2025 Year in Review
2025 Year in Review
Last year, I shared a reflection on what 2024 looked like for me across product, community, and learning. I am continuing with a 2025 Year in Review!
Being a Product Manager on the Power BI team puts me at the intersection of where data tools meet real users. But it’s the work outside my day job like volunteering, teaching, speaking that keeps me grounded. Community work has become my way of learning new perspectives, sharpening intuition, and staying honest about what “great” actually means.
Q1: January 1 — March 31 2025
The year started with a focus on mentoring and teaching. I ramped up work on the Power BI Desktop + Creator Space and dove into the Semantic Model Refresh Templates with Power BI integration.
I co-presented four customer-facing webcasts on the Semantic Model Refresh Templates in collaboration with the Data Integration team, reaching over 100 MVPs, Fabric Partners, and customers from the Enterprise Voice Program. I also presented to the Data & AI Communities of Practice on semantic model refresh templates with Fabric pipelines.
Outside of work, I was featured on Times Square as a top mentor on Topmate, co-organized GDG Devfest, and attended a Codepath mentors & alumni meetup at Microsoft. One of my learning goals this year was to expand my understanding of AI, so I attended lunch and evening sessions at Nvidia GTC and even jumped into an evening hackathon.
Q2: April 1 — June 30 2025
This quarter, I attended a cybersecurity conferences like Bsides Seattle and Women in Cybersecurity (WiCyS), plus several developer meetups and hackathons. These events reminded me how different user groups care about different things: security practitioners prioritize lineage, access control, and explainability, while hackathon teams want speed — how fast can they turn raw data into insight? Both perspectives matter.
Serving as a section leader for Stanford’s CS106A (Programming Methodology) was especially formative. Teaching fundamentals reveals every hidden assumption. When students struggle, it’s rarely because the concept is too complex — it’s because something foundational wasn’t clear.
That insight translates directly to product design. If users struggle with a workflow, the solution isn’t more documentation — it’s better defaults, clearer mental models, and fewer invisible rules.
Mid-quarter, I attended the Microsoft Fabric tour in Redmond and hosted an event with over 400 RSVPs. I also hosted an Ask Me Anything on careers in Product Management. The questions were revealing: people weren’t asking about frameworks or roadmaps — they were asking about ambiguity, tradeoffs, and influence without authority. In other words, the real work.
I was an intern cohort lead, mentoring 18 interns and hosting various events to build community & provide mentorship.
Judging and volunteering with Technovation was another reminder of the power of our youth in shaping the community. Teams with limited resources were building ambitious solutions, yet they were clear about the problems they were solving.
Q3: July 1 — Sep 30 2025
August marked a major milestone: the Public Preview of the Semantic Model Refresh Templates launched. You can read more in the blog post at https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/semantic-model-refresh-templates-in-power-bi-preview/ and check out the demo from the monthly feature update.
and GIF below of the feature:
The final stretch of the year is focused on large-scale, communities where research, infrastructure, and real-world usage converge.
Beyond shipping features, I continued building connections across communities where research, infrastructure, and real-world usage intersect. I attended Women in Product, and was recognized as a Top 100 WXN in STEM.
Q4: Oct 1 — Dec 31 2025
I attended the Aspire Start Strong event in Seattle, meeting a room full of Microsoft New Grads. It was inspiring to learn from everyone & hear their stories & experiences.
At Grace Hopper Celebration in Chicago, I presented a workshop on Power BI and Fabric Copilot alongside my colleagues Ojal and Neha. It was energizing to speak, learn from the community, and reconnect with old friends while making new ones.
November brought another milestone: the TMDL Visual Studio Code Extension became Generally Available. More details are in the blog post at https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/tmdl-visual-studio-code-extension-generally-available/
What I Learned
Product management is a contact sport. You don’t learn it in isolation. You learn it by staying close to users, engineers, educators, and builders by hearing frustration early and often.
Building in public, teaching fundamentals, and engaging with the community have made 2025 meaningful. I’m looking forward to continuing this work in the year ahead.
Cheers, and wishing everyone happy holidays!