Drew Bartlett, Product Manager in Denver, United States
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Drew Bartlett

Verified Expert  in Product Management

Bio

Drew is a seasoned digital product management and software development leader with over 20 years of experience. Known as an expert agent of change, Drew has a history of accomplishment delivering high impact, transformational and disruptive product, platform, and service offerings to market. Drew is an expert throughout the product development lifecycle from market analysis, strategy, and ideation through execution, operationalization, launch, iteration, and end of life. Drew delivers results.

Project Highlights

Redeam Operator Portal
Delivered an operator-onboarding-and-channel-management tool that removed barriers to entry and extended Redeam's reach of the total addressable market to approximately 80% of the tours, activities, and attractions segment of the travel industry.
Dice.com SEO and Google for Jobs Integration
Improved Dice.com's organic SEO positioning to page 1 and a top 5 position for their top 50 keywords and top 50 geographies as well as championed Dice's participation in Google for Jobs, further extending Dice's organic visibility.
Digital First Media | MediaNews Group Media Center
Increased the aggregate page view traffic by 23% and engagement (time on site and pages per visit) by 25% for the entire enterprise along with a more than 15% incremental improvement in unique visitors.

Expertise

  • Digital Marketing
  • Digital Media
  • Product Leadership
  • Product Management
  • Product Marketing
  • Product Planning
  • Product Strategy
  • eCommerce

Work Experience

Product, Strategy, and Execution Consultant

2009 - PRESENT
BIG
  • Developed strategy with PepsiCo and their eCommerce division to expand D2C and direct B2B offerings for Gatorade.com and related brand sites in 2021.
  • Defined and delivered robust enterprise API product strategy and portfolio to enable analytics startup AirDNA to engage enterprise prospects.
  • Yielded $500k in the first two months after launch, tracking at $10 million by year two, effectively doubling revenues.
  • Streamlined DevOps provisioning of dev enablement via self-service interfaces/automation, developed catalog for asset reuse, and implemented AI/ML low code app development platform for a primary US healthcare insurance provider in 2020.
  • Established various strategies, including product management processes, strategic partnerships, SEO, and audience acquisition, for a media startup, SDxCentral. In three months in 2018, the audience grew by 22%.
  • Advised as an industry expert on multiple topics for Guidepoint Advisors, a research firm advising private equity investors on industry and technology trends from 2017 till the present.
  • Delivered an annual revenue growth that exceeded $10 million by advising both on product functionality as well as the product management process and execution for eCommerce and affiliate marketing platform ClickBank from 2013 to 2014.
  • Created newsroom and operational workflow efficiency with gains exceeding 30%. From 2010 to 2011, I led the Denver Post in program management and execution of an enterprise-wide converged CMS implementation and product redesign.
  • Established a new $8 million line of business, a scalable interactive practice, through strategic consultation, partnership development, and execution for legendary brand and design agency Genesis, Inc. from 2009-2010.

Product Management Bootcamp Instructor

2023 - 2024
edX
  • Provided instruction and pragmatic examples to adult students wanting a solid product management foundation.
  • Simplified complex concepts into practical learnings and exercises of key understandings. This foundation allowed for more sophisticated development of insight into the skills needed for a successful product.
  • Got highly rated in terms of student feedback and engagement. Frequently requested as a substitute instructor when possible.

Product Manager

2023 - 2023
Priceline
  • Coordinated across the software development organization (around 900 devs and 600 apps) on the timing, documentation, training, and migration from a Harness-based unified CD pipeline to a GitOps approach using ArgoCD, Codefresh, and GitHub Actions.
  • Developed and delivered robust documentation and training materials for core use cases, FAQs, and new functionality/capabilities previously unavailable.
  • Coordinated migrating over 1,200 1st-party and 3rd-party text and file-based secrets from Harness to Google Secret Manager.
  • Solicited input from the development org and prioritized and backlogged new features/functionalities now possible with the new platform. This included support for using the latest technology, such as AI-powered skills, automation, and troubleshooting.

DevOps Workshop Facilitator

2023 - 2023
Toptal
  • Facilitated a conceptual and hands-on DevOps workshop for Volvo North America's "Connected Car" software division. Provided baseline conceptual understanding of DevOps and hands-on examples with various tools in the Volvo development environment.
  • Helped build reusable workshop content around the DevOps practices and tools that Toptal can take to run the workshop with other Toptal clients to help them establish or incrementally improve their DevOps practices.
  • Established a model and possible new area of value that Toptal can build into offerings that improve Toptal client best practices in technology development and operations and the other areas of practice in which Toptal provides Talent.

Head of Platform Product Management

2021 - 2023
Accruent
  • Built a 3-year vision and 18-month platform roadmap for the buildout of Accruent's data platform, common component strategy, and integrations strategy. Each element is in service of creating monetizable data and insights product offerings.
  • Developed product roadmaps for three separate platform products with market analysis and revenue projections, contributing $50+ million in new revenue.
  • Delivered, in coordination with the enterprise architecture, a standard data model design that enabled interoperability and eased integration to the Accruent platform and its portfolio products.
  • Led the growth accelerator innovation project to identify markets, segments, problems worth solving, and validation of solutions and business models for IoT and AI-enabled condition monitoring and predictive maintenance capabilities.
  • Delivered a robust roadmap of platform-based, cross-product integrations products for IoT-based predictive maintenance, space utilization, and other IoT and AI/ML-based use cases.
  • Established a new data product line based on aggregate data assets for new target customers: insurance and commercial real estate companies, asset manufacturers, and financial services providers.
  • Achieved a $25 million projected contribution to annual recurring revenue (ARR) over three years.

Vice President of Product Management

2019 - 2020
Redeam
  • Established the company's first true product management processes and artifacts including road mapping, biweekly product review meetings, structured prioritization methodology, product intake process, standardized artifacts, and launch checklists.
  • Delivered the first of its kind, independent channel management platform with API, UI, and mobile app interfaces transforming the tours, activities, and attractions vertical of the travel industry and how they connect with resellers.
  • Led delivery and incremental improvement of enterprise integrations with Google, Disney, Groupon, Expedia, TripAdvisor, GetYourGuide, Trip.com, and others yielding 4x growth in revenues, opening resale opportunities improving gross margin 3x-4x.
  • Delivered the key feature of timed-ticket support by expanding the segment of the total addressable market opportunity for non-API connected operators and channel partners—approximately 60% of the market.
  • Delivered an external validation API allowing technically sophisticated operators to incorporate validation tech into their reservation/ticketing systems, streamlining gate and back-office processes to improve the guest experience.
  • Delivered "Reserve with Google" program integration enabling the purchase of activities and attractions within Google's experiences (specifically maps and search results. Yielded over $2.6 million in Disney World ticket sales even during the pandemic.
  • Enabled over $85 million in sales in tickets, passes & reservations in 2019 with 3x pre-pandemic projected growth for 2020 and 7x for 2021.
  • Pivoted product strategy to eliminate a hardware-based redemption model to reduce costs and simultaneously enabled a touch-less redemption technology.

Director of B2C Product Management (Dice.com)

2018 - 2019
DHI
  • Guided the team through an SEO initiative to strategically improve Dice’s organic traffic and search engine visibility, resulting in a more than 180% improvement in organic traffic and "Page 1" positioning for top 50 keywords and top 50 geographies.
  • Championed a Google-for-Jobs integration and optimization allowing Dice to further dominate Google search results placement.
  • Drove the mobile app roadmap of new capabilities and delivered major versions of both Dice and eFinancialCareers, yielding an 18% engagement increase in Dice and 83% increase in MAU for eFinancialCareers within FY ‘18.
  • Created and structured new managed services offerings and the "Matchback" attribution analysis tools to penetrate direct employer markets resulting in 80% growth in direct employer segment.

VP of Product Management and Marketing

2014 - 2018
Olive Software
  • Oversaw the strategic deployment of the digital content enrichment, CMS integrations, programmatic advertising, and distribution programs that delivered 22% gains in new and incremental revenue throughout FY' 15-'17.
  • Increased prospect engagement by 47% through developing and launching demand generation strategy and programs that included thought leadership, best practices webinars, email drip campaigns, SEO, product announcements, digital ads, and more.
  • Conceived and implemented strategic revenue programs that yielded over $150 million in revenue returns for Olive's publishing partners and 10%-14% annual incremental revenue gains for Olive Software starting in FY '15.
  • Delivered an industry-changing content matching and enrichment platform merging print and native digital content in a highly intuitive experience, increasing digital engagement metrics by three times across digital print and native digital assets.
  • Managed the build, release, and migration of the customer base to HTML5 products from Flash; self-hosted to multi-tenant SaaS cloud(from a mix of self-hosted and on-premise, and the update of native apps (iOS) to PWA (iOS, Android, and Kindle).
  • Implemented a marketing tech strategy that included a website redesign and marketing automation platform with CRM integration for improved lead tracking and prospect engagement, increasing top-of-funnel lead conversion by 125%.

Director of Digital Product Management — News & Niche Products

2011 - 2013
MediaNews Group
  • Established the PM discipline across the enterprise (75 daily, 300+ weekly/niche publications) and newsrooms as an innovation engine unifying strategy across the organization. Yielded 22% growth in key metrics (unique visits and page views).
  • Streamlined the operations on multiple large-scale programs, products and projects, yielding a 33% decrease in operational expenditures by 38% and increasing revenue over $30 million year over year over year from FY 2011 to FY 2013.
  • Led a team through a unified UI and UX redesign, ad map analysis/strategy, and technology implementation programs that increased web traffic by 23% and reader engagement by 25%.
  • Defined and spearheaded the implementation of DFM’s Media Center and UGC strategies across DFM’s footprint that successfully engaged users, increasing site engagement metrics to 20+ pages per visit and 10+ minutes of time on the site.
  • Established and rolled out content management and SEO solutions for nationally centralized newsroom "Project Thunderdome," allowing maximum content syndication and distribution to the publications and external partners.

Principal Software Product Manager

2008 - 2009
Weyerhaeuser
  • Created and interoperability file format that enabled upstream and downstream value chain software applications, such as AutoCAD, lumber yard supply chain systems, automated panelization applications, etc., to interoperate.
  • Advised on how to make their core software product into a SaaS-based platform application for better reach and streamlining incremental releases into their customer base and design centers.
  • Created a plan for the modernization of core technology and incremental rollout to ease adoption.

Product Manager

2005 - 2008
Quark
  • Initiated Quark's first SaaS-based offering and first B2C/non-pro targeted product, Quark Promote. Multiple services were later integrated into the Quark B2B/professional offerings portfolio to create a 2-sided marketplace and community ecosystem.
  • Introduced new features to improve QuarkXPress web and interactive authoring functionalities and evangelized unique use cases via speaking engagements, user events, and webinars to improve their adoption resulting in unprecedented customer engagement.
  • Led the analysis and reconfiguration of Quark's global pricing, improved international file sharing, and feature support in a highly competitive market against a very strong competitor (Adobe) resulting in an 18% growth in 2008 global license sales.
  • Improved license control and transfer functionality to allow users self-service functionality in hardware updates, critical when Apple introduced a new Intel-based architecture. Reduced internal support costs by 83% and improved retention by 16%.

Project Manager | Senior Product Specialist

2002 - 2005
DexMedia
  • Consulted and educated print advertising customers on digital advertising and eCommerce offerings (internal/external) as well as project managing their development and execution; also was responsible for over $7 million in new revenue in one year.
  • Created new digital product offerings for the DexMedia portfolio that allowed them to leverage their local advertiser relationships and evolve their value proposition. These products became Dex's lead offerings as yellow pages' advertising declined.
  • Introduced and streamlined team-account-management sales to product fulfillment and operations approach which improved delivery by 33%.

Director of Technology (BestHalf.com) | Manager of Internet Services (SCI)

1999 - 2001
BestHalf.com | Service Corp International
  • Delivered early and under budget SCIs' online pre-arrangement capability, DignityMemorial.com, that yielded $150 million in new revenue its first year and over $400 million in year two.
  • Led the development and rollout of BestHalf.com's business infrastructure and core product including business systems, collaboration tech, telecom platform, hosting environment, three offices, and full B2C portal product buildout in under six months.
  • Established our web presence with a lead collection for SCI's multiple (12+) service brands, improving top-of-funnel prospect engagement by 55% and top-line revenue by 22%.

Redeam Operator Portal

https://redeam.com/channel-manager/

Delivered an operator-onboarding-and-channel-management tool that removed barriers to entry and extended Redeam's reach of the total addressable market to approximately 80% of the tours, activities, and attractions segment of the travel industry.

The Redeam Operator Portal is the primary user interface that our customers—tour, activity, and attraction operators in the travel industry—interact with our channel management and voucher processing platform.

The operator portal is a continually evolving interface supporting multiple complex capabilities and the first use cases for the operator portal, including self-service onboarding, voucher redemption, user management, product/channel (reseller) mapping, inventory allocation, channel management (revenue optimization), and transactional reporting and dashboards.

I led the effort as the VP of product management—managing a product manager and a UI/UX designer, as well as participating as an individual contributor. My direct contributions included market/user investigation (market fit, competitive analysis, core use case articulation, and so on), a high-level definition of functional requirements, core back-end requirements (user story) definition, UI guidance, framework selection, prototype testing, prioritization of functional delivery (aligned to core use case priority), internal QA and coordination of external QA testing, go-to-market planning, and rollout of an MVP including the presentation at industry events.

Dice.com SEO and Google for Jobs Integration

https://www.dice.com

Improved Dice.com's organic SEO positioning to page 1 and a top 5 position for their top 50 keywords and top 50 geographies as well as championed Dice's participation in Google for Jobs, further extending Dice's organic visibility.

After a previous team's re-platforming of Dice.com's front end, search engine visibility of job postings had been overlooked, severely neglected, and not regarded as a priority for the business under their brand/content marketing-based strategy.

Working with our front-end development team and internal SEO expert, I championed the effort to dedicate development capacity to every sprint to improve our organic search rankings and results. Using simple improvements in title tags, on-page optimizations, page-load performance, crawlable skill & geography landing pages, and optimization of our index and sitemap files, we could quickly and dramatically improve Dice's visibility and organic traffic. The addition of participating in the Google for Jobs program and its optimizations produced a halo effect that improved organic traffic by an order of magnitude beyond the results previously achieved.

As the director of product management for B2C, I obtained buy-in from the executive team who didn't understand SEO's value and continually protect the team from distracting feature projects. I served as the product owner, delivering a prioritized backlog until I could fill my team with a product manager with the necessary SEO expertise.

Digital First Media | MediaNews Group Media Center

http://photos.denverpost.com/

Increased the aggregate page view traffic by 23% and engagement (time on site and pages per visit) by 25% for the entire enterprise along with a more than 15% incremental improvement in unique visitors.

Working with the Pulitzer Prize-winning photography team at The Denver Post and a development team from Digital First Media's (DFM) corporate interactive group, we built and iteratively optimized a prototype media center architecture and platform to feature the work of the photography and multimedia teams. Leveraging the success of that experiment, we deployed this strategy and productized platform across Digital First Media's footprint of 75 daily newspapers using dedicated implementations for larger titles (e.g., San Jose Mercury News, LA Daily News, St Paul Pioneer Press, The York Daily Record, and New Haven Register) and a regionalized dynamic model enabling smaller markets (6+).

As the director of product management for the News & Niche products for DFM, I championed this strategy with the executive team, publishers, and regional editors. I oversaw development, ad integrations (productization), and functional optimizations as a PO in a scrum environment. I traveled to each market deployment to lead the training of the technical, editorial, and multimedia teams on the platform, presentations to local executive teams, and training of the sales teams for the presentation of this product's unique value for premium advertisers.

Healthcare Insurance Provider Developer Portal and AI/ML Platform (Toptal Project)

Delivered a self-service portal for developers to set up and manage their project environments, tools, data connections, workflows, security, and governance; also integrated a low-code/no-code AI/ML platform and zero trust architecture.

I led the design and implementation of a self-service developer portal that streamlined DevOps provisioning of cloud enablement, environment setup, tool access, and data connectivity; it also included the introduction of a new AI/ML low code app development platform for one of the largest health insurance companies in the US.

The comprehensive program includes:
• A DevOps provisioning self-service portal for cloud enablement of developer resources, CI/CD pipeline automation, corporate governance, and API and proxy creation/management for a fully self-service and automated model.
• Enablement of a low-code/no-code app development platform and marketplace incorporating AI/ML-based skills, models, available APIs, and other assets for use by nontraditional developers.
• Implementation of multiple business-driven, AI/ML-powered use cases to realize an immediate value, estimated at over $500 in revenue and realized cost savings.

Olive Dynamic Newsstand — Olive Software

Led the build, launch, and iteration of an HTML5-based platform, Olive Dynamic Newsstand, used by 68 of the top 100 US newspapers and two of the largest newspapers worldwide, including customization, enrichment, and digital ad capabilities.

The Olive Dynamic Newsstand was an HTML5-based, print-to-web content transformation and digital replica platform serving the newspaper and magazine industries. This product replaced the legacy Flash-based product (Olive Digital Edition), which had served the market for more than ten years and was rapidly being deprecated by all major browsers.

I led the development, design, launch, and iteration of the core product itself but also created unique advertising and content enrichment capabilities that allowed publishers to create their highest reader engagement publication format.

As the director of product management and marketing, I developed a two-year visionary roadmap incorporating web concepts and dynamics to the print replica industry, including the use of AI content matching capabilities. The advertising and enrichment programs generated substantial interest and results, with publishers looking for new revenue and product opportunities., particularly those who were willing to experiment with the platform, driving unmatched innovation in the industry.

We leveraged these success stories in Olive's marketing efforts to evangelize dynamic content strategies with publishers and innovative use of the platform.

QuarkXPress — Web and Interactive Layout Spaces

Extended QuarkXPress' desktop publishing and page layout functionality for creation of HTML5-based web formats, eBook publishing, and beyond.

HTML export tools had been introduced with QuarkXPress version 5.5. Starting in version 7, the QuarkXPress development team and I further extended the power of the QuarkXPress page layout platform with high-quality HTML5 support and tools that allowed print design professionals to repurpose their content, layouts, and assets for rich digital experiences, specifically the web, eBook, and interactive (Flash and interactive PDF) formats.

As the product manager leading the effort, I engaged the marketplace to understand better how page designers might want to publish digitally, what tools they preferred to use, and how they wanted them to work. I authored requirements to reflect their most common needs for asset conversion. I also preserved and further developed the ability to produce a full website, incorporating modular best practices and export formats. Stand alone, HTML5 "flip book" and eBook publishing output capabilities were enabled as low-cost, secondary features whose value and adoption almost eclipsed that of the originating ability.
2004 - 2008

Master's Degree in Computer Information Systems (Web Design and Development Technologies)

University of Denver - Denver, CO, United States

1991 - 1995

Bachelor's Degree in Psychology

Colorado State University - Fort Collins, CO, United States

JANUARY 2014 - PRESENT

Certified Product Manager

Association of International Product Management and Marketing (AIPMM)

AUGUST 2012 - PRESENT

The Mindset of Leadership

Introspect International LLC

JUNE 2012 - PRESENT

Strategic Planning & Leadership

Thought Leaders, LLC

JULY 2010 - PRESENT

Project Management Certification

Mindavation, Inc.

Tools

Microsoft Word, Jira, Confluence, Google Analytics, Visio, Draw.io, OmniGraffle, Adobe, ProdPad, Trello, Asana, Tableau, Figma, Git, GitHub

Paradigms

B2C, B2B2C, Agile, Scrum, Kanban, Stage Gate Process, Agile Product Management, Iterative Design, Business to Business to Consumer (B2B2C), Requirements Analysis, Agile Project Management, Rapid Prototyping, Team Development, Design Thinking, Continuous Delivery (CD), DevOps, Mobile App Design

Industry Expertise

Marketplaces, Education Technology (Edtech), Healthcare

Platforms

ProductPlan, Shopify, Omniture

Other

Product Strategy, Product Management, Publishing, Digital Advertising, Project Management, Product Marketing, Digital Marketing, eCommerce, Product Planning, Budget Management, Distributed Team Management, Software Development Management, P&L Management, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), User Experience (UX), Go-to-market Plans, Operations, Customer Experience, Print Media, Digital Media, Analytics, Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Social Media Platforms, iOS, Android, Mobile Web, Progressive Web Applications (PWAs), Microsoft PowerPoint, Product Ownership, Strategy, Customer Support, SaaS Product Management, News Media, SaaS, Business Strategy, Digital Strategy, Execution, Lean, Market Strategy and Research Product Manager, Startups, Technical Product Management, Advertising, Team Management, Leadership, Product Leadership, Product Roadmaps, Enterprise, Feature Roadmaps, Feature Prioritization, Product Discovery, Product Owner, Product Operations, Consulting, Product Launch, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Roadmaps, Market Research & Analysis, Technical Requirements, Product Growth, B2B, Data, Go-to-market Strategy, Digital Product Management, Product Consultant, Product Strategy Consultant, Process Improvement, Growth, New Products, New Product Development, Discovery, Discovery Workshops, Design Sprints, Project Timelines, Strategic Planning, Voice of the Customer (VoC), Scope of Work (SOW), Market Research, Feature Backlog Prioritization, Sprint Planning, Data Analysis, Platform Design, User Onboarding, Business Development, Scrum Master, Workshops, Research, Regulations, Executive Presentations, Product Requirements Documentation (PRD), Conceptualization, Ideation, Requirements, Wireframing, Optimization, Automation, Technical Leadership, Websites, Integration, Communication, SEO Tools, API Integration, Mobile, Mobile Applications, Innovation, Innovation Management, Innovation Strategy, Advisory, Facilitation, Innovation Workshops, Mentorship & Coaching, Small & Medium-sized Enterprises (SME), Product Development, Data-driven Decision-making, Web Applications, Internet of Things (IoT), QR Codes, Competitive Analysis, Newswire services, Product Positioning, Software Development, Mobile Apps, User Journeys, Multimedia, Documentation, Business to Business (B2B), Remote Team Leadership, Product Vision, Web Analytics, Website Traffic, Cross-functional Team Leadership, Business, Content Management Systems (CMS), Content Management, Chief Product Officer (CPO), Team Leadership, Best Practices, Business Cases, Waterfall Methodology, New Product Business Cases, Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Data Analytics, Enterprise SaaS, Large-scale Systems, Website Redesign, Design, Organization, Motivation, Conflict Resolution, Data Flows, Data Mapping, Scrum Product Owner, Backlog Management, Stakeholder Management, Agile Product Delivery, Entrepreneurship, Program Management, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Travel & Leisure, Marketing Technology (MarTech), WordPress, Program Management, Marketing, User Interface (UI), SaaS Product Marketing, Advertising Technology (Adtech), Cloud, Agile Leadership, Process Analysis, Market Fit, Pricing Models, Annotated Wireframes, UX Flows, APIs, Psychology, Web Design, Brand Positioning, Social Media, Audience Targeting, GDPR, Branding, Product Design, California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), Privacy Frameworks, Computer Graphics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), SQL, Machine Learning, Continuous Integration (CI), Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), White Papers, Pricing, Online Payments, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Hardware, Retail & Wholesale, Security, Access Control, OpenAI, Large Language Models (LLMs), Edtech Design, A/B Testing, Human Resources (HR), Agile Coaching, Data Integration, Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), Research, Aha!, Microsoft Excel, Cloud Environments, Project Coordination, 3D, Big Data, Platforms, CAD, System Integration, Medical Equipment, Azure Data Lake, Snowflake, Workshop Facilitation, Sales, Electronic Medical Records (EMR), WP Engine, GitOps, GitHub Actions, Teaching, Customer Research, Learning Management Systems (LMS)

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