Rea Ara
5.0
(2)
Get Unstuck and Land that TPM Career You Actually Want
Studied at University of Toronto
Hiring Manager at Stealth Startup
Available Monday at 4:00 PM UTC
Questions? Start chatting with this coach before you get started.
Rea's Coaching Offerings
Custom hourly · $69/hr
Get help with Leadership, Cover Letters, and .
Rea also coaches for Product Management, Executive Coaching, and AI Automation & Agents. View all.
Rea’s Career Coaching Qualifications
Coaches professionally
Experience level: Manager
30+ people coached for Career Coaching
My career doesn't follow a straight line — and that's exactly why I'm qualified to coach this category. I started with a political science degree and a plan to go to law school. That plan fell apart. What followed was a decade of deliberate, sometimes uncomfortable pivots — from Deloitte in Toronto to Accenture in London to Google DeepMind in the Bay Area — each one requiring me to position myself for a role I hadn't done before, in a city I hadn't lived in, for organizations that weren't obviously looking for someone like me. I didn't have a roadmap. I had coaches, mentors, and a willingness to do the work of figuring out how to tell my story in a way that opened doors. I still have a coach today. Not because I've arrived — I'm currently founding an AI startup and completing a Masters at NYU simultaneously — but because I know firsthand what the right guidance at the right moment is worth. It's the difference between spinning in place for another year and making the move that changes everything. That's what I bring to career coaching: not generic advice, not a framework pulled from a book, but pattern recognition from someone who has made the non-linear career work at the highest levels — and who can take your specific situation, your specific background, and help you build a path forward that's actually yours.
Rea can help with:
Leadership
Cover Letters
General Exploration
Professional Networking
Skill Building
Salary Negotiation
Networking Strategy
Job Search Strategies
Interview Prep
Career Planning
Resume Review
Personal Branding
Rea also coaches for Product Management, Executive Coaching, and AI Automation & Agents. View all.
About Rea
I spent 10 years building a career across three continents — from Deloitte in Toronto, to Accenture in London, to Google DeepMind in the Bay Area — and every single move required figuring out how to position myself for a role I hadn't done before. That's exactly what I help my clients do now. At Google, I was a Senior TPM inside DeepMind's technical infrastructure, making decisions that influenced over $100M in capital allocation for global GPU and TPU deployments — the physical backbone of modern AI. Before that, I led product at Accenture across fintech and banking in Europe, and before that, at Deloitte in Canada. I've navigated the consulting-to-tech transition personally. I know what it costs, what it takes, and exactly where people get stuck. I coach three types of clients: The consulting or finance professional who knows they're smart and capable but can't figure out how to translate their experience into language that gets them past Big Tech screening calls. The mid-level IC or PM who's been stuck at the same level for two years and doesn't know why they keep getting passed over for senior or staff. The career switcher targeting AI and ML roles who has transferable experience but doesn't know how to frame it for a field that fetishizes technical credentials. What makes me different from most coaches: I'm not coaching from memory. I'm currently completing an MSc in Cybersecurity at NYU Tandon while founding an AI startup focused on agentic systems. I'm in the current job market, following what's actually getting people hired right now — not what worked in 2019. I give direct feedback. I don't tell you what you want to hear. If your resume isn't landing, I'll tell you why and fix it with you. If your interview answers are weak, we'll rebuild them until they're not. If you want a coach who has done the exact thing you're trying to do, I'm it.
Why do I coach?
Coaching changed my life — and I don't say that lightly. When I was staring down a career pivot I didn't choose, moving from political science into tech without a roadmap, the thing that made the difference wasn't a course or a certification. It was a person. Someone who sat with my specific situation, cut through the noise, and helped me see a path I couldn't see alone. I felt empowered in a way I hadn't before. I had clarity on what to do next. And I got there faster than I ever would have on my own. I still feel that way today. I still have a coach. Because no matter how far you've come — and I've come from wanting law school to building AI infrastructure at Google DeepMind — there are moments where you can't see your own situation clearly. Where you need someone to hand you the structure, the template, the honest reflection that turns overwhelm into momentum. That feeling — of being genuinely supported, of suddenly seeing clearly, of watching results show up faster than you expected — is what I want every single one of my clients to walk away with. Not generic advice. Not a pep talk. Real clarity on your specific situation, from someone who has navigated the exact kind of transitions you're facing. That's why I do this work. Because I know what it feels like when it works. And I want that for you.
Work Experience
Founder and CEO
Stealth Startup
January 2026 - Present
Hiring Manager
Currently in stealth, building at the intersection of agentic AI and cybersecurity — two of the fastest moving and most consequential areas in tech right now. This is my first time as a founder. I'm doing the hardest things — customer discovery, building with a co-founder, navigating the gap between a technical vision and a real market — while completing a graduate degree simultaneously. I'm sharing this not to impress you, but because it's relevant to you as a coaching client: I'm not someone who left the arena. I'm actively building, actively figuring things out, and bringing that current founder perspective into every session alongside my decade of Big Tech experience.
Founder and CEO
Arctic Owl, Sikhara Group LLC
October 2025 - Present
Sikhara Group started as a passion project and became a real client practice — and Arctic Owl is the studio behind it. At arcticowl.studio, we sit at the intersection of AI and B2B SaaS design. Two things: we build AI agents that automate real business workflows — not demos, but production systems that actually run — and we design the interfaces around them. Clean, functional UI/UX that makes powerful tools feel effortless to use. The work came naturally from a decade inside Google, Accenture, and Deloitte — I'd spent years building complex systems for large organizations and wanted to bring that same quality of thinking to leaner, faster-moving clients who can't afford to get it wrong. What this means for coaching clients: I'm not just someone who talks about AI. I'm actively building with it, shipping it, and figuring out what works in the real market right now. That current, ground-level perspective is something I bring directly into every session.
Senior Technical Program Manager
April 2021 - October 2025
Hiring Manager
I was part of the team that kept Google DeepMind's AI infrastructure running at scale — the physical servers, chips, and systems that power some of the most advanced AI research in the world. In plain terms: when DeepMind needed to deploy new AI hardware globally, I was responsible for making sure it happened faster, smarter, and with fewer failures. I built the systems that caught problems before they became crises, coordinated teams across the US, Europe, and Asia, and helped decide where over $100M in infrastructure investment should go. What this means for you as my client: I've operated at the highest levels of Big Tech — not in a supporting role, but making decisions that affected global AI systems. I know what Google, DeepMind, and companies like them actually look for when they hire senior technical talent. I know how those organizations work from the inside, how decisions get made, and how careers get built — and stuck — within them. I also mentored TPMs and team leads throughout my time there, building playbooks and frameworks that helped people navigate complex environments and move faster. That instinct for structured, repeatable approaches to hard problems is exactly what I bring to every coaching session.
Manager
Accenture
January 2019 - April 2021
Hiring Manager
Before Google, I was at Accenture in London leading product for some of the largest fintech and banking clients in Europe. In plain terms: I built the digital experiences that millions of banking customers used every day — and made sure they were secure, reliable, and never went down. We're talking 99.99% uptime on systems where a single hour of failure costs millions. I designed the frameworks that prevented fraud and abuse at scale, and reduced system latency by 30% across platforms handling real financial transactions. What this means for you as my client: I made the consulting-to-Big-Tech transition personally. I know exactly what it feels like to be the smartest person in a consulting room and still wonder if you're "technical enough" for a product role at a top tech company. I navigated that gap from the inside — and I can show you how to do the same. I also know what it takes to succeed internationally. I built my career across three countries — Canada, the UK, and the US. If you're navigating visa considerations, international job searches, or figuring out how to position experience from non-US companies for American hiring managers, I've lived that exact challenge.
Senior Consultant
Deloitte
May 2015 - December 2018
Interviewer
Deloitte is where my product career started — and where I learned that building things people actually use is harder and more rewarding than anything I'd done before. In plain terms: I built the digital features that Canadian banking customers interacted with on their phones every day — back when mobile banking was still being figured out. I owned the product experience across multiple platforms simultaneously, made sure everything was secure and compliant with financial regulations, and drove the kind of engagement metrics that kept executives happy and users coming back. What this means for you as my client: I started here without a traditional CS background. I came from political science, pivoted hard into tech, and had to earn credibility in a room full of engineers and consultants who'd been doing this longer than me. I know what it feels like to be early in your career, to be figuring out how to position yourself, to wonder if you belong in the room. I also know what it takes to go from that moment — uncertain, unproven, figuring it out — to Google DeepMind a decade later. That journey didn't happen by accident. It happened through deliberate choices, good mentorship, and learning how to tell a story about my experience that opened doors. That's exactly what I help my clients do.
Rea was also given offers to work at
NVIDIA
Meta (Facebook)
Microsoft
Education
University of Toronto
Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), Political Science and Government
Grade: High Distinction Graduate
Li Po Chun United World College of Hong Kong
International Baccalaureate (IB)
Activities and societies: Davis UWC Full Scholarship Recipient
New York University
Masters, Cybersecurity
2026 - 2026
NYU Tandon's Cyber Fellows program is one of the most selective accelerated cybersecurity graduate programs in the country, designed for high-achieving professionals at the intersection of technology, security, and systems thinking. The program covers advanced topics in network security, cryptography, secure systems design, and AI security — with a direct pipeline into New York's leading tech, finance, and government security organizations. As a Cyber Fellows scholar, I'm completing my MSc while actively founding an AI startup focused on agentic systems, applying security-first thinking to the frontier of autonomous AI behaviour.
2 Reviews
Overall Rating
5.0
Rea has helped Leland clients get into University of Toronto