Nicole Birdsall

Nicole Birdsall is a lecturer in marketing at the Orfalea College of Business, teaching Principles of Marketing and New Product Development. She brings two decades of teaching and more than two decades of product management experience into the classroom, along with applied AI expertise.

She began her career in engineering and has spent her product career on platforms, from email, messaging, and pricing at eBay to pricing, checkout, and observability at PayPal. As Director of Product Management at PayPal, she owns the observability and developer analytics platforms, including AI observability and the measurement of AI utilization, impact, and cost.

She holds an MBA with a concentration in marketing, a master's degree in Industrial and Organizational Psychology, and a doctorate from Golden Gate University in cyberpsychology and consumer behavior. Her research examines how consumers choose between payment methods in digital wallets and the ethics of AI in business.

She serves as faculty advisor to Cal Poly's Product Management Club and Advertising Club, and sits on the board of two nonprofits.