What was your journey to getting into product management?

I studied 20th-century U.S. history in college, with a focus on world’s fairs. What the history of world’s fairs made clear to me was that technology is always the future. Combining that epiphany with my life-long love of computers, I decided I wanted to be a part of building what would come next.

With a history degree I found it tough to break into technology; many companies wanted to see a CS degree before even interviewing me. Microsoft, though, was willing to hire liberal arts grads into program management roles and set them up for success, so I spent a summer in Seattle and then a few years in Silicon Valley working as a program manager for Office Graphics and then PowerPoint. After Microsoft, I spent two years at business school broadening my perspective. From there I moved to Berlin to join SoundCloud, where I joke that I ended up “designing my own rotational program.” As a generalist at a high-growth startup, I kept working with my managers to redefine my role to maximize impact and learning — an opportunity I’ll always be grateful for.



After six months as a member of SoundCloud’s first strategy team, I took a step back and realized that I missed rolling my sleeves up. I moved into a product role at SoundCloud, and soon thereafter realized that I was ready to return to the U.S. Looking for my next role I found Quip — a startup led by product thinkers I hugely admired, seizing the opportunity to redefine productivity. I jumped at the chance to work at Quip to shape a product still in its early days. The faster we move, the more I learn, and the happier I am.