How did you get into the industry and what has been your journey so far?
I came in sideways, which I think is the most interesting way in. My studies specialized in Security at UCL focussing on intelligence and the mechanics of power. During and after my undergrad I built experience across a few different worlds: policy research at Chatham House, asset management structures at Pictet, and board membership across two foundations. Not exactly a traditional pipeline to adtech, but I've always been someone who thinks in systems, and it turns out building a company is just another kind of systems problem.
I met Andrea, CEO and co-founder of Thrad, in class during my undergrad at UCL in London. He was just getting started with Marco, CTO and co-founder, and I found their passion and drive genuinely inspiring. Over time I got closer to Thrad, started learning more and more about adtech as an industry, and eventually joined the two of them. Andrea and Marco have been the most amazing mentors, and they made me fall in love with the industry. "Spread ideas that matter to people who care" is something I now deeply understand. Good ads actually do save lives.
I now run operations at the company, which means I touch everything from publisher partnerships and advertiser BD to legal, finance, and automation engineering. Determined to get truly technical, I went back to UCL to complete an MSc in Information Studies, covering AI, programming, and ethics in data science.
That transition sharpened my toolkit enormously and kept me grounded in the ethical questions that matter most in the industry. I describe myself as a humanist who codes, and I think that tension is actually a superpower.
What struggles, if any, have you had as a women in the industry?
Honestly, less than you might expect. The AI and adtech space is unusually open: it's creative, fast-moving, and deeply operational all at once, and I've found that what gets respected here is thinking and output, not credentials or background. My ideas have been taken seriously and my work has spoken for itself, which has been very energising.
If anything, the discomfort I've experienced as a woman in professional environments came earlier, in more traditional settings before I found my footing in tech. What changed things for me was mentorship. Andrea and Marco have pushed me to back myself, and that confidence has translated directly into results. We joke that the "headaches" of the company always land with me, because they know I'll get it done. I've come to wear that as a badge of honour, though I suspect it also has something to do with the fact that women are just built differently when it comes to multitasking.
I think the lesson isn't that the industry is perfect, but that the right environment makes an enormous difference. Finding people who invest in you genuinely, and then delivering, is what builds a track record that no one can argue with.
Which women do you look up to and why?
Whitney Wolfe Herd, because she built Bumble from a genuine conviction that the dynamic needed to change, and then took it public as the youngest female founder to do so. That's not a small thing. She operated in a space that was hostile to her in very public ways and came out the other side having built something that actually shifted behaviour at scale. That combination of resilience and real-world impact is what I find inspiring.
Alexandra Zatarain, co-founder of 8 Sleep, because she took a deeply technical, operational product and built a brand around it that people genuinely desire. That is a very specific and underrated skill. In adtech and AI, we often forget that the best technology in the world still needs someone who understands how to make people care. She does that brilliantly.
Where you would like your career to go over the next five years?
I want Thrad to be the defining infrastructure layer for advertising in the AI era, and I want to have been a significant part of building that. I strongly believe what we're building is bringing back the good side of advertising: no interruption, but content that actually resonates with users. That matters to me beyond the business case.
Concretely: I'm focused on scaling our publisher and advertiser network and establishing Thrad as a category-defining company in the space.
Beyond the company, I want to keep building at the intersection of technology and humanistic thinking. Tech for good, essentially. The power that AI holds is immense, and I believe it will do extraordinary things with the right parameters around it. I want to be in that conversation with real standing.
What advice would you give other women in the industry?
Get technical enough to not need a translator. You don't have to be an engineer, but you do need to understand the systems you're operating in, well enough to ask the right questions and spot when you're being bullshitted.
Find your specific angle of attack. "Women in tech" is not a strategy. What is the particular thing you see that others don't? That's your edge. Build from there.
And don't wait for permission to have opinions. The industry rewards conviction more than it rewards deference.
Alexandra Naomi Perez, Head of Ops at Thrad