It is an understatement to say that Deb Liu’s rise to CEO of Ancestry.com is “unique.” From growing up as a child of Chinese immigrants in South Carolina (where she was often told to “Go back to where she came from”), to navigating gender imbalance in the tech industry, to an ongoing battle with imposter syndrome, Deb has met challenges with wisdom, grace, and a gentle perseverance. In this conversation with Paula Faris, you can hear Deb share her personal reactions to the challenges (and blessings) of her career, and specific tips, tools, and structures that she uses to arrange her life for continued growth.
Deb Liu
President & CEO | AncestryPaula Faris
Founder | CARRY Media™Lori Hermann
Executive Producer | Global Leadership NetworkEp 107: Behind the Leader with Deb Liu – Battling Imposters, Bringing Others to the Table, and the Importance of Finding Your Superpower
TOPICS IN THIS PODCAST
CharacterLeading YourselfIt is an understatement to say that Deb Liu’s rise to CEO of Ancestry.com is “unique.” From growing up as a child of Chinese immigrants in South Carolina (where she was often told to “Go back to where she came from”), to navigating gender imbalance in the tech industry, to an ongoing battle with imposter syndrome, Deb has met challenges with wisdom, grace, and a gentle perseverance. In this conversation with Paula Faris, you can hear Deb share her personal reactions to the challenges (and blessings) of her career, and specific tips, tools, and structures that she uses to arrange her life for continued growth.
On This Podcast
Deb Liu
Ancestry
With over 19 years in the tech industry, Deb Liu has been named one of Business Insider’s most powerful female engineers and one of PaymentsSource’s most influential women in payments. Prior to joining Ancestry as President and CEO, she was a senior executive at Facebook, where she created and led Facebook Marketplace, a platform for millions of people to buy from and sell to one another. She also led the development of Facebook’s first mobile ad product for apps and its mobile ad network, in addition to building the company’s games business and payments platform, which includes Facebook Pay. Prior to Facebook, she spent several years in product roles at PayPal and eBay, where she led integration between the two products. She serves on the board of Intuit and Ancestry and is a seed investor and advisor to several startups. Additionally, she holds several payments and commerce-related patents. Actively involved in promoting diversity in tech, Deb founded Women In Product, a nonprofit with over 30,000 members, with the goal of connecting and supporting women in the product management field. She is a member of the Committee of 100, a group of prominent Chinese Americans, and was named an A100 by Gold House, an honor recognizing impactful Asian Americans. Deb’s new book, Take Back Your Power, releases in August 2022.
Paula Faris
CARRY Media™
Paula Faris is an Emmy-Award winning journalist, speaker, best-selling author of Called Out: Why I Traded Two Dream Jobs For A Life Of True Calling, and host of the Paula Faris Faith & Calling podcast, where she talks to inspirational people about what they're called to do and who they're called to be. Faris spent the last nine years at ABC news, during which she was co-anchor of Good Morning America weekend edition and co-host of The View. While at the network she reported on everything from politics, news and entertainment to sports and faith. In 2022, Faris launched CARRY Media™ with the desire to champion, advocate and celebrate working mothers across America.
Lori Hermann
Global Leadership Network
Lori is the Executive Producer at the Global Leadership Network. The GLN is a community committed to learning from each other and using their influence to inspire and equip world-class leadership that ignites transformation. Lori leads a team of content curators and developers, producers and artists as they design and execute the Global Leadership Summit and year-round leadership development events, tools and resources. The GLS reaches more than 400,000 individuals around the globe each year with world-class leadership development. Lori has a passion to create opportunities that help others develop into the best version of themselves and has done that from the beginning of her career in health education at an HMO, the Arthritis Foundation and American Heart Association. She then brought her strategic gifts and event experience to Willow Creek Community Church where she led creative teams to produce weekend services, special events, conferences and church resources. In 2000 she transitioned to the Willow Creek Association (now known as the Global Leadership Network) to lead the Arts Ministry Business Segment and in 2013 became the Executive Producer of the Global Leadership Summit, as well as the year-round resources and events.