Yuka Perera
I love to build products that solve real user problems.
About Me
I'm a curious, lifelong learner, and product-minded builder. At MIT, I studied Mechanical Engineering with a focus on Product Development and a minor in Business Management. Graduated top 10% of my class and earned membership in Tau Beta Pi and Pi Tau Sigma engineering honor societies.
My education taught me to think from first principles and design products that balance technical rigor with real-world usability.
I co-founded Nomad Mannequin with two MIT friends. We built a full-size mannequin that collapses into a briefcase for apparel brands at trade shows. I led customer discovery, product ideation, prototyping, and go to market efforts. This experience sharpened my ability to learn fast from customers, make tradeoffs, and ship products that create value.
Professionally, I work in strategy consulting, often in Financial Services. I partner with C-suite leaders to diagnose root problems, design solutions, and build prioritized roadmaps to help enterprises deliver on their business goals. I also lead delivery by writing PRDs and user stories, facilitating client discovery to validate requirements, aligning with Design on functional specs and acceptance criteria, and partering with Engineering and client SMEs to deliver integrations. I drive backlog prirotization, milestone planning, and regular demos to ensure predictable delivery.
Outside of work, I'm always building. I experiment with AI tools, ship side projects to solve my own problems, and create tools for my community.
🏡Where I'm From
I grew up in Santa Barbara, California to a Japanese mom and a Sri Lankan dad. My entrepreneurial drive started early watching my parents grow their mom-and-pop restaurant into a household name in my hometown.
A Bit More About Me
All-American Tennis Player
Competed at the national level and earned All-American honors.
Nature Lover
Passionate about hiking and on a mission to visit all the national parks.
World Traveler
20 countries and counting. Always planning the next adventure.
Projects
Nomad Mannequin
Co-FounderProduct & Hardware
Problem
Apparel brands lose sales at trade shows when buyers can't see clothes on a body. Traditional mannequins are expensive, fragile, and a pain to transport.
What I Built
A full-size mannequin that collapses into a briefcase. Portable, affordable, practical.
I owned everything: customer discovery, prototyping in the machine shop, manufacturing tradeoffs, and go-to-market. Learned how to balance user needs with real-world constraints and ship products from zero to revenue.
Tech: CAD, laser cutting, 3D printing, machine shop fabrication
Visit nomadmannequin.com →Reel Bot
Product BuilderGrowth Automation
Problem
Marketing Nomad on Instagram was manual and slow. Spotting trends early was nearly impossible.
What I Built
A web scraper that tracks Instagram Reels: engagement metrics, trending songs, transcripts, growth velocity. Surfaces emerging trends so I can ride them before they saturate.
Transformed marketing from gut feel to data-driven. Saved hours every week.
Tech: Playwright, built with Claude Code
PicklQ
Product BuilderCommunity Tool
Problem
At public pickleball courts, nobody knows who's next. Lots of confusion and occasional arguments.
What I Built
A simple queue app. Players scan a QR code, join the queue, advance it when games finish. Turn order is transparent. No disputes.
Spotted friction in everyday life and solved it with minimal UX.
Tech: Firebase, built with Codex
Visit picklq.com →Directory Scraper
DeveloperSales Automation
Problem
Outbound sales for Nomad meant manually clicking through trade show directories, evaluating leads, and writing custom outreach. Painfully slow.
What I Built
A scraper that pulls brand data into spreadsheets, ranks leads by fit, and preps them for outreach. Days of research compressed into minutes.
Next: automate personalized emails using the scraped data.
Tech: Web scraping, built with Codex
Experience
Accenture Strategy
Strategy Analyst
June 2024 – Present
- •Partnered with C-suite executives at a global logistics company to design operating model strategy and define shared services roadmap
- •Led delivery for a major financial services client, working with engineers and SMEs to deploy pilot solutions that met performance targets
- •Redesigned customer experience for a large consumer bank using Agile methodology, writing PRDs and technical requirements to transform user flows
MIT Global Teaching Labs
Entrepreneurship and Computer Science Instructor
Dec 2022 – Jul 2023
- •Designed curriculum on entrepreneurship, data analytics, and computer science for advanced high school students in Italy and Israel
- •Led interactive lessons that encouraged critical thinking and hands-on problem solving
General Motors
Product Development Hardware Engineering Intern
Jun 2022 – Aug 2022
- •Optimized experimental variables (material, temperature, size) to improve in-lab EV battery performance by 6%
- •Collaborated with a multidisciplinary team on sustainable vehicle body and accessory innovations to strengthen competitive positioning
Other Experience
Gained experience at Shell Oil focusing on sustainable engineering practices. Also conducted research across multiple MIT labs, exploring product development, materials engineering, and applied design.
Get in Touch
Always open to product opportunities, collaborations, or just chatting about building things.