Zeinab Ibrahim Zaki did not begin her career with a carefully mapped plan to work in artificial intelligence or product leadership. Like many professionals, she started with a simple intention to learn, grow, and do meaningful work. Early in her career, however, she noticed a problem that would quietly shape her future direction.
While working in marketing at her first job, she repeatedly observed customers struggling with software that was meant to help them. Instead of simplifying work, the tools often caused confusion. Users wasted hours on basic tasks or abandoned the systems altogether. The technology looked impressive in presentations but failed to deliver value in real life.
That gap between promise and reality stayed with her. Over time, she realized she wanted to be the person who closed it by building products that genuinely worked for real people, not just products that looked good on paper.
Learning the Reality of Users Through Sales and Marketing
She began her professional journey in sales and marketing, working closely with ERP systems. Her role involved pitching products, conducting live demonstrations, leading business meetings, and responding to technical questions directly from clients.
The role demanded deep understanding. To answer confidently, she spent long hours learning how systems actually worked. Through this experience, she noticed a consistent pattern: clients were rarely impressed by complexity. What they wanted was clarity. They wanted to know how a product would fit into their day-to-day workflows and solve real problems.
This realization shifted her mindset. Instead of focusing on selling features, she focused on understanding workflows. She listened carefully to how clients operated and where friction existed, then translated technology into practical value. That experience shaped a belief she still carries today: great products are defined by usefulness, not sophistication.
Finding Product Management Through Frustration
She did not enter product management through a deliberate career plan. She found her way there through frustration.
She saw companies investing heavily in features users never asked for while ignoring obvious pain points. Decisions were often driven by assumptions or trends rather than evidence. It became clear that a critical bridge was missing between users and development teams.
Product management offered a way to become that bridge. The role combined problem analysis, user understanding, team alignment, and strategic decision-making. More importantly, it allowed her to influence products before they reached users, ensuring they were built with real people in mind.
A Defining Moment in Building Practical AI
One of the most defining moments in her career came while working on an AI platform designed to help businesses build their own solutions. The idea was strong in theory, but when tested with real users at a major technology event, the reality was different. Most users struggled, not because the product lacked power, but because it assumed people had the time and expertise to manage AI complexity.
Instead of forcing adoption, the team experimented. They tested role-specific AI agents that automated routine tasks. Through this process, they learned that effective AI requires thoughtful prompting, clear workflows, error handling, and coordination between systems.
The result was a complete rebuild. The platform shifted from enabling users to build AI themselves to doing the work for them. That decision transformed the product and allowed it to support real business use cases across industries. For her, it reinforced a core principle: the best product decisions come from testing, learning, and adapting based on real-world feedback.
Leading Product and Growth Transformation at Mazeed
A major chapter in her journey unfolded during her time at Mazeed, a financial technology company in the UAE. There, she led a significant transformation across both product and growth functions.
She managed the Etisalat–Mazeed partnership and owned the entire customer acquisition lifecycle, spanning marketing, sales, account management, and onboarding. Working closely with the marketing team, she introduced and implemented Mixpanel, Microsoft Clarity, and GA4 to track user behavior and optimize acquisition pipelines.
She also automated the customer acquisition process using HubSpot, streamlining complex workflows across marketing, sales, operations, account management, and tax teams. In addition, she owned the Mazeed website and led the company’s rebranding from McLedger to Mazeed.
One of her most impactful contributions was spearheading the development of an automated customer onboarding platform. This initiative increased acquisition rates by 15 percent and reduced manual processes by 70 percent, delivering measurable business impact while improving user experience.
Listening to Users Without Blindly Following Requests
Earlier in her career, she believed her role was to gather feature requests and deliver them. Experience taught her otherwise. Users often request features as surface-level solutions to deeper problems.
Today, she focuses on understanding root causes. She listens carefully, observes real behavior, studies data, and tests assumptions before making decisions. Her responsibility, as she sees it, is not to build what users ask for, but to build what actually solves their problems.
Thriving in Uncertainty and Early-Stage Building
She currently works on AI-enabled platforms that help businesses use technology without requiring technical expertise, while also exploring opportunities aligned with her strengths.
She thrives most in early-stage environments where uncertainty is high and learning is fast. Building from scratch, experimenting with ideas, and shaping direction from the ground up is where she does her best work. Long term, she aims to lead products that fundamentally change how industries operate, not just optimize existing systems.
A Vision Built on Respect and Simplicity
When asked how she wants to be remembered, she speaks about respect. Respect for users’ time, intelligence, and trust.
She believes much of modern technology is unnecessarily complex and designed to impress peers rather than serve people. Her goal is to prove that powerful products can also be simple, intuitive, and honest. If successful, her work may not be flashy, but it will quietly make life easier.
Lessons for the Next Generation
Her advice to younger professionals is straightforward. Do not wait for permission to solve problems. Spend time with users, because every hour observing real people is more valuable than internal debates. And stay humble. Being wrong is not failure; refusing to change when evidence proves otherwise is.
Through her journey, she demonstrates that meaningful impact comes from listening deeply, learning continuously, and building with genuine care for the people technology is meant to serve.
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