Sushma Zoellner is the Chief Product Officer at Hermetic AI, where she leads product strategy, design, and delivery for secure, enterprise-grade AI systems. She focuses on building scalable, human-centered products that enable organizations to deploy generative AI safely, efficiently, and with trust.
Before joining Hermetic AI, Sushma was CPO at Closinglock, a fintech company transforming real estate transactions. She led product, design, and engineering while scaling the company and technology . During her tenure, she launched the industry’s first homebuyer payments platform—processing more than $2 billion in transactions—and introduced several new products to market that accelerated growth, expanded market share, and closed fundraising efforts.
Earlier, Sushma was Vice President of Digital Product at H-E-B, where she helped build and scale the company’s digital product management organization from the ground up. She led the launch of H-E-B’s first transactional eCommerce app, driving a 367% increase in online sales and a 520% boost in active users. Her work modernized customer experiences across mobile, web, and in-store platforms, positioning H-E-B as a leader in digital retail innovation.
Sushma is also the Founder and CEO of Kultivation, a product advisory firm that helps early-stage technology companies accelerate growth through fractional product leadership, organizational design, and talent development.
She began her career as a software engineer at IBM, earning eight patents for innovations in enterprise software, and later held senior product leadership roles at Snap Kitchen, RetailMeNot, and Bloomfire.
Sushma has been recognized as an Austin Business Journal Women in Business Awards Finalist (2025) and an Amazing Women in eCommerce Honoree (2021).
She holds an MS in Technology Commercialization and a BS in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin, and has completed executive education in Digital Transformation at Harvard Business School and UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.