Product Manager, Agile Coach, Certified ScrumMaster with 10+ years of data analytics experience and nine years of experience delivering software and data solutions. Collaborative consultant, facilitating strategic vision and implementing an incremental roadmap toward that goal. Track record of success developing best practices and implementing process improvement initiatives to meet business objectives. Lifelong learner, passionate about process efficiency, gaining maximum benefit from data, simplifying processes, cutting costs, coaching, and helping others. Analytical, driven, and resilient.
Core Competencies
- Product & Portfolio Management
- Agile Methodologies (SAFe, Kanban, Scrum, XP)
- Lean & Agile Health Assessments
- Enterprise-wide Consulting
- Collaborative Team Leadership
- Training & Professional Development
- Development Practices (DevOps, CICD, TDD)
- Servant Leadership / Trust Building
- Process/ Value Stream Mapping (VSM)
- Change Management
- Continuous Improvement (PDCA)
- Cloud & Microservice Architecture
Work Experience
WAYFAIR, Boston, MA 2021 – 2023
Assistant Director, Product Manager, Data Engineering
- Led design and development of a net new data platform for Wayfair’s maiden launch into retail stores enabling over $2M in revenue in the first six months. Negotiated with multiple stakeholders on key performance indicators (KPIs) and ensured that critical metrics and reporting were available day one.
- Founded a new Scrum engineering team that became a model for other teams’ practices. Established team norms, practices, definition of ready, definition of done, work sizing, and ceremonies. Received praise from executives for Agile/Scrum knowledge and practical, flexible coaching style.
- Coach and interim Release Train Engineer for a three-team Agile Release Train establishing their initial SAFe program increment.
- Established shared product metrics across eight engineering teams. Led a 10%+ Looker query performance gain that improved the user experience for over 2,000 data consumers.
LIBERTY MUTUAL INSURANCE, Boston, MA 2008 – 2021
Director, Senior Product Owner, Advanced Data Analytics (2019 – 2021)
- Portfolio manager for three Agile Release Trains (ARTs). Collaborated with Scrum Masters to implement best practices, advance Agile methodologies, and conduct Agile health assessments.
- Led portfolio-level Agile transformation and developed and delivered Agile and product management training to new product owners.
- Presented proposals for Agile transformation roadmap and made resource recommendations.
- Consulted with stakeholders to guide the process of developing strategic portfolio level priorities.
- Established program-wide Agile capacity and velocity metrics that increased teams’ capacity up to 60% by identifying and reducing non-value-add activities.
- Led team process mapping exercises and identification of pain points, which resulted in changing data privacy approval processes, leading to faster access to data while maintaining compliance.
- Introduced quarterly Program Increment (PI) planning, led implementation, and coached product owners in detailed quarterly planning.
- Established Lean portfolio governance, weighted shortest job first (WSJF) prioritization, intake process, and stakeholder prioritization metrics. Led team sizing exercises and made capacity recommendation. Communicated progress to sprint and quarterly plans.
Director, Senior Product Owner, Cloud Data Platforms (2017 – 2019)
- Product manager for three generations of the data lake for a $4 billion division of Liberty Mutual. Enabled access for 250 data scientist, data engineer, and power users to over 200 TB of transactional data. Reduced wait time for data from six months to instant self-service.
- Developed behavioral analytics to monitor interactions, target training, and encourage best practices that optimized query performance and improved user experience.
- Collaborated with senior management, instrumental in decision to make data lake the core component of analytical data strategy.
- Established program charter, vision, and key technical principles. Led development and acceptance of program level KPIs and executive scorecard.
- Facilitated enterprise-wide digital transformation brainstorming and opportunity assessment workshops.
- Led quarterly program increments (PI) planning events. Highlighted internal and external program dependencies and facilitated removal of roadblocks.
Director, Data Engineering (2014 – 2017)
- Led team through Agile transformation including developing iterative and incremental data wrangling processes.
- Collaborated with data scientists on best practices for developing data models in parallel with data engineering work.
Lean Process Improvement Coach (2013 – 2014)
- Led Lean transformations including coaching, training, and support for underwriting and claims.
- Collaborated on Lean maturity assessments and made recommendations to management on process improvement, team effectiveness, and training requirements.
- Developed and delivered training on Lean and Agile concepts including continuous improvement, standard work, root cause problem solving, continuous flow, and visual management.
- Facilitated change management workshops providing leadership with insights on individuals’ and teams’ preferred styles in approaching change.
Education
Master of Business Administration, Finance, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA
Bachelor of Arts, Financial Economics, magna cum laude, University of Maine, Orono, ME