In this episode of On the Pulse, Tony Mulcock (Pulse Group) sits down with Brigitte West, a senior product leader in health tech, to unpack her journey from studying medical sciences and founding an early beauty tech company to leading product, design, engineering, and clinical teams at executive level. Brigitte shares why she’s stayed focused on healthcare impact, how shipping real products (from early breastfeeding support tools to systems used in millions of NHS appointments) shaped her career, and what she looks for when hiring across regulated and non-regulated backgrounds. The conversation explores women in tech and self-belief, learning by doing versus waiting for permission, leading in scale-ups with ROI-focused “bets,” building international teams in India with autonomy and strategic context, and how AI is changing workflows, decision-making, and the boundaries between PM, design, and engineering.

00:00 Believe Before Ready
00:44 Podcast Welcome Intro
03:03 From Med Sci to Startup
04:53 Health Tech Calling
11:45 Impact Driven Product Work
14:58 Hiring for Motivation Balance
24:45 Women in Tech Mentors
29:28 Action Over Permission
34:29 Leading at Different Scales
36:09 Crafting Product Strategy
36:33 Org Design Follows Strategy
37:46 Aligning With CEO And CFO
38:38 Products As Portfolio Bets
40:07 ROI Mindset In Scaleups
42:11 Balancing People Process Politics
42:58 Planning For High Impact
45:00 Redesigning Work With AI Tools
48:29 Building Teams In India
54:46 Autonomy And Decision Speed
58:06 AI Experimentation Culture
01:00:52 Personal AI Workflows
01:05:38 Leading Through AI Change
01:07:14 Impact Over Frameworks
01:09:18 Advice For Aspiring Leaders
01:12:38 Final Thanks And Wrap

In the debut episode of On The Pulse, host Ricky Burns sits down with Fabrice Khullar, a product leader who has spent over two decades at the forefront of digital transformation for some of the UK’s most iconic brands. Currently the Director of Product, UX, and Optimisation at Boots UK, Fabrice’s career journey spans senior roles at Sky, Sainsbury’s, and Selfridges, offering a unique perspective on how product management shifts between pure tech and large scale retail.

Fabrice pulls back the curtain on what it really takes to move from "delivery" to "discovery," how to handle the high pressure transition from individual contributor to leadership, and why the most important part of a product manager's role in the age of AI might be deciding what not to build.

In this episode, we discuss:

• The Career Pivot: How Fabrice moved from journalism and project management into the early days of product development at Orange and Sky.
• Retail vs. Pure Tech: The fundamental differences in managing products when your "customers" are right in front of you on the shop floor.
• The Leadership Leap: Moving from leading a product to leading the people who lead products, and the "dirty word" every leader must master: politics.
• The AI Revolution: What "vibe coding" means for the future of engineering and how product teams can use AI to accelerate roadmaps without losing the human touch.
• Agentic Commerce: Why the future of shopping is about "stacking channels" and meeting the consumer in their increasingly messy, multitasking lives.

Timestamps:

00:00 - Introduction to On The Pulse

02:40 - Fabrice’s journey: From journalism to product management

07:08 - Disrupting the industry: Lessons from Sky and Now TV

11:49 - The unique challenges of product management in retail

15:51 - Why "technical debt" is actually a product strategy problem

22:22 - The transition into leadership: Moving from leading products to leading people

35:53 - AI, vibe coding, and the future of engineering

44:47 - The next decade of retail: Convenience, fragmentation, and agentic commerce

53:16 - Closing thoughts and where to connect with Fabrice

Connect with us:

• Host: Ricky Burns: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardmarcburns/
• Guest: Fabrice Khullar: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fabrice-khullar-4309153/
• Produced by: Pulse Group: https://pulserecruit.co.uk/
  
  

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