Teresa Torres

World Pulse

Board Member

Product Talk

I help digital product teams adopt continuous product discovery practices including a regular cadence of customer interviews, rapid prototyping, and assumption testing. I emphasize strong critical thinking practices to ensure there is a strong connection between what the teams are learning in their research activities with the product decisions that they are making. 

Recent clients include: Allstate, CarMax, CapitalOne, Snagajob, Spotify, among others.

Product Discovery Coach

Master of Science in Learning & Organizational Change at Northwestern University

Instructor, Designing Solutions for Organizational Effectiveness

Executive Learning & Organizational Change Program at Northwestern University

Instructor, Co-Creating Change

Kindling

Advisor

AfterCollege

- Relaunched www.aftercollege.com to move away from traditional search and toward career exploration and discovery to better meet college students needs. 
- Repositioned employer products away from transactional job listing-based recruiting and toward on-campus relationship-building recruiting.
- Grew engaged users by 65% month over month and reduced audience churn by 3x.
- Redesigned product email strategy tripling MAU in first quarter.
- Introduced user-centered, hypothesis-driven product development practices.
- Launched content marketing strategy targeting college students (blog.aftercollege.com) and employers (employers.aftercollege.com).

Vice President, Products

Affinity Circles

Affinity Circles was acquired by Mingle LLC. 

Affinity Circles operates exclusive social networks for over 150 university alumni associations, professional organizations and honor societies, connecting 18 million members.

President & CEO

- Led an operational turnaround by focusing on core products, implementing new sales and account management processes, growing a key channel partner relationship and reducing operating expenses. 
- Extended operating runway from months to sustained profitability.

Vice President, Operations

- Drove product vision, strategy and execution for 2 revenue-generating product lines, including a social networking platform used by Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Purdue and 150+ other organizations and a corporate recruiting solution used by Google, Merrill Lynch, UBS and dozens of other Fortune 500 clients.
- Drove product discovery through client interviews, user research, usability studies and traffic analysis. 
- Managed a 4-person team of product managers and an interaction designer.

Senior Director, Product Management & User Experience Design

Become, Inc.

Become.com provides shoppers with product research and price comparison.

- Led design on core product from site launch to 3.5 million monthly unique visitors.
- Drove product discovery through user research, usability studies and site traffic analysis.
- Led design and development of key-performing features from concept to launch: “Suggest as You Type” Search Suggestions, “My Favorites” shopping cart, innovative shop filters including Find by Color and community-based shopping lists.

Product Manager / UI Designer

HighWire Press

HighWire Press, a division of the Stanford University Libraries, is the online publisher for over 1400 journals, books, reference works and other scholarly publications.

- Lead interaction designer for several Knowledge Environments (i.e. research collaboration communities) for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Oxford University Press and the International Bone and Mineral Society.
- Managed client design projects from concept to launch.
- Drove the design and implementation of several core features that became part of the Knowledge Environment platform including a suite of personalization services (i.e. saved searches, research folders, etc) and an innovative virtual journal that pooled topical articles from multiple publications.
- Implemented a robust template system that allowed diverse Knowledge Environments to maximize shared code while accommodating customizations.

Interaction Designer

As a product discovery coach, I help product teams make better decisions about what to build. I teach them how to:
- Identify clear business outcomes 
- Uncover unmet customer needs, pain points, and desires
- Discover the right solutions that deliver both business value and customer value

My book Continuous Discovery Habits has sold over 100,000 copies, we've taught over 15,000 students from 102 countries through the Product Talk Academy, and reach 100,000s of product people through our free blog posts and social media content.

If you aren't satisfied with how your teams decide what to build, get in touch.

I help digital product teams adopt continuous product discovery practices including a regular cadence of customer interviews, rapid prototyping, and assumption testing. I emphasize strong critical thinking practices to ensure there is a strong connection between what the teams are learning in their research activities with the product decisions that they are making. 

Recent clients include: Allstate, CarMax, CapitalOne, Snagajob, Spotify, among others. 

Onyx CenterSource

Driving collaboration and innovation in conjunction with internal and external stakeholders.

Product Manager

Very Good Security

I work with the Product Team to launch new SaaS products and define the correct metrics to track to assist in product growth. 
I work to implement and improve Product-Led Growth for existing products. 
I work closely with the data team to assure the data is correct and available for Insights to drive strategy.
Product manager for data, billing, and usage.

Product Operations Manager

Quadient

In this role I...
Lead a cross-functional US team for new product launches bringing millions of dollars in revenue
Prioritize the testing of specific features that provided a reduction in bottlenecks and lead the team to launch on schedule
Lead a program to replace over 3000 postal security devices, in the field, estimated at 1.5 Million Dollars – in just 9 months
Am the Cyber Security lead for mailing systems-related security issues. I have authored white papers, worked with customer security teams, and worked with R&D to improve the security of our products. 
Support field service and technical support (tier 3 support) and work closely with R&D to resolve issues.
Create launch documentation and training to effectively communicate new product features.

Principal Product Engineer

Neopost

Leader of a cross-functional team on product launches bringing millions of dollars in revenue. The products range from physical Mailing systems to SaaS-based products.
I Coordinate back-office activities to support product launch initiatives

Product Launch Coordinator

Lead on mailing launch activities – launching 3 different product lines
Product manager for LTE router for mailing systems generating over $70k in revenue
Lead on product security – authored white papers on security for mailing systems
I have worked with hundreds of customer security teams that translated into millions in sales
I was the Project manager leading a cross-functional team to update digital certificates on 160k systems in the field. This update was critical for USPS complaince.
Training development – leading to the remote training of hundreds of field techs
Testing and Quality development – leading to a 75% improvement in software quality

Senior Product Engineer

New Product testing – working with R&D on new products and features
Beta Test management  & reporting
Interfacing with customers regularly to improve features and products
Bug and customer issue identification & reporting
Field Communications & training

Product Engineer

Hasler Inc

Lead technician on projects involving new products
Coordinated field tests and acquired Beta test results for product improvement
Responsible for reviewing User and Service manuals for new products to assure correct content
Developed training manuals on technical procedures for non-technical departments (i.e. Customer Service)
Implemented training for other departments, which included over 30 non-technical personnel
Provided training for new Technical Support personnel
Responsible for the creation of installation instructions for various products in the field
Coordinated the shipment of diagnostic equipment to technicians in the field and analyzed the results and provided feedback through written reporting

Tech Support

Product | ProdOps | PLG | Data Driven | Lifelong learner

My journey has been long, and a little winding, but I have learned a few thing along the way. I did not choose the traditional path after high school, instead I joined the Army. There I learned much needed discipline and a hard work ethic. I never stopped learning though. I took classes when I had time available - and when my CO allowed it. Upon leaving the military I did not know what I was to do or where I would work. The Army treats you well and gives you a place to sleep and meals to eat. The thought of losing that stability was scary. However, my desire for learning and growth were greater. I left the Army to go back to college and that was exciting and tough! For many years I struggled working full time and going to school full time at night. However, after many sleepless nights from community college to University I finished my BA in Computer Science.

Eventually, I became a Product Engineer. I always wanted to be an engineer and I had finally achieved my goal! In retrospect, I think what I learned the most in this journey is to continue being a student. Keep learning new things and forget old habits. If you're not learning you're not growing. Once you think you know it all you are no longer valuable. It is better to have a growth mindset and feel not fully done then believe you are fully baked. Thus, I strive to get better and look for new abilities that make me indispensable.  

I have been a Principal Product Engineer, with 10+ years experience, within the Mailing System industry. I have extensive experience in product launches and managing projects with a different array of requirements. However, I am also versed in Cyber Security and how it impacted the products and the customers.  I collaborated with a cross-functional team of engineers, product managers, marketing managers, IT professionals, field service technicians, developers, and customers to release the highest quality products. 

My current role is a Product Operations Manager for VGS. In this role I work with the Product Team to launch new SaaS products and define the correct metrics to track to assist in product growth. Further, I work to improve Product Lead Growth for existing products. Lastly, I work closely with the data team to assure the data is correct and available for Insights to drive strategy. My philosophy is Data is a Product. As such, we should constantly improve the data and the analytics to improve product growth.

If you would like to know more about me and want to connect please send a direct message. You can also add me to your network.

Thank you,
Jose

taplio

The Battle

Teresa Torres

Jose Valle

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