People Behind the Product: Meet Athena Burgueno, Project & Program Manager

From Fashion to Features: My Journey to Pinterest Engineering Org

Hi, I’m Athena Burgueno, a Program Manager sitting within the Engineering org at Pinterest, where I’ve been since 2021. My role began with a focus on fashion expertise, supporting Engineering and Product teams with vertical content strategy, improving shopping quality signals and shaping brand-level insights. Over time, that foundation expanded into a broader cross-functional space that bridges creative intuition with technical collaboration. As a non-technical creative in a very technical environment, I’ve found my niche by connecting the dots between users, products and inclusive innovation. My path here wasn’t traditional, but that’s exactly what makes it distinctive.

A Nontraditional Path that Led Me Here

Before Pinterest, I spent four years in merchandising, working closely with established brands for dresses and activewear. I also built a fashion networking app designed to help industry professionals connect and collaborate, which gave me early insight into how product and user experience intersect.

My first summer at Pinterest was uniquely pivotal. The company provided me the opportunity to complete my master's degree at Parsons School of Design, including a final term studying in Paris. That flexibility not only reinforced my belief in Pinterest's culture, it allowed me to return to my role with deeper perspective and renewed clarity. That experience continues to inform how I show up at Pinterest today, which is rooted in creativity, guided by intention and driven to build systems that reflect our global users.

Why I Joined (And Stayed)

I joined Pinterest because of the culture. It wasn’t just the role that appealed to me, it was the people. From the start, I saw that this was a place where different perspectives are valued – a place where someone like me, without an extensive tech resume, could still contribute to a tech organization in deeply impactful ways.

What’s kept me here is that same energy. I’ve been trusted to lead, to collaborate and to shape programs with lasting impact on the product and the people who use it. As I’ve grown, so has my alignment with Pinterest’s core values, especially the one that guides everything we do: Put Pinners First. Whether I’m building a framework, weighing a trade-off or developing a new strategy, I’m always thinking about how our work shows up for real people in the moments that matter most.

Building With Purpose, Collaborating With Heart

One of the proudest moments in my Pinterest journey was contributing to the development of our body type ranges tool, an AI-powered feature that invites Pinners to choose the body types they’d like reflected in their fashion and wedding search results, making space for a more personalized experience.

As someone who has often felt overlooked by traditional fashion standards, it was meaningful to work on a feature designed to expand what people see and how they see themselves on Pinterest. I partnered with Engineering, Product and Content teams to build better signals, amplify relevant merchants, and reimagine how personalization can serve real people. Rather than taking a purely technical approach, I grounded my work in empathy and lived experience, applying a human lens to a deeply layered and evolving challenge.

How I Use Pinterest Today

As one can imagine, I save a ton of fashion related content both archival and new trends. Being a teenager in the early 00s with an obsession for the "it bags" of that era, but not the paycheck to match, I am revisiting and saving them to boards today. Imagine the Balenciaga City and Louis Vuitton Speedy, but with a Pinterest aesthetic like bag charms. However, often to more people's surprise, I use Pinterest for travel planning thanks to all of our creators’ recommendations. When I visit a new place and I am asked how I've heard about it, I happily say, "Pinterest."

Even after four years, I still find myself amazed at how the work I do behind the scenes shows up in real ways for millions of people. The fact that I can help shape that as a creative in tech is something I’ll never take for granted.