I love products but I love humans even more, and I love the combination of humans and products.
This eloquent quote from Dr. Elizabeth Churchill, a UX Director at Google, reflects the essence of who I am as a coach and encapsulates my overall approach. Before “the combination of humans and products” led me to coaching and training, my passion for both brought many product managers to me, seeking guidance, mentorship, and support. And while over time I evolved into a people leader who works across cultures and continents, I remain a product manager at my core.
My product career began over ten years ago when product management was mainly about “taking requests and translating them into requirements for engineers to build features.” While this definition is still valid for many companies today, I believe we are making important strides in the direction of “empowered product teams,” thanks to all the work done by product coaches and leaders such as Marty Cagan, Teresa Torres, and others.
Over the last decade, I have worked across various B2C and B2B product areas in hyper-growing startups like 15Five and enterprises, such as ServiceNow. As a yoga teacher and mindfulness practitioner, I co-founded an e-commerce startup several years ago to design and build a reversible meditation cushion for yoga and mindfulness enthusiasts. Since then, I’ve been applying my entrepreneurial mindset to everything I do. Having pioneered the Design Sprint framework as a design thinking leader at ServiceNow several years ago forever changed my mindset. Today, I continue to leverage these principles in my coaching when encouraging clients to “begin with the end in mind” and go wide, as well as in my life as a location-independent professional.
Before transitioning to full-time coaching, I led and directly managed a distributed team of product managers at 15Five. The experience of working at a successful remote-first company made me realize even more how critical the human aspect and emotional intelligence are for product management and leadership.
Today, as a part of my coaching practice, I work with individual product managers and leaders looking to intentionally grow in their product careers and product teams lacking a structured approach to PM career growth and development. Being passionate about education, I’ve recently co-designed the Ahead of Product – a hands-on 4-months career program tailored to Senior Product Managers who are ready to become product leaders but don’t know how. To keep flexing my product muscle, I’ve also co-founded Kala as a way to solve a problem that many self-employed professionals experience – late payments and missed invoices. And lastly, the growth mindset brought me to a two-year Mindfulness Meditation Teach Program with Tara Brach and Jack Cornfield. I intend to weave skillful means mindfulness offers us into my coaching approach to help my clients move in their professional life with awareness, lightness, confidence, and intention.
