From Clarinetist to Product Manager
As a growth-driven Product Manager in the enterprise Software and Platform as a Service spaces, I've worked globally with customers and cross-functional teams to uncover high-impact problems, design valuable solutions, and take new, iterative products to market. The most rewarding aspects of this work are fostering meaningful relationships, learning from peers, and helping others succeed.
Unlike product managers who have MBAs or software engineering backgrounds, I have Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in clarinet performance from the Eastman School of Music and Carnegie Mellon University. Altough I will always be a musician, I recognized in the months following grad school that my burn rate exceeded the time that would be required to land a job in an orchestra. I needed to pivot.
This led to a starting point where I saw that music, creativity, and innovation intersected: Apple computers. I spent almost 2 years working at an Apple Store alongside a talented, dynamic, and diverse group of peers. It was a great learning experience where I was able to make measurable impact.
Performance at Kilbourn Hall, Eastman School of Music
As I began investigating what the right next career step would be, some former colleagues mentioned that Oracle had opened an office in Austin, TX and that they were hiring folks for inside sales/demand generation roles. 4 weeks later, I had packed up a U-Haul and was on the road to Austin.
The inside sales role at Oracle helped me understand some basics around market problems, mapping solutions to those problems, and systems architecture. Throughout the numerous conversations I had with prospects and customers, I yearned to more fully understand these problems, the ways we could solve them, and how to demonstrate this in a way that conveys value. The music school “practice room” mindset was useful here; I took any extra time available to read product documentation, offer content creation help to go-to-market teams, and learn some coding basics.
I also sought the input of two colleagues in sales engineering roles on how to focus my development efforts. They coached me through a journey that led to a similar Sales Engineering role.
A musical side note 🎵
In preparation for interview round 3, I was asked to incorporate clarinet into my presentation. My Eastman peer Rob Strebendt and I composed a piece to be played live with pre-recorded piano accompaniment over a marketing video for the product on which I was presenting.
Here’s what the result sounds like
Right around this time, a peer forwarded my name to one of our product teams. They needed someone to deliver a demo to a major analyst firm that was evaluating competitive offerings in the team’s product category.
It was so enjoyable to collaborate with and learn from the Product Owner, Director of Product Management, and Development Team as we evaluated how to best portray the solution in line with the 70+ requirements the analyst firm provided. We were thrilled when we heard the results of the analyst’s report: the team’s product was named a Leader for the first time in this evaluation.
Collaborating with this team only furthered my interest in moving into product management, so I asked the team’s director for guidance on how to make the pivot. One of the best questions she asked me on our first call was “what would make you unique as a PM, and how would you demonstrate that?” I knew I cared about great user experiences and analytics, but I needed to find a way to back it up.
After several months of applying more “practice room” focus to the Scrum.org PSPO Certification, the Oracle Analytics Cloud Certification, and a JavaScript course on Udemy, my mentor mentioned another team was hiring. The interview process included leaders and prospective peers from that team, and after several challenging rounds, I received an offer to move to my first Product Management role. With it came new things to learn, great people to work with, and ways to approach problems I would have never considered in my music school days.
As I continue the product management journey and beyond, I look forward to working with customers to find the causes of their most high-value problems and opportunities, to collaborating with teams that build solutions to these problems that drive customers success and business growth, and to evangelize these solutions internal and external audiences alike.
I spent the next 6 years in Sales Engineering, where I learned about customer priorities across industries and collaborated with sales, product marketing, and product management. In the latter part of that timeframe, my work shifted from midsized customers to key accounts. I identified a challenging pattern in our conversations: customers were clear with their problems, and I consequently understood what software solutions were needed to address these problems. I wanted to utilize this knowledge to build and take to market even more impactful products.
Presenting to attendees at AI Summit in San Francisco, CA