ML model that lifted consumer CSAT 40% and drew press coverage
- Shipped the Creators Update privacy overhaul: out-of-box setup rebuilt so users explicitly choose their privacy and diagnostic settings
- Partnered with the Xbox team on the 2019 launch of Xbox Game Pass for PC (now PC Game Pass), driving its go-to-market through Windows
Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer
- Co-founded a social podcast app for shared listening and group spaces, and led product, research, and design end to end, including early monetization strategy, while working on the engineering team
- Built the prototypes, designed the backend database schema, and owned the storage architecture; pitched prospective investors and acquirers
Product Manager, Consumer Growth
- Drove activation of the first 100M Windows 10 devices (14M in the first 24 hours, 75M in four weeks) through the reservation experiment, the Get Windows 10 app, and the shift to over-the-air delivery
- Moved 500M+ Windows 7/8 devices onto current releases
- Designed and shipped the Windows Update Assistant and the Media Creation Tool end to end, reaching 50M+ commercial and power users
- Owned DISM, the Windows command-line tool for servicing OS images
- Blue Egg Cross-Organizational Award (2015) for the Media Creation Tool, which cut media-related support call volume 84% in four months, +10 points CPE
Areas of Expertise
AI & Machine Learning
Leading AI platform strategy, implementing ML models for billion-user products, and driving Generative AI initiatives.
Product Strategy
Defining vision, roadmaps, and investment strategies for enterprise and consumer products at scale.
Business Growth
Defining growth and monetization strategy for consumer and enterprise products at global scale.
Leadership Excellence
Setting product direction across cross-functional organizations, and managing, hiring, and promoting product and program managers.
Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Founding an applied-AI product lab, driving 0-to-1 products, and fostering innovation culture.
Enterprise & Compliance
Leading regulatory product design and compliance for critical systems, from the EU DMA and DSA to Executive Order 14028.
The receipts.
Defines the controls that decide what an AI agent may do with a person's mail, in alpha across 200,000+ seats, as Head of Product, Gmail Enterprise & AI at Google
Gmail's part of three public agent products: Gemini Spark (May 2026), Google Workspace Studio (December 2025), and the coworker agent introduced at Gemini at Work (October 2026)
Windows 10 passed one billion active devices (Microsoft, March 2020) while he owned the build and publishing stages of the Windows Update delivery pipeline as Principal Product Management Lead
Drove activation of the first 100M Windows 10 devices (14M in the first 24 hours, 75M in four weeks) as Product Manager, Consumer Growth at Microsoft
Led the Gmail side of Google Account username change (US, March 2026), a program sized at $150M to $240M a year: 30,000 changes a day at peak with 90% user satisfaction and 12% lower account abandonment; 2026 Google Tech Award
An admin API that closed a five-year-old enterprise blocker across 23+ organizations and 1M+ seats, as Head of Product, Gmail Enterprise & AI at Google
An estimated $18B in regulatory exposure protected across the EU DMA, DSA, and German FCO Case B7-70/21, as Product Manager Lead, Gmail Consumer Growth & Premier Experiences at Google
Sets product direction across a 90+ person cross-functional organization at six global sites, with end-to-end product accountability for roughly a third of Gmail engineering, as Head of Product, Gmail Enterprise & AI at Google
Off the clock.
My Black Job
A Story of Black Careers, a children's book about the range of careers a Black kid is allowed to imagine. Written and illustrated by Cedric Strickland, published in 2025 by Neua Publishing House, and sold through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Bookshop, and library systems.
- Reimagine email: Introducing AI power for Gmail, Breakout session at Google Cloud Next '26 in Las Vegas, introducing the AI capabilities coming to Gmail Enterprise.
- CSS 566: Software Management, Designed and lectured the graduate software-management course at the University of Washington, teaching 30+ graduate professional students through a full capstone program.
- My Black Job: A Story of Black Inventions, Forthcoming from Neua Publishing House.
- Google Cloud Next '26 · Las Vegas, 2026
- Google PM Connect · Chicago, 2025 and 2026 (Austin, main stage and closing panel)
- Texas State MathWorks · San Marcos, 2022 & 2025
- Panelist, Black Tech Mixer by TechRise Global · Seattle, 2024
Currently writing an adult literary fable about judgment in the age of intelligent machines.
Say hello.
I'm most active on LinkedIn and welcome meaningful conversations about technology, leadership, and innovation.
- /cedstrickland
- Resume
- PDF · two pages
- GitHub
- /cedstrickland
- Neua
- /Neua-Labs