In November I left my Marketing Manager role at Opes Advisors to pursue a career as a product manager. During my two and a half years there, I owned a wide variety of initiatives including managing the development of our company website and intranet. I led the roadmapping, specification and prioritization of new features and enhancements to our company sites. To ensure our development was both effective and efficient, I sourced feedback from users, drove discussion among major stakeholders and used Agile methodologies to manage work with our designer and developer. The web team’s success culminated with our public website’s conversion rate increasing by 26% in a single quarter.

That experience, coupled with the desire to not just sell solutions but create them, was what finally steered me into product management. These projects capitalized on everything I loved doing - talking to users and stakeholders, empathizing with their needs and working collaboratively with a skilled team to deliver the best technology solutions. Reflecting on my career, I realized that the skills and tasks where I excelled in my marketing career are also integral for great product managers.

I began in Marketing and Business Development straight out of college, starting with an internship in local politics in 2005 and followed by a position as Business Development Associate at a boutique financial planning firm. I enjoyed learning about a client’s goals and showing them where there were opportunities to improve their financial lives.

After three years, I realized how strongly I wanted to broaden my skill set into digital marketing. I consulted for B2B and B2C companies that varied in industry and size but all wanted to increase acquisition, retention and revenue without a big marketing spend. I built deeply researched customer personas in order to create and execute the best marketing strategy for each business. Often these solutions involved a combination of strategies, from email and content marketing to creating online communities through social media networks.

In 2012, I returned to the corporate world on a year-long contract at Gap in their credit card marketing division. While consulting, I used the basic data available to gauge effectiveness and make necessary adjustments, but knew I could learn much more by analyzing higher volume marketing strategies. At Gap I turned data into meaningful insights and recommendations that informed data-driven decisions on the best promotions for each customer segment. Learning about the explanatory and persuasive powers of data, as well as its potential pitfalls, made me a much more effective marketer and product manager.

With foundational product experiences at Gap and then Opes Advisors, I wanted to ensure that, as a product manager, I had the domain-specific skills and knowledge to walk into a great company and help their users win from day one. In December I began my training at Product School and collaborated with fellow students from backgrounds in engineering, project management and business development to create real product solutions. For my capstone project I developed a refresh for Square’s Support Center site.

Are you looking towards the next phase of your business and need someone to lead the charge? I’m here to listen with an open mind, dive in and work with great people to deliver successful products!