April Underwood
COUNTRY OF BIRTH
United States
INDUSTRY
TOP ACHIEVEMENTS
April Underwood is the VP of Product at the cloud-based team collaboration tool Slack, which is an acronym for ‘Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge’. Underwood is well known in the technology sector and has held several high ranking roles at industry leaders. In September 2016 she appeared in Forbes as one of the ’40 Under 40’ top influential business people in the world.
EARLY YEARS AND EDUCATION
In 2001, after completing her studies at the University of Texas in Austin, April Underwood graduated with a BBA degree in Information Systems. She went on to study at the University of California, Berkeley where she graduated with an MBA. During this time she completed her internship with the multinational technology company Apple.
CAREER
Underwood started her impressive career by gaining experience in the technology industry. She held a variety of roles with leading technology focused firms like Travelocity, Deloitte and Intel. In 2007 Underwood was appointed as Senior Partner Technology Manager at Google where she was responsible for acquiring content and creating monetization strategies.
From Twitter to Slack
In 2010 she left Google and joined Twitter as product manager of central features that included the ‘follow’ and ‘tweet’ buttons. Underwood led the design of the Ads API and managed search affiliations with Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. She was also in charge of the business development team. The final role held by April Underwood at Twitter was director of product. She left Twitter in 2015 and joined Slack where she initially held the role of head of platform. As in 2017 in her role as vice president of product, Underwood leads various teams including the platform evangelism team, engineering, partner marketing and product management.
#Angels Investment Group
In 2015 April Underwood and several other businesswomen who worked or were working at Twitter joined together to form an investment group named #Angels. The team consists of eight business veterans with experience across a wide range of areas including corporate strategy and development, media, business development and product development. The idea behind the group is to offer a more diverse and broader platform for start-up funding and networking by understanding female consumers who are often the main users of new products.
PERSONAL LIFE
April Underwood is a busy executive and not much is publicly known about her private life. She has mentioned that she enjoys practicing yoga to relax. She also plays the violin and the piano and is a great believer in the virtues of a good breakfast.
ADDITIONAL FACTS
- First fell in love with technology while using Microsoft Works to catalog baseball cards
- She led an 80-person orchestra in high school
- First job was being a hostess in a Texas comfort-food chain
- Investor in Tawla, her favorite restaurant in San Francisco
- Also worked in an executive role at WeatherBill
- Underwood used to write code but prefers leading product teams and launching exciting products
- Investor in Tawla, her favorite restaurant in San Francisco
