Product leader and practitioner with over a decade of experience in companies at every stage, from seed to Fortune 50. Passionate about fostering environments that provide teams with the freedom to experiment, learn, and grow together.
Great products are the result of both art and science and are made by teams with diverse experiences and skill sets. They are the product of trial, error, intuition, and some luck. They are grounded in profound understanding of people's needs and wants. They are the accumulation of rigorous decisions informed by data but made by people. They require craft and meticulous editing. They deliver radical improvements over the status quo because the teams that build them are willing—and able—to go back to first principles.
I'm a product manager with over fifteen years of experience. I have worked with the earliest stage startups up to the largest global organizations and have been fortunate enough to see a couple exits (both acquition and IPO). Currently I work at VMware's Pivotal Labs, helping customers across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa adopt our practices and products to ship better software at enterprise scale.
I'm interested in using software to make people's lives more fulfilling and their choices more meaningful. I want to help get people off their devices and more fully into the world. I want to create software that people value enough to pay for with their money, not their attention or personal data.
I enjoy the craft of software because doing it well takes a team of people of diverse skills and perspectives. I like it because it’s often hard, and the hard things are rarely technical. Software challenges are fundamentally human challenges: understanding the needs of others, making and committing to decisions, learning and adapting, taking responsibility for the consequences of your actions. I’ve spent most of my career trying to get better at these things, and teaching others to do the same.
I have put together a series of talks and workshops that I offer to other companies and organizations grappling with these challenges of growth.
I'm an American living in Paris. I am currently learning French - slowly. «C’est très difficile pour moi.»
I started performing improv in 2017 with Washington Improv Theatre. Doing improv has been one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my life. I still love to do it, though I don't hvae as many opportunities in Paris. Maybe someday when my French improves.
I used to be an avid cyclist but I don't yet own a bike in France, so I run with Let's Run Paris when my schedule allows and shin bones cooperate.
There are some causes that are very important to me, and here is what they are and why I support them. They are all political in some way or another and I keep this list up-to-date as my personal understanding of our collective challenges change.