Andrea grew up around Zurich and spent her childhood at the stables riding horses as much as she could in the rolling hills around the city.

After an apprenticeship as a drogist she stepped into a role at the major Swiss Health Insurance provider, Helsana. She took a brief sabbatical to travel across the United States, with three months spent in an English language course in Miami. When she returned to Zurich she took on a role at comparis.ch. This role was her first experience with product management, user experience, and e-commerce.

This experience with digital products led her into the role of platform manager at Hotelcard, where she helped to grow the company with a small team, focusing on release management. During this time, she completed a Certificate of Advanced Studies in Innovation, Customer Experience Management, and Service Design at ZHAW School of Management and Law in Winterthur. She has since joined modum and is supporting the product team with user experience insight.

Andrea, you made a really radical switch from customer service in healthcare to digital product management. Was that always the plan?

I had always wanted to work in the area of customer experience management. I have always been interested in human-centered design and have tried to learn as much about it as I can in each role I take on.

My apprenticeship and role at Helsana gave me a lot of customer service experience and I learned the importance of doing the best for your customer, this was especially important in healthcare. After working at Helsana, I developed an in-depth understanding of how health insurance works and by moving into a product manager role at Comparis I was able to contribute my knowledge to a platform that really helped people to understand the health insurance they were buying.

At Hotelcard and now Modum I feel the same way: I love thinking about how to bring the biggest and best value to our customers, and trying to see our product from their perspective as it grows and develops.

Modum is your first experience working with a product that engages the worlds of blockchain and IoT. How have these technologies affected the way you approach the customer experience?

Well, I am really able to empathize with our customers who are new to understanding a blockchain-based project. I was very new to the technology when I started at Modum, so it’s been really fun to push the engineering team to talk about the product in everyday terms! What’s really exciting about Modum’s solution though is that there are both hardware and software components. Supporting the team as they test the sensors has been a really fun experience; holding a physical product has forced me to think about the haptic element of our customers' experience, which doesn’t always come up with software.

And, most importantly, what is the best part about working at Modum so far?

The team of course! I know everyone always says that, but it’s true. I have worked for so many great companies in Zurich but Modum is really special. We have such a diverse team and everyone is so ambitious. It’s really obvious that each team member wants to do their best and bring their unique experience to their role. We are all learning so much from each other every day!