 Hello, everyone. My name is Soni Bara and this webinar today is about women in product management. Wherever you're joining from today, welcome and thank you for joining me on this topic, which I'm very passionate about. I will be covering three topics today. Number one, what's product management? How do you get into it? Number two, importance of finding a unique voice as a woman product manager. Number three, mentorship and sponsorship and why is that important? Now, I've tailored the content more towards beginners in product management and folks who actually want transition into product. The second and third topics, they're more tailored for women in particular, but again, it's still applicable for everyone. I really hope that you find some helpful information in this next 25 to 30 minutes of presentation. Let me start by giving some background on myself. You will see that like a lot of people achieve my career path a few times before I got into product management. I'm currently a senior director of product management at Visa. Before that, I have been in product roles for about 13 years in various places like Microsoft, AT&T and Under Armour. I do have to say that I have been lucky enough to be in product management since it actually became a discipline back in and around 2007. Let's also talk about my educational background for a second. I'm not a computer science engineer. I have a business degree in fact and an MBA, but here is a fun fact. My first real job was actually as a front-end developer. I sort of fell into it because I liked the development and I did it as side gigs. I liked it so much that I actually went to the university and picked up a whole bunch of programming courses. The first few years of my career, first four to five years of my career, I was a front-end engineer and then I realized two things. Number one, I was a terrible developer. Number two, I actually loved talking to the users of the products and also talking with business to find solutions rather than code myself. I started rearranging my career. First, I transitioned within the same company into a business analyst role. From there, I went on to become a program manager and then sort of navigated my way into product manager as it actually became a real discipline. As you can see in a nutshell, my career path shows you one way of going about it to get into product management. Okay, great. So now let's talk about the edge of the top number one. What's product management and how do you get into it? Firstly, what is product management? Simply put, product management is the practice of strategically driving the development, market launch and continual support and improvement of a company's product. But of course, you might also have seen this diagram many times on the left. What does that mean? It means product management is about identifying a user's need, figuring out how the product can be built to fill that need and then articulating what the success look like for the product and then also rallying a whole team behind you to turn that vision into reality. So really simple words. If you are a great product manager, you are the finder of pain in a way and then fixing it. Let's talk about some myths about product managers of product management. Number one, product managers are extremely creative and have amazing vision. That's rarely the case. That's something you do over time. Number two, PMs are mini CEO of the product. You might have heard this a whole lot. Again, not true because typically product managers don't have authority or power, but rather they have to influence teams. Number three, product managers are highly technical. They have a computer science background or they have a lot of certifications in product management. Again, not true. That's not the case. So let's actually unpack this a little further and talk about what is it that makes a good product manager? Number one, foremost, knowing your audience, knowing your customer journeys and your users really well. Then as a good product managers, you always ask the person why every time you ask like why are we doing this or why are we building this. Number three, you learn how to lean on data, look for data and then balance it with like really good gut feelings as a PM. Again, the gut feeling you develop over time. Another core skill is to align stakeholders around the vision of your product. And then another core skill is also to ruthlessly prioritize the features you're building. So let's actually also talk about some other key areas, hard skills versus soft skills. What do you mean by hard skills versus soft skills? Hard skills are technical skills that you need to learn over time. And these in my books are opinion these are much easier to do because you can learn them. Some of them are road mapping and road mapping is like how you actually build out your product over time. There are several tools for it. One of my favorite these days is roadmunk. Other things you need to know is all about agile methodology. If your teams are operating in agile methodology, you need to know how to look for data, leaning on data, metrics, key KPIs and then also tools related to data. These are all things you can learn. These are all things you can look up, learn, it's easy to do. You also need to develop domain knowledge about the product you're building. And then several ways of rationally prioritizing your features. There are several methodologies in this. Again, you can look all these things up. Some of them are rise value versus effort, KNO, story mapping, Moscow method. There's several methodologies you can use. The key to becoming a great product manager is like the next bucket, which is the soft skills. Number one, influencing teams actually without power. And then relationship building because you are actually like rallying a whole team around your vision. You need to get many teams to align on your vision. And so you are a relationship builder. You know, that's the soft skill we need to develop. And negotiation power and championing your own product. You know, that's actually a soft skill that you need to develop. Great. Now let's start by doing the important part of this topic. How do you transition into product management roles? Now, what if you're actually not in technology? What if you're in a different industry? How would you transition? So some of the things you can actually start doing is take an inventory of skills that you already have in your current role in the industry that you're in and see how you can transfer them. Start by working on your resume. Make sure that you highlight all these proven examples of these skills that you already discussed for product management on your resume. See if you can actually take certifications. If your company pays for them, do that. That's great to have. Look for books which will help you actually learn about product management and transition into product management. A couple of books that I really like. There is this one book called Squire to unlock the primer on technology and business strategy. Look it up. It's a great one to actually learn about technology and the landscape and things that you actually need to know. It's a very useful book. There are also several books on how to crack PM interviews. Great resources that you can find on Amazon. Lots of books in this regard that you can use. Now, number three, the third point, which is internal transfers and internships. That is the one that I would definitely say look into because your company is very vested in your career development and advancement. So look for opportunities to transfer within your company and look for roles which are product management type of roles. Look for adjacent roles like project managers or business analyst or even associate product management roles which is probably a foot in the door into product management. You can also see if your company has job rotations or things like GoShare where you can actually go look for a project in another team which is doing something related to product management and you can see if you can get the foot in the door that way. Also, like if none of these work, other option would be to look for side projects which are outside of your industry, outside of your current role. Look for places where you can volunteer outside. There might be projects that you can always volunteer for. And then I cannot stress the importance of this. Always keep building your network. Your network of people in the industry who can help you and navigate this landscape. So look for all of this and you might actually need to be patient but along the way keep building a track record of key skills that are needed for product management and eventually you'll be able to transition. So now let's actually move into the second part of our agenda topic finding your unique voice as a woman product manager. Before we get into that, let's actually talk about technology sector for a second. These are really a gender gap in technology. Here are some of the stats. 25% that's the average number of women in top technology companies and by top technology companies, what I mean is Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, these companies. That's a pretty digital number. 5 to 1, that's the ratio of men to women in engineering. Now here's another digital stat, 24%. In 1985, 37% of computer engineering graduates were women. Today it's trending down to 24%. 41%, 41% of women in technology, they drop off by year 10 or so. So overall there is a big gender gap in technology. Now does it matter? Why does gender diversity matter in technology? Key points, alternative viewpoints, they always create better products. There is a study done by Boston Consulting Group recently which shows that companies with greater gender diversity, they generated 34% more revenue than other companies in the same industry. It also sort of becomes like a self-fulfilling prophecy for companies. So companies have a reputation of being gender diverse. It attracts a more diverse, better talent pool. So it does really matter. Now to try it back to finding your unique voice as a product manager, why does it all matter? If you're a woman product manager, you already know that you're in a tech industry where women are a minority. And one of the key skills of a great product manager is your ability to influence as many teams to get behind your product vision. For this, you need to find your own voice and you have to create a brand for yourself. You may ask why does it matter? Why does one have to have a strong brand? So for a second, think about any global brand that you like. They usually come with a personality and a clear sense of purpose. And that's why people like the brand and why people get behind that. So that is a key thing that you need as a product manager. Question is, how do you find your unique voice? How do you get there? How do you carve out a strong brand for yourself? How do you get confidence? How do you drive engineering and business discussions? And how do you get the themes to get behind you? Some of the behaviors that can help you get there is keep on learning, be curious, ask lots of questions. There are no dumb questions. If you think you need to get more technical to have respect and meaningful discussions with engineering teams, don't be afraid to learn coding. Look under the hood. Learn more about the technical aspects of things. Here's a key thing. We all have self-doubts and imposter syndrome. That is real. I'll let you on to one secret that I've learned over the course of 13, 14 years in product management. Nobody knows all the answers, especially in technology where the landscape keeps on changing every day. So keep learning. Form your own point of view. And here's another key thing. Find your mentor sponsor. So that's the next topic. So stick going into the next topic. Importance of mentorship and sponsorship. What's the difference with both of them? And why is it really important for us? So here's some facts which we already know. 41% of women drop out of technology field in the first 10 years. And we also know that mid-career is particularly challenging for women. So how do you navigate the tech world? What are the help that you can get? Mentorship and sponsorship, they are key. I'm very grateful for various mentors and sponsors that I had along the way that shaped my career. Now, what is the difference between mentorship and sponsorship? Now mentors can come from anywhere. They can be in your organization. They can be in your industry. They could be even outside of any of this. They can serve as a professional role model, but they are not actively seeking advancement for you. You can learn many new things from them, especially things like leadership skills, soft skills, things that you don't know at all, but you would like to learn. Mentors can help you in that. Sponsors are likely different in that they are generally referred to as your mentors who are in your workplace advocating for you. So a sponsor could be a boss or another leader or even a peer, but they champion your work and development and puts you in the right place at the right time for your advancement. So they have a more active role. Now, mentors can turn into sponsors. In fact, that's one of the best ways you can find your sponsors is starting with mentors. So this is very key, and it's not just for women in technology, but for everybody. Find your mentors, network. One organization that I would recommend is women in product. They have built a massive following since 2016 or so. They currently have 14,000 or so members, and they have lots of chapters around the world. So try to find your local chapter, join it. Find your similar-minded people, and maybe you will find your mentors over there, but also look within your organization and your teams. So that's all I had for today. I hope you found some of the information useful for the part of Germany in your end. Thank you for your time, and if you have any questions, stay connected. I have added my LinkedIn info here. Thank you all.