Today, Latch announced that Andrea Nelson has joined its leadership team as Vice President and General Manager of Smart Access. Nelson will oversee the Smart Access team, ​​including its strategy, P&L, and product roadmap. 

“Latch started by solving the hardest problems our customers faced by developing a full building smart access solution,” said Latch Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder, Dhruva Rajendra. “Now, our smart access products act as the gateway to LatchOS, our full building operating system. Andrea’s cutting edge experience at the intersection of hardware and software will help supercharge our efforts to continue to lead the industry in both innovation and resident experience. ” 

Prior to joining Latch, Nelson led new product introduction programs for Amazon Robotics. As a Single Threaded Leader, she managed cross-functional teams across Hardware, Software, Launch, Systems, Analytics, Deployment, and Supply Chain to launch a first-of-its-kind robotic solution, Robotic Delivery Station for Amazon Last Mile. Nelson led this project from ideation to launch in less than a year, an all time record for Amazon Robotics. 

Previously, Nelson served as Director of Product Management for AiRXOS, the leading unmanned aircraft system traffic management platform, where she launched three mobile and cloud SaaS products, bringing drone traffic management solutions to the U.S. and Australia in a quickly developing market. 

Earlier in her career, she served nearly every automotive and heavy vehicle OEM worldwide, managing the Aerodynamic, Aeroacoustic, and Thermal Management design product portfolio for Exa Corporation as Senior Director of Product. She also served as a Computational Fluid Dynamics Specialist and Lead Engineer at the NASA Ames Research Center on the Orion Constellation Rocket Program.

Nelson has co-authored one patent and nine published papers related to database mining and complex systems, and brings her extensive experience developing cutting-edge products, incorporating both hardware and software, to Latch’s growing product organization.

“Latch has an incredible foundation of technology and human expertise,” said Nelson. “With the Smart Access commitment to seamlessly and securely connecting users to their spaces, I have no doubt that more and more Latch users will quickly wonder how they ever managed to live without our services.”