Zoya Brandes
Livingston
Summary
Dynamic product and delivery executive with 25 years of experience in financial services and technology, including over two decades at Bloomberg. Expertise in translating business strategy and customer insights into scalable product execution while aligning cross-functional teams—Product, Engineering, Data, Sales, and Go-to-Market—around measurable client and business outcomes. Proven ability to manage relationships at all organizational levels and enhance team performance through continuous development. A strategic thinker with a disciplined approach to delivery execution and organizational design, driving clarity, alignment, and innovation across complex global ecosystems to deliver impactful solutions that balance speed, quality, and customer value.
Overview
27
27
years of professional experience
Work History
Team Leader – Product Delivery Management Office
Bloomberg L.P.
New York, NY
08.2024 - Current
- Promoted to lead and scale a team of 12 Product Delivery Managers supporting Data & Analytics Platform, BQuant, Core Communications (MSG, IB, Integrations), and Vault.
- Operate as a strategic connector across Product, Engineering, Data, and Sales, aligning product strategy, discovery, and delivery to customer and business outcomes.
- Expand organizational influence by uniting multiple product and platform groups under a shared delivery vision, integrating frameworks that balance innovation, execution discipline, and measurable impact.
- Partner with Product and Sales leadership to align go-to-market and product strategies, ensuring customer insights and commercial priorities shape delivery roadmaps.
- Introduce customer discovery and validation frameworks to inform product vision, user interviews, and early-stage experimentation - especially within emerging AI-enabled products like BQuant and BQL.
- Redefine delivery governance and team topology, clarifying ownership boundaries and improving communication flow between product lines and platform dependencies.
- Establish a strategic coaching model for Product Delivery Managers, strengthening their ability to operate as business partners and influence without authority across senior leadership levels.
- Foster an outcome-driven culture, embedding feedback loops that tie delivery metrics to customer value and organizational learning.
- Partner cross-functionally with Product, Engineering and Data senior leadership to optimize prioritization practices and ensure alignment across complex product ecosystems.
Team Leader – Product Delivery Office
Bloomberg L.P.
New York, NY
09.2017 - 08.2024
- Co-established and led Bloomberg’s first Product Delivery Office, creating a scalable delivery framework and growing a team of Product Delivery Managers to serve diverse Product, Engineering, and Data organizations.
- Partnered with senior leadership to connect delivery execution to strategy across 10+ business units, including FX, Commodities, Equities, Fixed Income, ESG, Emerging Markets, and News.
- Led and developed a team of Product Delivery Managers, empowering them to operate as strategic partners to senior Product, Engineering, and Data leaders.
- Defined and scaled Bloomberg’s product delivery framework, guiding PDMs in applying lean, agile, and value-driven approaches tailored to team context.
- Designed and implemented training and enablement programs that strengthened delivery discipline, discovery techniques, and outcome-based planning.
- Cultivated a culture of innovation, curiosity, and reflection, encouraging experimentation and continuous improvement within and across product and platform organizations.
- Partnered with business and technology leaders to align product and delivery strategies, driving execution of complex, high-impact initiatives such as Libor Migration and Croatia Euro Conversion.
- Oversaw a portfolio of 10+ delivery teams, ensuring business alignment, technical readiness, and customer-centric prioritization across multiple domains.
- Championed data-informed decision making, enabling teams to use frameworks like Jobs to Be Done, User Story Mapping, Lean Product Canvas, and OKRs to connect work directly to measurable outcomes.
Senior Program Manager – Equity
Bloomberg L.P.
New York, NY
01.2007 - 09.2017
- Led delivery programs and organizational initiatives across the Equity Product and Engineering group, improving how Product, Engineering, and Design/UX collaborated to bring new functionality to market.
- Led the Bloomberg NEXT modernization - a multi-year effort that redefined the Bloomberg Terminal’s interface and user experience - by translating product vision into a coordinated roadmap and execution model.
- Introduced scalable delivery practices that standardized planning, dependency management, and release readiness across 40+ engineering teams.
- Built quantitative delivery metrics to monitor cycle times, throughput, and risk, giving leadership real-time visibility into progress and outcomes.
- Launched continuous-improvement forums that helped teams share learnings and remove systemic blockers, reducing time-to-release.
- Mentored emerging program and delivery managers, strengthening communication, prioritization, and stakeholder-management capabilities across the organization.
Program Manager – Bloomberg Law
Bloomberg L.P.
New York, NY
12.2004 - 01.2007
- Partnered across Product, Data, and Engineering to establish Bloomberg Law as a major product offering - aligning cross-functional teams to deliver the company’s first integrated legal research and analytics platform.
- Defined the early delivery framework and operational processes for the product’s technology organization, supporting a rapid expansion in scale and feature complexity.
- Led cross-organizational initiatives to align platform development, data acquisition, and product release schedules.
- Built and managed recruiting and onboarding programs that accelerated the growth of the Bloomberg Law Engineering team, improving ramp-up time and cultural cohesion.
- Served as the central delivery liaison ensuring technical readiness, data availability, and product stability for launch milestones.
Team Leader – Private Client Group
Citigroup Inc.
New York, NY
07.1999 - 12.2004
- Managed a team of 6 engineers in the following key areas: career development, issue resolution, role definition and performance metrics, application development, and business processes.
- Acted as a business liaison between multiple cross-functional areas. Interfaced extensively with customers, product managers and application developers both internally and externally to facilitate timely and quality project deliverables.
- Performed project planning, project and time budgeting, resource allocation, business requirements definition, development of functional and technical specifications utilizing UML design with Rational Rose, coordination of pre-release/QA & UAT application testing and capacity planning efforts, maintaining project status and managing production implementations across multiple initiatives.
- Led process re-engineering efforts for several critical value added applications resulting in large monetary savings for Citigroup in printing, faxing, and mailing expenses.
- Oversaw vendor-outsourcing decisions including vendor selection, activity management, and retention when appropriate.
- Pioneered and led technical design and development for a multitude of client driven web-based and client/server applications that handle over 6.68 million participants, average 500 thousand hits per page monthly and process 275 million net proceeds weekly for domestic and international clientele.
- Handled day-to-day production support and end-user support for several key revenue-driven client applications. Provided customer training pre and post launch of the applications, led root cause analysis to assure production issues are resolved in a timely fashion.
Education
Master of Business Administration - Financial Management
Pace University
New York, NY12.2004
Bachelor of Science - Information Systems, Business
Pace University
New York, NY05.1999
Skills
- Product strategy development
- Customer Discovery & Value Definition
- Data-Informed Decision-Making
- End-to-End Product & Delivery Integration
- Go-to-Market Alignment & Commercial Strategy
- Organizational design
- Change leadership
- Executive Stakeholder Influence & Consensus Building
- Coaching & Leadership Development
Timeline
Team Leader – Product Delivery Management Office
Bloomberg L.P.
08.2024 - Current
Team Leader – Product Delivery Office
Bloomberg L.P.
09.2017 - 08.2024
Senior Program Manager – Equity
Bloomberg L.P.
01.2007 - 09.2017
Program Manager – Bloomberg Law
Bloomberg L.P.
12.2004 - 01.2007
Team Leader – Private Client Group
Citigroup Inc.
07.1999 - 12.2004
Bachelor of Science - Information Systems, Business
Pace University
Master of Business Administration - Financial Management
Pace University