User Stories

I consider myself a serious person with an absurd sense of humor. My biography involved a lot of context-switching, culture shock, and (on-going) development of identity and communication skills. I spent formative years as a kid and young adult in the vast region of America between the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains, downloading Napster, living in a drinking town with a football problem, having my name and physical features on 9/11, and filing my first Form 1040 in the moral center of the country, Chicago, the City of Big Shoulders. I briefly left the country, learned to further empathize with the immigrant experience, and then returned to negotiate the Big Apple as a new parent.

I’ve had a wide-ranging career from non-profit organizing to Fortune 100 environments all over the Americas. I’ve helped build and lead teams to create innovative solutions, leading strategy, implementation, people development, data ownership, and stakeholder management.

I’ve exercised many multidisciplinary muscles of a product person, resulting in a T-shaped corporate athlete who is a “jack of all trades and master of [n]one.”

Decades ago, before companies began openly acknowledging how heavily they relied on software, I think a brand manager filled this organizational and leadership role. Now, digital screens are ubiquitous and the user/customer experience is disintermediated by a technology product.

In my experience, the “product” tribe itself is large, diverse, and exists at all levels and in all types of organizations: it is the…