What I learned moving from Amazon to a non-for-profit | Kate Kempe

Kate Kempe made the leap from 13 years at Amazon — most recently leading Alexa's screened products — to head up product at the International Baccalaureate, an NGO with no established product function. In this episode, she talks through what that transition actually involved: finding focus during a job search through Phil Terry's Never Search Alone methodology, reconciling Amazon instincts with a slower-moving, mission-driven organisation, and learning to be interested rather than interesting when you're the new person trying to make an impression.

Chapters
01:07 — Kate's introduction
01:37 — From arts degree to Amazon: career origins
03:30 — Why leave Amazon? Finding the IB opportunity
05:08 — Never Search Alone: how the job search council works
10:37 — Building a personal inventory before committing to a role
13:38 — Amazon vs the IB: culture, pace, and decision-making
16:10 — Making the case in a mission-driven organisation
19:02 — Influence and persuasion — the "bus" analogy
23:44 — Building a product function from scratch
25:10 — Shifting from project delivery to product health
29:45 — Crossing domains: how to land and establish yourself
35:26 — Be interested, not interesting
37:50 — Advice for big tech → mission-driven transitions


Key takeaways
— Slow down to go faster. Whether it's stakeholder buy-in or ecosystem readiness, moving at the pace of your environment is more effective than pushing ahead and losing people.
— The job search council works because it narrows the search. Vague ambitions are hard to help. Specificity — size, sector, working style — lets your network actually assist you.
— Your transferable skills are the reason you were hired — not your curiosity about the new industry. Immersing yourself in domain knowledge is useful, but resist the urge to perform enthusiasm at the expense of bringing the perspective you were brought in for.
— Launching isn't the finish line. Success is a healthy product in-life, not the deployment event. Embedding that mindset in a team used to project-based thinking is its own change management challenge.
— The skills that got you here won't necessarily get you to the next stage. Moving into senior leadership means letting go of functional discipline instincts and developing a different kind of presence — one that's less about doing and more about enabling.
— Mission-driven organisations require a different kind of business case. The cost of doing something shouldn't obstruct the right thing if it advances the mission — a meaningfully different frame from commercial ROI logic.


Featured links
Never Search Alone by Phyl Terry | https://www.neversearchalone.org/
Be the Leader You Want to See by Susie Ramroo | https://www.amazon.co.uk/Leader-You-Want-See-confidently/dp/1781334595
International Baccalaureate | https://www.ibo.org/