Leni Hakvoort

As Head of Product at New Black, I bring a thorough, academic, and deeply creative approach to shaping our product vision, translating ideas into concrete direction for the product teams of New Black. Blending vision, theory, and data with a strong intuition for what the market actually needs is a second nature to me. What energizes me most is seeing how people actually use the product. Our product is regarded to be the best in the market, and everything we build has to meet that standard.

Key Achievements

• Co-created EVA itself, one of the most advanced Unified Commerce platforms for enterprise retailers.
• Pioneered breakthrough thinking around Order Management (OMS), reshaping how the platform handles the full order lifecycle.
• Introduced brand communities as a new layer on top of unified commerce, turning transactions into relationships and setting the direction for contextual commerce in modern retail.
• Oversees all development at New Black, organizing teams into verticals with deep expertise in their respective domains.

My Vision
Technology has a tendency to optimize processes at the expense of people. The vision here is the opposite: technology should facilitate human interaction, not replace them. By layering brand community features and contextual commerce on top of unified commerce, retailers get a toolset that serves real business goals while enabling long-term relationships between retailer and customer. The future of retail isn’t more automation for its own sake, it’s technology that makes human connection possible at scale.

Leadership Philosophy
Vision is what motivates people, and offering that continuously is my main objective. Accepting that every high-performing individual is different, and reaching them means understanding what actually drives them, implies not applying a one-size-fits-all approach. Leaders make leaders, not through micromanagement, but by zooming in on people’s individual qualities and helping them grow from there.

Let’s Connect
If you share this passion for product vision, contextual commerce, brand communities, or the future of order management in unified commerce, let’s connect. Exchanging ideas on how technology can bring people closer together in retail is always welcome.