Rainbow-coloured self drawn head of Amy with long hair from a slight side profile.

Hi. I'm Amy.

And this is my portfolio website.

LinkedIn icon.CV icon.

I'm an MBA-wielding, recovering software engineer turned passionate, creative and inclusive product leader. I've been a dedicated Product Manager for 6 years but I've been working in tech for over 15 years. I suit collaborative, innovative, ambitious and dynamic environments best, so startups and scaleups, although I've done some great stuff in some of the largest tech firms out there (Google & Visa).

Please use this website to get to know me and my work in Product a little better with the help of some rainbow animals.

My Strengths
  • Very fast learner
  • Storytelling and presentations
  • Inclusivity and caring about people
  • Critical thinking and decision making
  • Creativity, innovation, and workshops
  • Curiosity and openness to try new things
  • Efficiency, organisation, and process creation
  • Data fluency and new information processing
  • Enjoys change and working through ambiguity
Rainbow-coloured self drawn gorilla face.
Areas I've Worked In
(All B2B)
  • Software Consultancies
  • APIs and Integrations
  • Payments/FinTech
  • BigTech/AdTech
  • Internal Tooling
  • Ecomm Ops
  • Startups
  • Scaleups
  • CCaaS
  • EdTech
  • HRTech
  • SaaS
Things I'm learning and working on improving (always looking to learn/improve):

Coaching skills, conflict management techniques, pacing myself to adjust to change at a rate suitable for the environment, working out how to balance authenticity with professionalism, Portuguese, playwriting, crocheting, acting, improv, philosophy, ethics of technology, and AI.

My Professional Interests & Passions
  • Scripting, machine learning, and APIs
  • User, customer, and employee experience
  • UI/Web design and front-end development
  • DEIB (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging)
  • Continuous improvement and experimentation
  • Lean Agile ways of working (bit of a Toyota geek)
  • Strategy and working smart to discover and iterate on ideas
  • Ethical, deliberate, and mindful applications of tech (tech for good)
  • Cognitive biases, behavioural sciences, and organisational psychology
  • Automation and using tech to improve how humans spend their time and energy
  • Bringing theatre techniques to the tech profession, especially for better marketing, collaboration, and innovation
My Motivations
  • Increasing social mobility and opportunities for marginalised groups
  • Making people laugh, providing clarity, and helping ease anxiety
  • Problem solving and fixing things that are broken
  • Trying new techniques and developing skills
  • Learning new perspectives/worlds/contexts
  • Being creative, having fun, and making things
  • Leaving things better than I found them
  • Honing my craft and mastering my skills
  • Meaningful connections with humans
  • Helping people grow and be fulfilled
  • Making tech a positive force
So my ideal working environment would probably be:

A place where people want to be on a journey, united by a shared vision and goals. Collaborative, trusting, and creative people. Managers and colleagues who care about people as well as profits, certainly more than status or personal wealth alone. Modern and improving tech/processes. So probably a startup or scaleup?

Rainbow-coloured self drawn giraffe head looking curious.
Rainbow-coloured self drawn baby monkey looking shocked.
My Key Achievements
  • Created a scientifically complex 0-1 product, including recruiting the product team (3 engineers, 1 data scientist, 1 product marketer, 3 psychometrician contractors), and launched within 6 months to 80% user approval
  • Created an MVP, pitch deck, and business plan for a startup within 1 month by myself
  • Managed response to Brexit in first months at a company with technical complexities, a small team, and last minute changes
  • Created multiple internal tools in various companies, saving thousands of hours in manual operations and generating new business lines
  • Created an integration product that could be resold as an addon to a main product, which generated hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in revenue and put the company on the radar for its eventual acquisition by the product that I integrated our product into
  • Reduced product portfolio at Google by nearly 80% through end of life program, clearing the path for efficiency and better tooling
  • Launched a multi-team, technically complex program at Google with the aim of saving $8bn/year within my first 6 months
  • Took a battlefield promotion to manage a Product team with the aim of ensuring all colleagues stay during the transition during a great period of change and actually grew the team within months
  • Hired by Google as a top 1% candidate (only 1% of people who apply to Google get a 100% positive indication to be hired by all interviewers)
  • Completed my MBA at Warwick Business School through COVID period whilst working (also accepted to Imperial Business School)
  • Used machine learning techniques (which I taught myself) to perform an analysis on data I retrieved online around gender pay gap reporting to create a unique dissertation using techniques never seen before applied to business school research
  • Successfully spoke at Women of Silicon Roundabout conference two years in a row, once in front of thousands of people
  • Taught myself numerous programming languages and frameworks across decades including TypeScript, Python, C#, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Bash Scripting, Powershell and Perl
  • Numerous academic awards for attainment. Top of my undergraduate class and top of my faculty in my first year. Received firsts in every Computing class.
Rainbow-coloured self drawn sheep head.
Example Products I've Worked On As A Dedicated PM
(I've worked on a lot more products as an engineer, or consultant)

A semi-legacy platform with APIs for a lot of data ingestion from hardware sources. The backbone of a monitoring service being used in high-stake environments. I helped navigate tech debt, strategic priorities and incident management.

A 0-1 online psychometric tool to help people navigate the roles in the cyber security industry and work out how their personality and traits would be suited for cyber security with a strong UX, data presentation, scientific rigour, and API integration. I built the product and product team from scratch.

A decisioning system for multiple territories/languages with lots of data integrations for an online business credit card application and a third party integration with a tool to allow credit analysts to iterate on and manually ratify their decisions. I helped iterate on an existing solution to make incremental improvements, to finalise a large migration project to a third party system and to begin to prepare for territory changes.

A onboarding flow for multiple territories/languages for an online business credit card application that allowed for experimentation and telemetry to increase acquisition growth. I ran a design sprint and iterated to devise a new system to allow for more growth experimentation (A/B testing) without engineering input.

Reliable integrations into couriers for e-commerce operations to be able to create, facilitate and manage shipments of goods ordered to customers internationally. I managed the company's response post-Brexit changes and devised a longer-term strategy to enable territory and market growth.

Easy to use integrations into online marketplaces for e-commerce operations so that sellers did not oversell and good efficiently manage orders and inventory. I prioritised and helped manage partners for small third-party compliance changes and devised a longer-term partner and platform strategy to enable market growth.

Internal tools for use by customer service or support teams within BigTech. Tools often created by an individual and needed to be standardised to meet compliance, security and robustness standards. I helped reduce the team's portfolio by almost 80%, ensuring that time spent was dedicated to the most impactful tools and initiatives. I launched a large scale data workflow tool project to be able to access various complex data sources and create automated actions within different internal systems saving $8bn/year. I assessed new tooling ideas for inclusion within our portfolio.

Bug management tracking and communications system for use throughout BigTech to help ensure information on customer-facing issues were resolved in a timely and transparent manner. I created an internal marketing campaign to start to bring new users to the system and worked to disambiguate ongoing security and permissions-based changes following a company restructure.

Reliable and speedy integrations into workforce management solutions from a legacy contact centre management platform through scheduled data ingestion files and SQL stored procedures. I took an existing collection of scrappy scripts and turned them into an application that could be sold to customers. I devised and coded this product. I worked closely with pilot customers to install, troubleshoot and monitor it in production.

Some Samples of My Work

All samples are completely my own work. They should no longer be particularly commercially consequential to the companies I worked for. Where I think they might be, I have anonymised the company.

Presentations/tasks from interviews

Actual artifacts from my recent Product career

Rainbow-coloured self drawn deer looking to camera, one leg raised.

Academic writing

Case studies were mainly from my career. Names were anonymised. Some details were changed to anonymise circumstances without affecting analysis. Analysis was for academic/post-work-experience processing.

Rainbow-coloured self drawn zebra head.
My Personality Profile

Psychometrically:

  • MBTI: ENTJ-A "Executive"
  • Quintax: elsT-V Logical with Theoretical Strategist
  • True-Colors: Blue-Green
  • StrengthsFinder: Responsibility, Relator, Intellection, Learner & Strategic
  • OCEAN/Big 5: Openness 98%; Conscientiousness 71%; Extraversion 90%; Agreeableness 67%; Neuroticism 77%
  • IQ approx 137 as an adult (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale)

Practically:

  • I'm extroverted, enthusiastic, communicative and honest, sometimes to my detriment
  • I like to lead, grow and be strategic in my activities
  • I take my responsibilities seriously and am conscientious but I am prone to emotional irrationalities (like most people!)
  • I care about people and am always keen to understand psychology and the why behind what people do
  • I'm very liberal and open to new experiences and ideas, although it means that I need novelty
  • I have a growth mindset but I still have high standards
  • I intellectualise things a lot and I'm often driven by independent thinking, cognitive/logical reasoning and mental models
  • I'm enthusiastic, optimistic, and generally seek harmony however I'm not afraid to speak my mind
Good To Know
  • I'm a late-diagnosed (2024) autistic person. This has deep implications far too numerous to publicly write here. However, I generally fit a lot of typical traits for the internalised AFAB autistic profile.
  • I am non-binary. My pronouns are they/them and she/her. Why? Because my gender is non-binary but I have a very female body/sex.
  • I am queer (LGBTQIA+). I am neuroqueer.
  • I'm a near lifelong vegetarian and I do not drink alcohol. I do not want to work in an environment where alcohol is present or plays a part in the culture (beer on tap is not a perk for me).
  • I grew up in a low socio-economic home, with a chronically-ill parent. My father died when I was 16. I am the first generation to go to university. Despite my current higher socio-economic status, I am quintessentially working class in a lot of my attitudes.
  • I am genetically and partially culturally Ashkenazi Jewish. This has driven some of my attitudes to the world and I carry with me definite generational, hereditary traumas from the 20th century.
  • Working in tech with my identity and in my generation has not been easy.  Please see stats on how 50% of females leave tech before 35.
  • I've been coding since I was 13. I'm not in tech for money, status, or because I didn't know what else to do. It's been my passion since I got my own computer.
  • I speak Spanish, have lived in Spain and have a Portuguese family. I am heavily influenced by Iberian culture and ways of being.
  • I read (and listen/watch) a lot of business, psychology, and non-fiction books/podcasts. In the last decade alone, I've averaged about 50 books a year.
  • My main hobbies are all Arts related: theatre (going to and performing), drawing (I drew all the animals on this site), and crocheting.
  • I have some ethical hard lines in terms of industries I won't work for: gambling, oil and gas, tobacco, alcohol, payday lending, BNPL, investment banking, and companies that test on animals.
My Academic Qualifications

🎓 MBA - Merit (68.5%) - Warwick Business School

0.5% from Distinction (very annoying!). Student representative. HR/People specialism. Completed mainly during pandemic and whilst working.

Change Management, Org Behaviour, Marketing, Finance, Operations Management, Leadership, Economics, Innovation, HR, Strategy, Wellbeing Economics and Behavioural Sciences.

Distinctions in all exams (including 2 I took at Imperial Business School whilst enrolled there- I switched schools after 1 term and started again).

🎓 BA(Hons) Computing & Spanish - First Class - University of Kent

Top of my class and top of my faculty first year. Student representative. Retail work 15 hours/week. Year abroad in Spain teaching English as a second language to children and adults with no prior training.

🎓 AVCE ICT (3 A Levels) ICT - AAA

🎓 AS Spanish - B

Only 1 of 60 starting students to complete 3 A Levels' worth of technology modules. Only student to study an additional subject. Achieved As in every technology module which was nationally recognised as standout. This was also in a state-run non-selective college in another town with a high turnover of teaching staff and 50% of students left after the first year. I taught myself a lot. Also worked most weekends whilst studying in retail or a library.

🎓 11 GCSEs - 4 A*s, 5 As, 3 Bs

My father was diagnosed with terminal cancer months before my final exams and died a few weeks before my exams started, so this was under severe adversity. This was also in a state-run non-selective school with a poor Ofsted rating. I needed to teach myself a lot.

Rainbow-coloured self drawn roaring lion profile.
Rainbow-coloured self drawn fox sitting.
My Certifications & Vocational Training

📃 Micro-certs: Cloud Computing, AI Strategy, AI Transformers (GPTs), Generative AI x 2, Product Analytics, Product-Led Growth, Product Launches, Product Roadmapping, Product Strategy, and AI for Product Management.

📃 Reforge Program- 8x courses on Product Management

📃 SAFe Program Consultant (SPC4)

📃 Professional Scrum Master

📃 BCS Certificate in Business Analysis Practice

📃 Agile Project Manager Practitioner

📃 Lean Six Sigma Green Belt

📃 PRINCE2 Practitioner

Q&A

What am I looking for in a new opportunity/role?

A chance to improve, progress in seniority, and make a positive impact on something that is meaningful. A chance to be myself, be trusted and understood/appreciated. Easy, right? :D

What makes me different?

Too much. I don't really fit in a box or the norm in my industry. I've never really worked with anyone like me. I'd say that it's rare to find someone with a good technical background/sense that is a good storyteller, strategy thinker, and is courageous enough to take risks and embrace change.

When should someone not hire me?

If the organisational power structure is very hierarchial, or heavily based on unwritten social dynamics (like politics or in-groups), instead of outcomes or collaborative relationship building, I'm unlikely to navigate the environment well. Additionally, if the executives are too busy, not available or not able to set a clear strategic direction, I'd also not do so well. If you want people to stay in their lane, do as they are told, or sleepwalk as Seth Godin puts it in the book Tribes, I'm likely to cause you stress. If the environment is slow to change, embrace new ideas, people or ways of doing things, also I'm unlikely to be compatible and it will cause tension as I am a changemaker.

Why have I had short tenures in previous roles?

I'm going to give a very honest answer here; I'm not going to give the "interview safe" version. Apart from some bad luck/randomness in the fates of the companies I was working for or my ability to make my position look redundant/easy (as I've not been replaced in the last 5+ roles I've left), there's a general volatility working for companies pre-PMF or with shifting PMF. The only personably attributable thing I can think of, is autism. Or more specifically, undiagnosed, misunderstood autistic behaviours. It's a common pattern for undiagnosed autistic people to go through the world, feeling like we don't belong so I have chosen to move on from places because I felt I didn't belong, always trying to be optimistic that I just had to find the right place. I think, also because I'm autistic, I can get the measure of somewhere fast and I don't have an ability to ignore things once I've realised them. I'm also not as great as others claim to be at spotting problems in interviews. Or maybe I am but I am often looking for roles in a state of desperation that I feel I have to ignore them or at least give the company the benefit of the doubt. I'm still not sure how anyone knows what it's like to work somewhere until they actually do?! My particular personality and autistic traits also mean that I don't keep my head down, I try to make an impact quickly and I'm vocal and confident. This doesn't go down well in low trust or hierarchial environments. It can put a target on my back too in low psychological safety zones where people are competitive or insecure, and I am too trusting/open. I've also seemingly gone into a lot of environments as a PM, where the company or people above or around just didn't really understand what Product Managers were. Most seemed to think that the primary marker of a PM's success was people being "happy" with them. As most seasoned PMs know, this is often the sign of a bad PM who never says no or a very tactical operator! I've only worked in a role for 1 month with a manager that was also a Product person. I've also just had some bad luck/timing. Not one of the Product roles I've held was backfilled after I left. I've worked in environments going through a lot of change or taking big risks, which so often don't pan out. Despite short tenures however, I've been able to have standout impacts because I am a fast learner and executor. I don't seem to need as long as other people to ramp up, or at least I can't pretend to need as long as to not upset anyone or to just coast through probationary periods.

And it shouldn't matter that I'm non-binary, female-presenting and queer but tech is a sexist place, we cannot deny it (50% of women leave by 35). I, like many other people from under-represented groups do have more of a spotlight on me; I am judged by stricter standards. It's basic psychology: I'm basically othered by most people I meet so when I do something they don't expect, I don't have the benefit of affinity or in-group biases to be easily forgiven or understood or even given the benefit of the doubt. It's also a competitive environment generally, and whilst not everyone will actively try to make you fail, they certainly don't help you succeed. At least, that has been my experience.

In a nutshell, why should someone hire me?

I'm a generalist. I can do a lot of things pretty well, at least to a good enough standard to get things going or to help others out. I'm an executor. I'll swallow frogs on behalf of the team. I get things done. I'm efficient and quick but I also care about quality. I care about what I do and I don't just dial it in. I care about people and I can easily imagine what it's like to be in other's shoes. I've worked with many businesses, in different businesses and industries so I have a breadth of experience. I study and I learn fast. I'm creative. I'm technically competent and can bridge the gaps between different teams. I've been around the block enough to have learnt major lessons and to have honed a decent instinct on what and how to do things. And I love tech and I love Product, because it's different every day (I like the variety of different tasks and types of work), it's strategic, it allows me to use a lot of my skills and I think companies with strong Product people and cultures, build better products.

Hybrid, remote, or in-office?

I've only ever worked as a PM in remote or remote-hybrid setups. I have a strong preference for remote but I recognise that in-person collaboration, or at least knowing colleagues as people is important for most people. So my preference is remote, with quarterly or ad-hoc meetups. I could potentially do hybrid 2 days a week in office, but on those days I'm likely not to be at my best, especially if a commute on public transport or longer than an hour is involved (it's an autism sensory thing). I would not appreciate going into an empty office or an office so busy there's nowhere to have a meeting. In office 100% is a no-go for me. I live in Reading, UK. Ideally, I'd love to be able to work from anywhere in the world for short stints as I have family abroad and a partner who travels for work a lot. Office socials/parties are not really a plus for me. Alcohol and work especially are something I try to avoid due to past experiences and because I don't believe that intoxicating substances have a place in a workplace.

What's with all the animals and the rainbows?

I love animals. I love rainbows (I am queer after all). I love drawing. And, well I needed something so that this didn't just look like any other portfolio site. Love it or hate it, hopefully you'll remember it.

Rainbow-coloured self drawn guinea pig face.