As Senior Director, Product Management, Lavina Khemchandani heads up a team that makes it easy and enjoyable for customers to explore Audible’s catalog and find content they’ll love, by allowing them to see quick highlights from customer reviews, search by mood or ultra-specific genre tropes, and customize their browsing and recommendations.

What is life like at the hub you’re aligned to?

Our Newark headquarters offers impact initiatives that are really special, particularly the school programs where we meet kids who are almost intimidatingly smart! The tickets we sometimes get for concerts and shows at NJPAC and the Prudential Center are also a huge perk.

How does your job contribute to Audible’s mission to surprise and delight listeners around the world? What is your biggest source of inspiration?

My team helps customers better understand the kinds of stories they love so they can find more of them, in fun and easy ways. We're constantly asking: how can we make discovering your next great listen feel as delightful as listening itself? Whether it's surfacing the perfect mood tag or helping you stumble onto a genre you didn't know existed, we're creating joyful discovery moments. My biggest inspiration comes from getting lost down a Wikipedia rabbit hole or finding the perfect movie on a streaming service and thinking, "How can we create that same sense of delightful exploration for audiobook lovers?"

What was your first Audible listen? What inspired you to check it out?  

Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling. I was already a huge fan of her work, so hearing her tell her own stories in her actual voice felt like having a conversation with a funny friend. What hooked me wasn't just the humor, it was how she balanced the laughs with being real about the challenges of being a woman in comedy. Her insights about persistence and finding your voice really resonated, and it convinced me of Audible's unique power to bring stories to life. 

Can you share a bit about your career journey at Audible?

I've had a wonderfully squiggly path! I started in analytics almost a decade ago and fell in love with understanding customer behavior through data, but realized I wanted to shape the experiences that drove those behaviors. I moved to marketing to think more strategically about customer communication and messaging, which taught me about segmentation and storytelling. But I kept gravitating toward upstream product decisions. Leading this “content wayfinding” team now feels like the perfect intersection of everything I’ve learned: using data to understand problems, applying customer insights to prioritize solutions, and building cross-functional experiences that help customers make the most of Audible.

How do you exemplify our People Principles in your day-to-day work?

“Study & Draw Inspiration from Culture & Technology" describes how I keep my product manager hat on during downtime, analyzing what makes the tech and culture that I consume work (or not) and bringing those insights to my team.

"Imagine & Invent Before They Ask" manifests in the ideas I generate from that inspiration.

"Be Customer Obsessed" dictates how I prioritize based on real customer problems from data and research.

"Articulate the Possible & Move Fast to Make it Real" comes into play when I’m rallying cross-functional partners to build solutions that balance speed with quality.

"Activate Caring" is my compass, guiding me to act with empathy and respect toward colleagues and customers.

Can you share about a project you moved quickly to make something real?

When we started this team, we needed a comprehensive content intelligence engine to power discovery experiences. Instead of building in silos, my team and I brought together data scientists, engineers, editorial experts, and designers to create our "tags pipeline,” a scalable way to generate and distribute rich content intelligence that any Audible team could leverage. In under a year, we built a system powering everything from detail pages to personalized recommendations to topic pages. It became foundational to how we approach content discovery and moved us from one-offs to a cohesive solution that multiple teams benefit from.

Other than the people, what do you love most about the culture here?

The fact that our People Principle "Activate Caring" isn't just wall art, it defines how we interact with colleagues and customers. We're all invested in making Audible a product people feel good about using, and it starts with the positivity, empathy and curiosity we show one another.

Can you share about your employee experience and the transition to your new role?

My current manager was a mentor before I joined her team. Through collaborative projects, she recognized how my diverse experiences could translate to successful product management. She guided me through the transition, helping identify skills I could sharpen for this challenging, but rewarding career path. I'm incredibly grateful for that push—now I can't imagine doing anything other than building experiences that help customers find their next great listen!

Each transition I've made at Audible has felt supported and intentional rather than jarring. What I love about Audible's culture is that career growth isn't just about climbing a ladder, it's about finding where your interests and strengths can create the most impact. The company genuinely invests in helping people explore different paths, and there's this understanding that diverse experiences make you a better contributor.

What’s one quality people interested in working on the Product team need in order to be successful at Audible?

Curiosity about the "why" behind customer behavior. The best team members don't just accept that customers struggle with discovery, engagement, or whatever problem space they’re focused on, they dig into the nuances and get excited about creative solutions. Whether analyzing behavioral data or going through user research, you need to be energized by turning insights into meaningful improvements.

What advice would you have for a candidate considering Audible?

Always keep your customer hat on. Whether you're watching a show on a streaming service, using the navigation system in your car, or ordering food on a delivery app, notice what's working for you, what's not, and why. That conscious customer obsession is how you succeed here and what makes the work feel rewarding when you solve problems you've personally experienced.

What made you choose to work at Audible, what made you want to stay?

I chose Audible because I'm a passionate book lover and media consumer excited to work on a product I actually use and care about. There's something motivating about understanding problems not just intellectually, but because I've lived them as a customer.

What makes me stay is finding people who see potential in unexpected ways. Instead of boxing me into a single role, colleagues and managers helped me recognize how my diverse experiences create a unique perspective that drives business impact. They've challenged me to stretch beyond what I thought possible by showing how my strengths could evolve to meet bigger challenges. It's rare to find a place where people invest in your whole self rather than just the job you were hired for, and where that investment feels genuinely tied to both your personal growth and the company’s success.

Lightning Round!

Favorite genre? Quirky, feel-good fiction.

Listening from a speaker or headphones? Headphones.

Favorite activity while listening? Long walks.

Morning person or night owl? Night owl.

Favorite snack? Guacamole and chips.

What are you currently listening to?

Indistractable by Nir Eyal. He gave a fantastic talk at Amazon about managing distractions and finding focus, and his practical approach to understanding why we get pulled away from what matters really clicked with me. As someone juggling multiple projects while trying to stay present for work and personal priorities, I love his deeper insights on attention and intentional time management.

See open Product & Customer Experience roles at Audible