Frequently Asked Questions from ADPList
Educational background
I graduated from Washington State University in 1994 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA). My job prospects at the time were limited, so I decided to stay in school and pursue an MBA. At the end of my first year, I was approached by a mentor from the Fine Arts department encouraging me to apply for their new master’s program in Visual Communications. I applied and was accepted and started the program in the fall of 1995.
While in grad school I taught undergrad students principles of graphic design, PageMaker, Freehand, and Photoshop, and additionally, I worked in the Center for Teaching and Learning, helping professors design curricula with emerging technologies. While working at the Center for Teaching and Learning, I had the opportunity to meet several Adobe executives – they encouraged me to apply for jobs at Adobe after graduating with my MFA. 2 weeks after graduation in 1997, I moved to Palo Alto and started at Adobe in the San Jose office.
Summary of professional journey
I started at Adobe on the Photoshop 5 team as a senior quality engineer, testing the Type tool, adjustment layers, filters, and animated gif builder. One year later I took a job in the Adobe Seattle office testing a new core technology feature called Adobe Online, which was Adobe’s first attempt at connecting desktop products such as Illustrator and Photoshop to online help and tips on Adobe.com.
A year later, Adobe Online merged into Adobe Version Cue (early versioning workflow for Photoshop files) and then Adobe Bridge. In 2000, I was promoted to Quality Assurance Manager on the Adobe Bridge team. In 2007, I made a big career shift from quality assurance to experience design. For the next 7 years, I worked as a designer and senior designer on various products, including InDesign Server, CS Review, Muse, Digital Publishing Suite, Adobe Publish, and AEM Mobile.
In 2015, I made another career shift, moving into Product Management working on AEM Mobile, Experience Platform, and currently Principal Product Manager on the Photoshop Desktop team.
How I made the move from User Experience to Product Management
Having experience and detailed knowledge of the software lifecycle helped me to drive business ideas to market. I had in-depth knowledge of design, quality assurance, and some front-end (JavaScript) development, which meant I filled in for each of those roles when needed or was able to effectively work closely with people in those roles (I "spoke their language") to move projects forward. I saw an opportunity to fill a leadership gap on the Product team, by creating mock-ups and or prototypes of features, validating with customers, and working with engineers on development and quality to shipping. Essentially, I leveraged skills from different previous jobs + added organization, management, public speaking, and research skills to fit into a leadership role.
My day-to-day as a Product Manager on the Photoshop team
I currently work with 3 scrum teams, managing features ranging from typography features, AI selections, Illustrator to Photoshop interoperability, guides, and filters. Daily, I am doing research, meeting with customers, writing requirements, working in JIRA creating epics and stories, working with design, grooming the backlog with the devs, presenting to prerelease, and working with product marketing, documentation, and release engineering.
After a feature ship, I dive into data analytics to track usage and work with support to track usability or other technical problems.
