# Building Products for Positive Social Impact with Divya Dhar Aced (formerly Exponent) publishes a public search API over its indexed pages; the guide is at https://www.aced.io/agents/agent-access. Source: https://www.aced.io/blog/building-products-for-positive-impact Source observed: 2026-11-05T01:40:12.408Z Last checked: 2026-11-05T01:40:12.408+00:00 Indexed: 2026-11-07T03:22:36.194+00:00 --- # Building Products for Positive Social Impact with Divya Dhar [Aced (Exponent) Alumni](https://www.aced.io/blog/tag/exponent-alumni) Mitchell Kim • Last updated a month ago ![Article image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/a5/f5/a5f5c2f0-4c62-43c7-891b-662a0b6d68b3/content/images/pmlesson/2020/01/Alumni-Series--Blog---9-.png) We interview [Divya Dhar](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ddhar/?ref=exponent-blog.ghost.io), an Aced alumna, about her journey from medicine to nonprofit leadership, entrepreneurship, and product management. At the time of the interview, Divya was a product manager at Google working on Google Maps rideshare and delivery verticals. ## Divya’s career journey Divya’s early goal was to serve and develop people through science, which led her to become a doctor. She founded a nonprofit that inspired young people to work toward ending extreme poverty and grew into a large national youth voice on international-development issues. She later founded a health-tech company to reduce the burden of care coordination in hospitals. The company, [Seratis](https://entrepreneurship.wharton.upenn.edu/divya-dhar-wharton-mba-14-and-lane-rettig-wharton-mba-14-arts-sciences-ma-14/?ref=exponent-blog.ghost.io), was sold after 3.5 years. She then joined Faire, an online wholesale marketplace that helps entrepreneurs—mostly women—grow their small businesses nationally. She subsequently joined Google Maps as a product manager to help develop its then-nascent rideshare and delivery verticals. ## From doctor to entrepreneur and product manager Divya says that her love of science and people led her into medicine, while discovering her love of creativity motivated a broader career path. During an MBA, she met her cofounder and started Seratis. She identifies synthesis—the ability physicians develop to combine information from different sources and draw insights—as a central product-management skill. ## Empathy and problem selection Divya looks for problems she has personally experienced because she believes that firsthand experience creates deeper user empathy. As a doctor, she understood the difficulty of coordinating patient care; as a person of color, she understood the difficulty of shopping for beauty products online. ## Nonprofit and for-profit product management Divya distinguishes the optimization goals: - Her nonprofit sought broad participation to build a grassroots movement capable of influencing federal policy and the private sector. Because participation was voluntary, it could involve thousands of young people while keeping expenses low. - A startup must maximize impact per employee because its staff are employees rather than volunteers; she notes that federal law prevents voluntarism at a company. She describes these as different maximization functions: nonprofits may optimize involvement, while startups must optimize labor and capital efficiency. ## Challenges and advice for social entrepreneurs and product managers Learning new industries from scratch was difficult and exhilarating. Divya recommends distinguishing clearly between social entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship because they involve different values and optimization goals. Her broader principle is that work should serve people and create positive impact. She views monetary value as an indicator of impact, but says it is difficult to optimize monetary value and impact separately at the same time. Her advice is to choose one focus or ensure both goals are aligned in the company’s purpose. ## Product managers she admires Divya names her direct boss, [Eli Danziger](https://www.linkedin.com/in/elidanziger/?ref=exponent-blog.ghost.io), and her director, [Baljeet Singh](https://www.linkedin.com/in/baljeet-singh-84413a/?ref=exponent-blog.ghost.io). ## Interview preparation For her phone interview, Divya completed about 30 mock interviews focused mainly on product design and metrics. For the on-site interview, she completed about 80 mocks, including two with Aced coaches. The Google technical round was the most difficult part of her preparation. She read widely and studied full time for nearly two months. She also wrote about her preparation in [a detailed Medium article](https://medium.com/@divyadhar/how-to-prepare-for-googles-product-management-technical-round-when-you-are-not-technical-474de3ee01b3?sk=4112b87dbedf885f8a3c71e7ed21469d&ref=exponent-blog.ghost.io) and on [www.divyadhar.com](http://www.divyadhar.com/?ref=exponent-blog.ghost.io). ## How Aced helped Divya says Aced helped her develop several interview skills: - Empathizing more deeply with the problem, users, and pain points in product-design questions, enabling more creative answers. - Breaking problems down using metrics and estimation. - Leading the interviewer through appropriate signposting, summaries, and direction of questions. Her advice to aspiring product managers is that mock practice is essential. She recommends [Aced](https://www.aced.io/pm?ref=exponent-blog.ghost.io) and its coaches for skill refinement, emphasizing that more practice improves performance. ## Continue with Aced - [Browse product manager interview questions](https://www.aced.io/questions?role=pm&src=blog) and review recently asked questions and answers from real candidates. - [Book time with a Product Manager coach](https://www.aced.io/coaching?role=pm) for mock interviews, career coaching, or resume review. The coaching section advertises a 96% rating from 5,400 reviews: [browse coaches](https://www.aced.io/coaching?role=pm&src=blog). - [Create a free Aced account](https://www.aced.io/signup?src=blog) for free interview guides, insider tips, and courses. - Learn more through the [Aced Interview Course](https://www.aced.io/courses/pm?ref=exponent-blog.ghost.io) or [Aced’s website](https://www.aced.io/?ref=exponent-blog.ghost.io). ## Related courses ### [Product Management Interview Prep Course](https://www.aced.io/courses/pm) ![Product Management Interview Prep Course](https://images.ctfassets.net/x78yjrjc11pq/4PFBEhtIRyKwPm14eaBAFm/ad92a8c4dd1dc51108b3a855de64473b/product_management_track_compressed_063e6d4b35.jpeg?w=800&h=800) 7 courses • 58,100 students. Prepare for product strategy, product sense, analytical and execution, leadership and drive (behavioral), and technical PM interviews. The course description references AI product-sense rounds, vibe-coding prototypes, metrics questions, and the AI fluency interviewers expect, as well as roles at Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta, Apple, Google, and more. ### [Amazon Interview Prep Course](https://www.aced.io/courses/amazon-interview) ![Amazon Interview Prep Course](https://images.ctfassets.net/x78yjrjc11pq/13J85L9SUOG04YlmBQO22r/60eb5015cca36c6a178bbc0eb148571d/amazon_318003089b.png?w=800&h=800) 3 courses • 13,400 students. Prepare with an in-depth look at the Amazon interview process, tips, and example interview questions. ## Related blog posts - [Life of a European Product Manager](https://www.aced.io/blog/european-product-manager) — A month ago • 6 min read - [Landing College Internships: Engineering, Growth, and Product Management](https://www.aced.io/blog/landing-college-internships-engineering-growth-pm) — A month ago • 9 min read - [Product Managing the Cloud with Hemanth Kempanna](https://www.aced.io/blog/cloud-product-management-hemanth-kempanna) — A month ago • 7 min read - [Breaking into Product Management from a Non-Technical Background](https://www.aced.io/blog/breaking-into-product-management-non-technical) — A month ago • 5 min read --- [Read this page’s summary](https://www.aced.io/agents/api/public/v1/page-tldr?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aced.io%2Fblog%2Fbuilding-products-for-positive-impact&trace=t_679ff9ab98f3) ## Ask a follow-up about this page Need a more specific answer? 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