About

Hi, I’m Sam. As a product manager, I strive to build technology that empowers humans.

Critical thinking, user centricity, and transparent communication are some of the most important tools in my toolkit. I enjoy collaborating with diverse teams to deliver products that users love.

Background

I earned a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Virginia and started my career as a software engineer building large-scale web applications. I cut my teeth working on a high-quality, agile engineering team and innovating on web-based language education.

I spent some time consulting for small businesses to develop custom websites and in-person experiences. One of my favorite projects was designing a street art tour for a Denver start up.

I moved back to education technology as a product manager at an online healthcare education startup. While serving as the growth PM, I drove growth in top-of-the-funnel user acquisition and purchase conversions. I also executed on strategic initiatives to expand from the student market to the professional market and piloted generative research to prioritize opportunities to improve product-market fit.

As the product and design team grew from one person to five, I also led initiatives to evangelize and operationalize product processes across the company. I introduced discovery and delivery backlogs, product demo days, an internal knowledge repository, team trainings, document templates, and more to make sure that our team could effectively communicate the “why” behind product recommendations and decisions.

I’m always interested in new opportunities that leverage my skill sets. I especially love products that serve a social good and teams that value quality, EQ and IQ, protecting employees’ focused time, and diversity. See my CV, connect with me on LinkedIn, or get in touch!

Praise

“What I’ve enjoyed the most about working with Sam is her strategic and systemic approach to product work. She has an innate curiosity and effortless ability to manage the scrupulous details of projects. Time and time again, I’ve seen Sam get to the core of customer problems through market research and product discovery techniques… She is also extremely passionate about streamlining product and research operations within the team. From organizing product discovery backlogs, team communications, and internal training; she can do it all!” - Roberta, Product Manager at Osmosis

“Sam is everything you’d want in a Product Manager and teammate. She’s thorough, relentless, and ambitious. As a PM, she has a unique ability to keep everything organized, enabling her team to work without distraction towards a clear, stated goal. Sam has streamlined numerous processes in our time together that have created high value efficiencies. She is able to think deeply about a problem through user research, data, and intuition. Then, she works with and empowers the designers and engineers to create the right solution.” -Eric, Senior Product Designer at Osmosis

“Sam is a fantastic product manager and her positive impact on the team was immediately visible. She is incredibly process and detail oriented, which ensures that things don’t ‘fall through the cracks’ but also keeps stake-holders across teams in the loop; something that is of vital importance within a remote organisation. In addition to her reliability, Sam is someone who is caring, always has her teammates’ back and reaches further to ensure that no one’s voice gets drowned in the crowd.” - Ashwin, Data Team Lead at Osmosis

“Sam W is an extremely bright and talented person who has also demonstrated the ability to be flexible and navigate the ever-changing startup environment… I enjoy reading her thorough and insightful [user research syntheses] as well.” - Shiv, CEO and Co-Founder of Osmosis

“Sam cares deeply about the learner experience and is very thoughtful in terms of how she breaks down problems so that they can be measured. She has been an awesome addition to the team and continues to impress with her ability to ask the right answers and get to the right solutions.” - Teammate, Osmosis

“Sam has strongly focused on improving coordination and collaboration across our [SpanishDict] teams…Sam’s efforts help ensure we build products that solve user needs, while bringing together the different stakeholders on our team.” - Stuart, Product Manager at Curiosity Media

“Sam has been instrumental in launching the language guide. Her strong working relationship with Elise and the content team and ease of communication with them ensured we were building the right thing, by clarifying requirements and use cases.” - William, Principle Software Engineer at Curiosity Media

“Sam and Aaron did an excellent job translating the [project] goals into well-scoped, clearly-prioritized, and clearly-estimated tickets…which helped identify and resolve potential bottlenecks and reduce uncertainty… As a result…[we] have great clarity and focus.” - Chris Cummings, CEO and Co-founder of Curiosity Media

“Sam has really championed content-related issues and features, and has taken a very thoughtful and thorough approach to implementing our wish-list…from figuring how it was going to work on the engineering side, to understanding how we were going to be using it, and working through all the different scenarios” - Elise, Content Director at Curiosity Media

“Sam was instrumental in developing the website for my business… She was able to answer all my questions and explain how to bring my vision to fruition. She developed working models and variations that allowed me to simulate the user experience, and helped me successfully launch on schedule. Without Sam, my business would just be an e-mail address.” - Greg, Owner of Aerial Greg Photography, Client for website design and development