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Product Director and former Engineer with 10+ years in product, 5 in leadership

AI governance built from zero · Product orgs built from scratch · Track record delivering impact

Intro

Hi, I’m Emily

I’m a Product Leader with a fairly unconventional background : a philosophy degree, an MA in Human Rights, a law conversion, a coding bootcamp, and five years as a full-stack software engineer, before "product" ever appeared in a job title. The common thread is systems thinking and why I tend to look past the presenting problem for what's actually driving it, tracking the dependencies and downstream risk a narrower brief would miss; and why I thrive doing ambiguous, high-stakes work.

I’ve spent years building digital products in complex, high-stakes environments — often with limited data, legacy systems, and users who really don’t have time for friction. I care deeply about making tools that are intuitive, trustworthy, and grounded in the messy realities of human decision-making.

Clinical Partners

Most recently I was Director of Product at Clinical Partners, a national NHS mental health and neurodevelopmental provider, where I was the most senior product person in the business. I built the product function from scratch: outcome-led discovery across six squads, an AI governance framework stood up from zero, and an AI-assisted documentation rollout that roughly halved clinical report turnaround while lifting SLA compliance. I also co-led an audit that halted a platform programme running four times over its sanctioned budget, and led a billing recovery worth an estimated £700k based on an informal ask from the CFO.

Before That

I spent four and a half years at Cera Care, Europe's largest digital-first home healthcare provider, promoted twice, from Product Manager to Senior Product Manager to Group Product Manager. I rescued a troubled medication-management build into a system used across 123 branches worth £7.3m in benefit, and built the data-strategy case, presented to the CEO, that shifted the company's direction toward proprietary data and AI.

Somewhere in between all that, I built Launchling, my own AI-powered tool for early-stage founders, end to end, evaluation pipeline and all, mostly to stay honestly hands-on with what current AI tools can and can't do rather than take anyone else's word for it. I don’t think there’s any better way to learn and keep your skills relevant than through experimentation.

Now

After Launchling, I spent the back half of last year and the first half of this one at Clinical Partners, which didn’t leave much time for personal projects or blogging. I'm back to building and writing here while I work out what's next, whether that's another Director of Product role, interim or contract work, or something more strategic.

What I write about here now is mostly this: what AI is actually changing about how products get built and led, and, just as often, what it isn't.

Let’s get in touch

If you're working on similar problems, thinking through similar questions, or just want to swap notes, I'd love to hear from you.

Drop me a line at hello@emilysas.com — always happy to chat, or head over to my contacts page for more details of where to find me.