Julia Kanter loves her job.
If you're a customer of Expedia.com, chances are you're already benefitting because of it.
As Senior Global Product Manager at Expedia, Inc. (a title she thinks sounds a little too fancy), Julia owns "Scratchpad," a modern tool to alleviate the old-fashioned pain of planning travel with pen and paper.
Her approach to product management might be summed up with a single query:
Am I contributing value?
As a fresh employee of American Express, Julia got her first opportunity to build products rather by accident - when a key member of a newly formed loyalty product division abruptly left the company, leaving Kanter in charge.
Since then she's had an unhealthy obsession with banks and travel companies, spreading good product cheer at both JP Morgan Chase and Orbitz before landing in her current role.
Actually I'm lying about the obsession part. Julia's deliberate career path has been partly informed by a former mentor, who once advised "anytime you're looking for a new role, try to keep 50% familiar and 50% new. That way, you don't fall on your face, but you're still learning and being challenged."
Today at Expedia, the learning continues:
- How to develop effective processes for managing a globally distributed team
- Which tools are the right tools to succeed on the job?
- Rejecting societal "norms" and taking up space as a woman
Tune in for the whole conversation below, and enjoy the infectious kindness of Julia Kanter.
"My favorite part of being a Product Manager is, honestly, that it doesn't force you to choose what career you want to do...it really allows you to do anything that you want." Julia Kanter
In this episode:
- Where do startups go wrong with implementing OKRs
- Can OKRs really scale for enterprise?
- What are pipelines and how do they change the way we think about product roadmaps?
In this episode:
- From retail to product management
- Why relationship building is the number one required skill a product manager could have
- The value of having confidence with humility
In this episode:
- Establishing a clear vision of your career path
- Using metrics to answer burning product questions
- What product managers can learn from biology
