Berner

Joined leading software development consultancy to coach clients in XP, Lean and Agile. Worked with a variety of startup and enterprise clients including the US Air Force, Fiserv, J.P. Morgan Chase Bank, Travelers Insurance and others to help them evolve their software development practices and organizations. 

Product Practice Development

• Coached and mentored Pivotal Product Managers in the New York and Boston offices in product and consulting skills. 

• Solved a problem Pivotal Employees experienced when trying to find internal resources by building a popular Slack bot, Hercule. This Slack Bot has helped hundreds of employees find resources such as decks and internal wikis more easily and continues to be used. 

• Saw gaps in Pivotal’s Product Practice Guide and helped develop additional practices to fill these gaps including: A workshop to help clients identify their MVP and a Core Practice Talk on the value of lean and agile.

Client Work

• Built award-winning software for JPMC and was awarded a medal for work with the Airforce building software to support target development in preparation for missions. 

• Taught Product Management and Strategy to clients using a pairing methodology and applying best practices in lean and agile.

• Worked with a balanced team of product design, engineering and product management to help clients identify valuable and viable business opportunities using Pivotal’s Discovery and Framing process. 

• Executed against opportunities by breaking Epics into thin slices of user value and maintaining a backlog of stories for engineers to build and ship using Test Driven Development and Continuous Deployment. 

• Facilitated a variety of workshops to help clients identify and mitigate risks, explore new opportunities, winnow down requirements and more. Also taught clients facilitation and feedback techniques.

• Managed stakeholders and led the team in communicating with these stakeholders and obtaining their buy in when needed. 

Recruited to founding team of stealth Expa-backed fintech company, now Current.com. Managed product from early ideation stage to the launch of the Current on Slack, Web & iOS. Current offers P2P payment services and is executing on a strategy to become a digital bank.

Product Process & Team Management

• Implemented a product process adapted to a blazing fast development team. Iterated to meet evolving needs of the team and company.

• Led and documented weekly Company All Hands meeting, Product Team Sprint Planning, Retrospectives, and Product Workshops. 

• Managed user testing, QA process and other tactical functions to help remove blockers and maintain a rapid release cadence. 

• Implemented Mixpanel and Metabase to measure usage and adoption, pinpoint friction in the experience, and gauge feature impacts. Resulting instrumentation and analysis was evaluated by Expa Insights team as being the most advanced of its portfolio companies.

Specs & Prototypes

• Wrote detailed user stories and specs with clear requirements, context, success criteria, and steps taken to reduce complexity and de-risk underlying assumptions. 

• Worked closely with a designer to produce wireframes and high fidelity prototypes. Iterated on designs based on usability tests as well as feedback from engineers and management. 

• Prioritized interfaces and channels, adopting a Slack-first approach in order to test and iterate in the lightest-weight environment. 

• Cultivated team empathy for users by including engineering and design in user interviews, crafting personas and synthesizing research and observations to help inform product and design decisions.

Milestones & Launches 

• Set milestones, roadmap and requirements in order to maximize learnings, focus energy, reduce risk, and motivate the team. 

• Communicated progress and key decisions to the board of directors and senior management in meetings and weekly reports.

• Launched Beta Q1 of 2016. Beta learnings enabled rapid UX iteration, feature prioritization, informed messaging as well as launch plan. 

• Current’s website, Slack app, and iOS app launched on Product Hunt and Re/code in April 2016, 6 months after the Alpha was built. 

• Launch conversions exceeded expectations and Current had one of the most successful initial launches of any Expa portfolio company.  

Joined the Growth team focused on user on boarding, promotions and new product launches. Stepped in to fill manager’s role working closely with product, engineering, design, content and marketing teams. Betterment is the largest and fastest growing automated investing service that manages over $3 B in AUM for 100,000+ customers across the United States.

Product Development & Feature Launches 

• Led cross-functional teams of product, design, and PR in the launch of features such as Tax Impact Preview and joint accounts. Set and executed against launch checklists with clear objectives and measurable impacts.

• Earned a seat on the Instant Rollover product team by winning the company-wide hackathon during which the MVP of this feature was built. This feature and it’s promotion had a major impact on the business, nearly doubling rollover completion rates and driving a 30% lift in rollovers across the board. 

Growth Strategy

• Leveraged data, research, and customer insights to propose and vet ideas that increased customer conversions, LTV, and referrals. 

• Analyzed impact estimates, ROI calculations and produced prioritization recommendations for team backlog. 

• Ideated, implemented and analyzed A/B tests for marketing emails to improve overall channel performance, including creative optimization, and developing automated and triggered campaigns distributed to nearly 100,000 subscribers.

Customer Development 

• Designed, conducted, and analyzed surveys to provide customer-driven recommendations to product and marketing teams. 

• Built, grew and leveraged a community of customers used for qualitative research on products, messaging, and more.

Led the company’s pivot into the financial software space managing the product development and marketing of a SaaS digital banking platform sold to financial service providers in emerging countries. The platform processes millions of transactions each day, powering some of the most successful mobile money services in Africa and Latin America. 

Product Development

• Led specification, design, development and optimization of award-winning TagPay mobile money software working with a team of 5 engineers to ship and iterate. 

• Researched, analyzed, and evaluated end-user needs by establishing local partnerships and conducting user research on Malians living in Bamako and Paris (closed-beta service launched in 2009).

• Worked with 20+ financial institutions to gather and negotiate requirements so as to adapt and prioritize the product roadmap.

• Designed and distributed demo kit product and workflow. This proved to be one of the company’s most effective sales tools.

Marketing

• Managed new corporate website from conception to launch. Worked with executives to define requirements, brand strategy and content priorities. Hired and managed designer to produce template based on wireframes. Hired and managed developer to deliver finished site. 

• Responsible for Blog and social media growing followers from 1,000 to 10,000. Wrote newsletters distributed to over 7,000 subscribers.

• Tracked online presence and managed SEO using Google Analytics. Built effective AdWord campaigns and strategies to boost traffic. 

• Represented company at 5-10 trade shows and events per year. Managed booth design and marketing materials, created and executed demos and presentations, capitalized on speaking opportunities to communicate corporate vision and market insights to attendees. 

Business Development & Thought Leadership

• Identified and analyzed weaknesses in lead conversion and sales processes. Designed, developed, and implemented sales tools to address these including a financial modeling product, local and consultancy partnerships, and a sales broker incentive program.

• Worked with COO to define software licensing models and produced corresponding pricing documentation.

• Launched and developed an international community of mobile money and payments professionals. Developed resources, led webinars, and provided networking support to bolster member success and engagement.

• Regularly invited to speak at industry events such as the GSMA, Mobile Money Summit and Africa Connected World Forum.

Management and Training

• Supervised and supported 5 independent sales brokers and several marketing interns.

• Trained clients’ management teams to effectively implement, customize and communicate TagPay product features to operations, sales, and technical teams. Structured training approach and produced presentations and videos to support training process.