What I’m dedicating 2026 to: A look at the year ahead
It’s time for yet another annual review!
I love taking this time to reflect on the past year and to look ahead to the next one. (If you’re interested in seeing any previous years’ editions, you can browse through them here.)
Going through this exercise gives me the chance to celebrate the wins, to learn from the mistakes or missteps, and to approach the new year with a clear sense of purpose and direction.
This year’s reflection feels a little different. 2025 wasn’t a year of big experiments or bold new directions for me. Instead, it was a year that asked for steadiness, patience, and a lot of inner work. My husband and I decided to part ways in the middle of the year—a big personal change that naturally shaped how much energy and attention I could give to the playful, exploratory parts of my business. Still, I’m deeply proud of what I was able to build and maintain through this time.
Reflecting on 2025: Highlights, new projects, and some personal updates
Creating and sharing content
This year I released four editions of my quarterly newsletter, published 20 blog posts, and wrote dozens of social media posts. Compared to previous years, my output is slightly on the lighter side—and that’s perfectly fine. I had less creative headspace for experimenting wildly, but I still found joy in the deep, thoughtful work I put into the PLwheel and my recently launched leadership course, From Strong to Exceptional. Both projects felt like anchors during an otherwise turbulent year.
Connecting in person around the globe
In 2025, I had a mix of travel for business and fun. I made several trips to Barcelona and Copenhagen, I went to Tangier for House of Beautiful Business, and enjoyed time relaxing in Egypt and Slovenia on family vacations.
And while I wasn’t on the road doing speaking gigs as much as in previous years, I’ve been presenting virtually at corporate events and have appeared as a guest on several podcasts. I was also invited to the hot seat at ProductTank Hamburg, where the audience got to rate my answer to every question on the spot! It was a fun (though slightly stressful) way to interact with the local product community here.
Supporting innovation and community
I’m continuing to invest in an AgriTech seed company and I had my first successful exit as an angel investor when airfocus was acquired by Lucid. 🎉
Product at Heart: Ambitious experiments and returning to our roots
We began 2025 with an ambitious vision for Product at Heart: to bring our beloved event to an even broader audience by offering events in both Barcelona and Hamburg.
Despite our best efforts, we had to cancel the Leadership Event in Barcelona due to a lack of ticket sales. Thankfully, we put on a successful day of workshops in Barcelona, but it wasn’t quite the scale we’d initially imagined. This experience helped clarify the importance of staying true to our roots and focusing our attention on making Hamburg the best event it can possibly be—at least for now!
Speaking of the Hamburg event, 2025 was a smashing success, with over 1,000 product people attending the Leadership Event, workshops, and main conference. We’re so grateful for this curious community we’ve been cultivating over the past few years—a heartfelt thank you to everyone who’s participated as a speaker, attendee, workshop presenter, sponsor, or volunteer! Find more of my thoughts on Product at Heart 2025 here.
A new project: All Things Product with Teresa & Petra
In March 2025, Teresa Torres and I launched our podcast, All Things Product. In each episode, we take on a different topic, sharing our personal stories and hot takes. Of the nearly 40 episodes we’ve released so far, our AI-related topics—AI prototyping, AI evals and discovery, and Building AI products—have generated the most views and listens (not a big surprise given all the interest in AI in the business world and especially within the product industry). However, my personal favorite topic so far was Context is King, which also happened to be the theme for my autumn 2025 newsletter!
AI experimentation: Still much more to do!
File this under the “stuff I would have loved to do more but did not find the time” category: At the beginning of the year, I had a lot of ideas about how I might tap into the potential of AI.
I use ChatGPT and Claude daily for prompting, testing, and refining workflows across coaching, writing, and event planning. I even have extensive projects trained in both environments to help me with everything from summarizing materials to brainstorming post ideas. If you’re interested in learning more about my specific use cases, check out the episode of All Things Product where Teresa and I discuss using AI as a thought partner.
But there’s still so much more I could explore to automate aspects of my business and maybe even build some cool new things.
To share one specific example, I experimented with using Lovable to build a software-based version of the PLwheel. I was truly impressed with what I was able to come up with in a few days and I even tried it out with some of my coachees. But at the end of the test period, both my coachees and I realized that the paper or PDF version was a much more powerful tool for self-reflection. The software version (at least that iteration of it), felt too much like it was nudging them to rush through and tick the boxes rather than to spend as much time as they needed on answering the questions thoughtfully.
Overall, this experiment helped me see how fast it is to build with AI tools, but it also reminded me that the most technologically sophisticated product might not be the right one for every situation and audience. So even if no one is using the software PLwheel today, I think building it was an incredible learning experience. And I might just dust it off again at some point in the future and see how it can be improved!
To sum up: I know there’s much more I can do with AI, and this is an area where I expect to devote a lot more of my time and energy in 2026.
Personal milestones and challenges
On a personal note, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, Andree and I came to the mutual decision to end our marriage, so for the past few months we’ve been navigating what this next chapter will look like for our family. It’s been a profound change—especially with a little one in the mix—and it naturally influenced how I showed up in other parts of my life. Still, I’m grateful for the grace, support, and understanding I received from clients, colleagues, and friends throughout this period.
Looking ahead to 2026: Goals and focus areas
I see 2026 as an opportunity to build and expand on many of the foundations I’ve been building in 2025. This includes:
Promoting wider adoption of the PLwheel and Leadership course
Now that the PLwheel and From Strong to Exceptional course are officially launched, I’ll be looking for ways to promote them more broadly. I’m not ready to release the PLwheel to the general public (I think it requires too much support to be useful that way), so I’ll continue to work with companies to help them use it and share it with participants in my leadership course. If you think the PLwheel would be a good fit for your organization and you’d like to work with me on rolling it out, you can learn more and get in touch here.
In other leadership course news, we’ll soon be starting the live Q&A sessions. I’ll be offering these about every other week for the next year. I can’t wait to connect with participants during these calls. It will be fascinating to hear how the course material is resonating and discover what they found most challenging and transformative.
Refining the Product at Heart Leadership and conference experiences
Based on our learnings over the past few years, we’ve decided to make one major update to Product at Heart in 2026. Instead of hosting the Leadership Event and conference in the same week, we will now hold the Leadership Event April 20–21 and the workshops and conference June 25–26. We believe spreading the events out this way will allow us to give each event the attention and care it deserves.
Growing our agritech venture
I’ll continue to invest in NurtrTech and look forward to seeing how this project progresses.
My first public speaking event on the PLwheel
Egypt holds a special place in my heart, so when Omar Sallam invited me to join the MENA Product Summit in Cairo in January 2026, my answer was a wholehearted yes! I’ll be offering a workshop where we’ll reflect on what product leadership means in your context, assess your current strengths, and create a practical development plan for the months ahead. I’ll also be doing a fireside chat during the main conference.
Personal learning
After my transformative experience at the House of Beautiful Business in Tangier in 2025, I can’t wait to join the next event from the same organizers, the World Beautiful Business Forum, which will be held in Athens in May 2026.
As life is finding a new rhythm, I’m entering 2026 with a renewed sense of clarity and calm. My focus will be on stability, meaningful work, and continuing to create spaces—through coaching, writing, and events—where growth and connection can flourish.
Final thoughts: Creating regular, structured opportunities for reflection
There’s a reason why I commit to making this time for reflection every year: I believe this is how we absorb new information and take steps towards actually changing our behavior.
This is why in the product leadership course, we use a simple framework to prompt reflection at the end of each unit (every eight weeks).
If you’d like to try this out—and make reflection a regular habit rather than trying to squeeze it all in at the end of the year—here are a few prompts to get you started:
What was your main takeaway [from the week/unit/quarter/etc.]? Was there a quote or thought that stood out to you?
What’s something you want to try [this week/unit/quarter/etc.] What specific action will you take? How will you approach it?
Is there a specific way you’d like to celebrate your effort and progress?
Is there anything else you’d like to make note of?
And if you are looking for a more structured framework to help you reflect on your past year, check out this post.
Wishing you a happy and healthy 2026!