New Chief Product Officer Bela Stepanova Joins Apollo's Journey

We're thrilled to announce Bela Stepanova is joining Apollo as our new Chief Product Officer. 

A technology leader who drove product innovation at Box during its growth from $60M to over $500M in revenue and most recently served as Senior Vice President of Product at Iterable, Bela brings extensive experience in scaling software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies through critical growth phases.

"I see Apollo winning in this space," says Bela. "Between the foundation the company has built and the evolving AI landscape, we have a real opportunity to transform how businesses approach go-to-market."

From coding at 12 to leading product innovation

Here's something you might not expect from a Chief Product Officer: Bela taught herself to code at age 12 in a pre-internet small town in Russia, reverse engineering computer graphics from a single programming book. That same drive to build and innovate has defined her career, from earning her Computer Science degree at Berkeley to founding Box's growth team before "B2B growth" was even a thing.

"I started coding by literally looking at a book and reverse engineering," Stepanova recalls. "In those days, I had no internet. My experience in CS was probably like 20 years behind what people had here growing up."

That early start laid the foundation for a career marked by transformative product leadership. At Box, she helped scale the company through its IPO, leading initiatives that drove user retention up 30% year-over-year. At Iterable, she built out the product team and spearheaded AI-driven marketing solutions that helped grow annual recurring revenue to over $200M.

The AI inflection point: reimagining software from the ground up

According to Bela, we're at a transformative moment in software development — but not for the reasons you might think. While many companies are rushing to layer AI on top of existing tools, she sees a bigger opportunity.

"We're going through a really interesting transitionary state," she explains. "I think software will become a lot more contextual, a lot more dynamic, a lot more proactive in helping users achieve their goals. But we have to reimagine how we build things to begin with…this wave is fundamentally giving us a way to re-envision how software works."

Why Apollo is positioned to lead

When asked what drew her to Apollo, Bela points to two key factors: the people and the vision.

 "The team is sharp, ready to win, and really has a sense of owning the company — not just their piece of the puzzle, which at this scale is not always true," she notes.

Like climbing a glacier — one of Bela's favorite pursuits outside of tech — building transformative products comes with different types of challenges. In mountaineering, Bela tells us, there's Type 1 fun (pure joy, like taking in stunning views from the summit) and there’s Type 2 (not fun in the moment — say, an ice storm hits — but looking back, you’d do it again).

"Tech should be something that makes it easier for customers to achieve their goals versus something they need to actively figure out and learn," Bela emphasizes. "We're there to help them grow their businesses in simple and effective ways."

As Apollo enters its next phase of growth, our vision for AI-powered go-to-market technology promises both Type 1 and Type 2 moments. But with her at the product helm, we’re confident that the view from the summit will be worth the climb.