Brad Fenstermacher, Product Manager in Bellevue, WA, United States
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Brad Fenstermacher

Verified Expert  in Product Management

Product Manager

Bellevue, WA, United States

Toptal member since March 30, 2020

Bio

A champion of design thinking and customer experience, Brad has played critical roles with large corporations and startups alike. He has broad industry experience, including wireless, banking, edtech, and health care. Past projects have been with T-Mobile, PeaceHealth, and Avant Assessment, just to name a few. Brad's strengths lie in showing the brightest in the market strategy, design, and product development stages.

Expertise

  • Customer Experience
  • Design Thinking
  • Interaction Design (IxD)
  • Journey Mapping
  • Personas
  • Service Design
  • User Stories
  • User-centered Design (UCD)

Work Experience

Service Design Consultant

2019 - 2019
Freelance
  • Served as a direct link between product owners, data scientists, and the development team.
  • Built journey maps and wrote user stories for multiple personas at early stages of development.
  • Focused on breaking down the long-term vision into actionable plans for new service offerings.
  • Rapidly ramped-up on-site, sector, and cell signal data and implications for network performance.

Service Design Consultant

2015 - 2017
Freelance
  • Planned and facilitated the migration of more than 75,000 users to the Microsoft Cloud.
  • Oversaw the successful transition for all users, including retail and call centers.
  • Ensured compliance with HR, legal, security, and contract requirements.
  • Developed visual and written communications for program stakeholders.

Director, Business Development

2012 - 2013
LiveStories
  • Worked with the founder to build the product roadmap, providing the majority of VOC input gathered through first-hand interviews and industry research.
  • Worked with the founder, UX designer, and web developer to develop the MVP and subsequent iterations and releases.
  • Teamed with customers to develop new online donor engagement strategies.

Senior Manager, Customer Experience

2011 - 2012
West Monroe Partners
  • Led digital strategy projects, customer experience (CX), and user experience (UX) initiatives.
  • Facilitated client sessions to develop personas, use cases, and journey maps.
  • Teamed up with design agencies to apply new branding to digital properties.
  • Cataloged existing content and coordinated new content development.
  • Coordinated the integration and rebranding of linked secure sites.
  • Led full QA cycles across the matrix of OS/browser/device combinations.
  • Primarily worked on the following project: a bank rebrand and digital channel overhaul.

Chief Technology Officer

2007 - 2011
Avant Assessment
  • Led team that developed and supported Avant's SaaS language assessment platforms.
  • Oversaw all technical aspects of assessment delivery to thousands of language learners worldwide.
  • Implemented processes, systems, and controls to streamline production and improve quality.
  • Grew the team from a handful of junior developers to a robust team of 12 and retaining key talent.
  • Traveled to evaluate market and partner opportunities with Tsinghua University (China).
  • Contributed marketing, tech, financial, and operations expertise to the executive team.

Project History

STAMP Pro Online Assessment

Teamed up with language and assessment SMEs to develop and grow what is now known as STAMP Pro for Avant Assessment.

STAMP Pro is an industry-leading language assessment platform used to verify employee and applicants language skills in reading, writing, listening, and speaking. In my first year, I grew the team from three to twelve—introducing structure and reliability that enabled a major pivot to the government sector. My team also delivered major product releases to three large federal agencies, setting the foundation for market expansion beyond edtech, into the corporate sector.

Crowdfunding Platform

Voiced customer efforts and worked with founder through design, MVP development, initial launch, and beyond.

I worked with the founder of a new startup venture to gather industry and prospective customer insights, design and scope the MVP, and manage the development team through the initial launch. In addition, I recruited and onboarded the initial 25 customer agencies and provided the valuable voice of the customer input to early ongoing development iterations.

Interactive Web Surveys

Led the design, development, and deployment for a CRM-integrated customer survey tool that required no IT assistance for marketing department users to deploy.

Interactive Web Surveys was the internal name for a product deployed and licensed under NDA. I led the design, development, and deployment of this product from start to finish. IWS enabled more than 100 corporate marketing teams to engage directly with customers via dynamic, multi-path surveys, and see all of that data return directly to their CRM systems. This process ensured that the information was immediately available for business intelligence purposes without having to write any code or engage with any IT department personnel.

Online Banking Experience

Led development and launch of new online banking experience for serving individual and business banking customers across more than 170 branches and four states.

I led the development of an online banking experience that pushed boundaries for the industry, taking a new approach to engaging small business customers. The bank wanted to earn and maintain both the personal and business relationships with these customers. The key shift I introduced was bringing the experience and messaging together. I also introduced the concept, provided evidence to back it up, moved it through executive approval, and led its design, development, and deployment.

Education

2003 - 2004

Master of Business Administration (MBA) Degree in Business—Sports Business and Marketing

University of Oregon - Eugene, OR, USA

1994 - 1998

Bachelor's Degree in Business: Information Systems and Marketing

University of Washington - Seattle, WA, USA

Certifications

JULY 2020 - PRESENT

Human-Computer Interaction — HCI

Interaction Design Foundation

MARCH 2020 - PRESENT

Usability Testing

The Interaction Design Foundation

MARCH 2020 - PRESENT

Mobile UX Design

The Interaction Design Foundation

FEBRUARY 2020 - PRESENT

Emotional Design

The Interaction Design Foundation

FEBRUARY 2020 - PRESENT

UX Management

The Interaction Design Foundation

Skills

Tools

Figma, Visio, Trello, Confluence, Asana, Jira, Microsoft Project, Zeplin

Paradigms

Design Thinking, Human-computer Interaction (HCI), B2C, Agile Product Management, Scalable Application, Agile, Kanban, Agile Software Development

Industry Expertise

Sports, High-tech Startups, Education Technology (Edtech), Banking & Finance, Healthcare

Other

Use Cases, User Journey Maps, User Journeys, Customer Experience, Interaction Design (IxD), Journey Mapping, Storyboarding, User Stories, Story Mapping, Personas, Service Design, Business, Business Processes, Business Process Analysis, Business Process Flow Diagrams, Business Process Modeling, Ideation, Ideation Workshops, Web Platforms, Feature Backlog Prioritization, Roadmaps, Microsoft Excel, Product Management, Data Queries, Product Design, Use Case Analysis, User Experience (UX), Marketing Strategy, Strategic Planning, Startups, Digital Marketing, Wireframing, Product Development, SQL, Wireless, User-centered Design (UCD), Competitive Strategy, User Research, Competitor Analysis & Profiling, Marketing, Technology, Digital Product Design, Digital Product Management, Marketing Communications (MarCom), Product Marketing, Edtech Design, Business to Business (B2B), Business to Consumer (B2C), UX Testing, Validation, Smaply, Adobe Experience Design (XD), Retail & Wholesale, Surveys, Primary Research, B2B, JavaScript, HTML

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