About Deb Liu
Building Platforms That Connect Billions
Deb Liu was most recently President and CEO of Ancestry, where she brought the legacy company into its next phase of growth.
In her prior role at Meta, she turned persistence into a platform. The idea for Facebook Marketplace came to her during her first interview, though it took six years of strategic thinking and tenacious advocacy to build what would become a global marketplace serving over a billion people. She also architected Facebook’s first mobile ad products and payments infrastructure, proving that the most powerful solutions emerge when you connect the right people, ideas, and opportunities.
Her 20+ years in tech began with integration work at PayPal and eBay — complex projects that taught her how to see the connections others miss.
Deb’s Duke engineering background from Duke and MBA from Stanford provided the technical foundation, but her real strength lies in pattern-matching, immediately seeing what people need and how to make it happen.
Bring Deb to SpeakCreating Space for Others
In addition to building products, Deb cultivates community. Women In Product, which she founded, now connects over 30,000 women in tech who might otherwise navigate their careers alone. Her board service at Intuit and Duke’s Engineering School extends this philosophy: use your platform to help others.
Recognition as an A100 honoree by Gold House and membership in the Committee of 100 reflects her commitment to representation, but the real measure is in the careers launched and connections made. She approaches every conversation with the same question: how can I leave this person better off than they were before?
Frameworks for What’s Next
After getting Ancestry back to growth, Deb stepped away to practice what she teaches about strategic transformation. She’s working on her second book — a guide to effective transformation — while continuing to mentor founders, advise startups, and serve on boards. Her weekly Perspectives newsletter and monthly A Tiger Mom and Her Cub column offer frameworks for navigating change with both professional rigor and personal authenticity. Born competitive in small-town South Carolina, she now lives in Northern California with her husband and their three children, proving that the best transformations honor where you came from while building something entirely new.
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