Hey, I’m Beth.
I’ve managed products, programs and people. But who am I really?

I’ve worked as a senior product strategist, senior product manager, and an offerings manager. All in all, I’ve got over 5 years’ experience in the realm of product management. I’ve taken a product from concept to launch, relaunched products, and sunset products. I’ve refined hundreds if not thousands of tickets, written a book’s worth of user stories, and spent hours in agile ceremonies. I’ve planned and participated in marketing campaigns, written business cases, facilitated workshops and written thousands of words of competitive analyses.

I’ve worked closely with technical teams of all abilities and maturities, across multiple technologies, from PostGres to R, and mainframe to microservices. I’ve managed a team of product managers, and coached junior talent to success.

I took a break from product management to work as a program manager, but absence makes the heart grow fonder! I missed the ability to execute on strategy, not just guide it. I missed being part of getting to the vision, rather than just coordinating it. So, I’m looking to move back into Product Management, for good.

This is a role I fulfilled working in both product management and program management. I’ve managed junior and mid-career talent, from writing the business case for the hire through to their exit interview. I’ve also supported the hiring process for roles from apprenticeships through to director level.

Within my team, I take an empathetic approach to people management. I create trust and transparency with my people, to empower them to perform at their best. I make sure to create a cohesive and collaborative team spirit, especially when my people might not work together day to day.

I enjoy helping my people to set ambitious but realistic goals, and supporting them to achieve these. I have also trained graduate and junior product managers in key skills, such as facilitation, strategic thinking, roadmapping, SWOT analysis, competitive analysis and more.

My time as a program manager at YouGov really helped me to get comfortable with ambiguity. I wasn’t hired as a program manager, nor did I ever interview for that role - but things were so fluid, that it’s where I ended up. I naturally performed the work of a program manager for my department - coordinating teams to deliver shared goals.

During my time as a program manager, I worked solidly on a cross-functional program to 10x the revenue on a product - a moonshot goal. That taught me a lot about keeping a program team motivated, managing c-level stakeholders, communicating effectively, and dealing with the inevitable disappointment of not reaching the goal!

I started my ‘real’ career, post-university, as a business consultant. I wasn’t really sure what role I wanted to fulfil, so it seemed like a good place to start. And I was right - I was exposed to different industries, from utilities to retail and hospitality, and trained in all sorts of useful skills. I still remember the facilitation course we went on, where we were told you should feel like a swan when you’re presenting and facilitating - graceful and calm on the surface, and frantically paddling to keep course underneath the water!

This role gave me the opportunity to enhance my analytical skills, learn to identify process improvements, manage and map benefits, manage change properly, and so much more. It also taught me that I specifically wanted a job where I didn’t travel on a regular basis - it’s enjoyable for a lot of people, but I’d prefer my own bed to a hotel any night.

The job that funded me through my teenage years, university, and travelling. I started my working life at home, working remotely as a transcriptionist - listening to recordings and writing down what was said. I did this for an umbrella company, and had to meet their exacting standards, which varied depending on the level of accuracy a client wanted.

I transcribed everything from an interview about freediving, through a discussion about jai alai, to focus group discussions of Mini Cooper adverts. After university, I also worked for this company as a live notetaker, travelling to wherever I was needed and taking notes in the room.

This job taught me - well, for one, to type pretty fast with great accuracy! I also learned to maintain a poker face in tricky situations - notetakers don’t have opinions, they just record what’s said. But, more than that, I had to be disciplined, self-organising, detail oriented and communicative.