- 🔭 I’m a Director of Product. I was a former Google Developers Expert (Evangelist) for product strategy;
- 👯 I'm currently leading Ventera's AI/ML practice, mentoring Product Managers at Ventera. I previously worked on iQIES at CMS and helped grow our SiriusXM program;
- 🌱 I’m currently learning Bias Algorithms , working towards MLOps for Enterprise Applications;
- 👯 I’m looking to collaborate on emerging technologies, and techniques;
- 💬 Ask me about Product Strategy,AI & Data Ethics, AR&VR for the Enterprise, or Data Governance.
(Note this is adapted from my leadership compass at a previous company but the concepts mostly apply at Ventera)
As a manager, onboarding is both tough and really important whether you’re joining a team or they’re joining yours. My very short list for onboarding in either direction is:
- Share expectations
- Build trust
I’m here to help and support you, to set the context for what you’re working on, and to advocate for you and our internal team and our clients. I intend to lead by setting the example. I will inspire through coaching, mentoring and laying frameworks to helping my scrum team ship quality code more often. I will not ask you to do something that I’m not willing to do, or that I haven’t done before. My responsibility is you, your welfare, and your ability to execute the mission. By listening to your concerns and recognizing your achievements, I strive to make you a fulfilled, efficient, and productive member of our team.
I’m excited when teams fail fast, learn from their mistakes, course correct and share that knowledge with others. This builds an environment that does not fear risk-taking, develops ownership and autonomy in their work, and is collaborative at its core.
I get animated when projects excite me or circumstances beyond my control limit us. In these rare moments, I’ve may use “colorful language”. Know that this isn’t directed towards you and is an indicator that I trust, and am comfortable in our relationship.
I despise the phrase, “We’ve always done…”. My goal is to continuously learn, create leaders, and push organizations to the next level, by that very nature we can not continue doing what we’ve always done.
Finally, I enjoy a bad coffee; some of my best work has been accomplished over drinks. Whether you need to get something off your chest, you need to hash out an idea, or you just need a break from your work; please grab me - let’s connect!
I manage individual contributors (ICs). You'll eventually get to know all of those people, start by getting to know the members of your team and practice.
Our AI practice is called Human-centered AI at Ventera (HAIV). Internally, you'll often hear it referred to as AI Vengers (AIV). At Ventera our focus is to bring our clients ML needs into production thus, we're looking to set ourselves apart by combining Ventera's mature User-centered design and DevOps practice. These are a few principles to guide how we build:
- Build AI solutions for Humans
- Understand and help our clients interpret data models
- Explain to users how the model got to its inferences or predictions.
Executing applied production ML with these principles empowers multidisciplinary teams to avoid disproportionate product failure, bias, and harm to humans, and promotes fairness for our clients and their users' needs.
I’m big on 1:1s. I believe that these meetings are for you to set the agenda. What would you like to talk about? What’s going well? What’s bugging you? These don’t need to be status updates unless you really want to talk about project status. For in-person chats, I really enjoy walking 1:1s or sitting down for coffee. If there are things that I want to ask you, I’ll do it, but this is your time. The length, frequency, and medium are also up to you, but my hope is that we’ll have at least 30 minutes a week, with an optimal 60 minutes per week. This is only a minimum though, and not a maximum! I prefer to have separate meetings scheduled for agenda-driven chats (e.g. goals, reviewing performance, etc.) so that we still have room for more timely 1:1 chat.
The scrum team works between 9am (at the earliest) to 6pm (at the latest), and unless there’s an emergency, I don’t expect to communicate with you outside of these hours with respect to your local time. I try not to respond to emails or slack during off-hours and under no circumstances expect you to, unless it’s an emergency.
I am a proponent of the DRI model and I'd expect us to measure your performance through Objective Key Results. We'll meet quarterly to gauge and score how you're doing with your OKRs.
I’ve written a lot here about my philosophies but a fair amount of my job is adapting to your needs and philosophies, and I look forward to talking to you about them!
What OKRs am I currently tracking? | OKRs for 2022 - See the Product Management & Innovation workbook (Note: this is a snapshot. OKRs are updated in GTMHub)