Eric Kovar, Product Manager in New York, NY, United States
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Eric Kovar

Verified Expert  in Product Management

Product Manager

Location
New York, NY, United States
Toptal Member Since
October 11, 2019

Eric is a senior product management professional with a proven track record of success in multiple industries. He's worked with both Fortune 100 companies in Manhattan and startups in San Francisco. Eric has been featured in the NY Daily News, CB Insights, and USA Today for product innovation.

Project Highlights

Launched Internal Data Visualization Product for McKinsey
Led the MVP launch of an internal financial data collection and analysis product that reduced the existing manual process from two weeks to two days.
Product Manager for a New Pharma Product Launch
Part of the Pfizer's new digital leadership team that is launching 15 new digital products to match with new drugs to be released over the next 3-5 years.
Serve Anywhere
CB Insights recognized the hospitality product I designed for innovation and called it one of the 89 applications reinventing the restaurant industry.

Expertise

Work Experience

Senior Technical Product Manager

2021 - 2022
Gartner - Digital Markets Non-Engineering
  • Redesigned the user journey and increased page views by a thousand per day.
  • Mentored offshore engineers and Scrum Masters of all levels.
  • Led the redesign of one of the main pages for user testing.

Senior Product Manager

2021 - 2022
McKinsey & Company (via Toptal)
  • Launched the MVP of an internal McKinsey financial data visualization product that could replace excel.
  • Helped design an application that reduces the current manual two-week data collection and analysis process down to two days.
  • Led a cross-functional team of partners and engineers from seven countries and had a budget of $100K+ per week.

Senior Product Manager

2020 - 2021
Startup Client
  • Worked side by side with a brilliant female founder and helped her turn her vision into a software platform and product that saves lives worldwide.
  • Led the team of engineers and designers as we designed, built, and launched an MVP for User testing.
  • Led the worldwide team that launched the V1 product in the critical care space.

Senior Product Manager

2019 - 2020
Pfizer (via Toptal)
  • Acted as a product manager for the Digital Companion team at Pfizer. Helped recruit, train, and coach a cross-functional team that developed the product roadmaps, release plans, and Jira use and reporting that is now the standard at Pfizer.
  • Led and coached senior managers (10-20+ years at Pfizer) as they learned to design, build, and launch new digital products in their capacity as stakeholders.
  • Served as part of the leadership team for the digital transformation. Provided coaching, seminars, and team-building as an additional scope.
  • Involved in a project with hardware that collected data passively from users that were used later as part of a data science project to inform providers.

Senior Product Manager

2017 - 2018
Startup Client
  • Developed a computer vision system for a retail environment that recognized customers and sent them texts.
  • Led a very successful project that produced excellent data.
  • Oversaw the project that was terminated due to data privacy issues at that time.

Operations Officer and Manager

1984 - 1986
Sun Bank Data Center
  • Managed the Sun Bank's data center and improved the level of service from 67% to 96%.

Launched Internal Data Visualization Product for McKinsey

Led the MVP launch of an internal financial data collection and analysis product that reduced the existing manual process from two weeks to two days.

Financial data collection, analysis, and use case modeling product that automates the current manual process for every firm engagement. Industry Benchmarks and internal IP are constantly updating and populating scenarios for clients.

Product Manager for a New Pharma Product Launch

Part of the Pfizer's new digital leadership team that is launching 15 new digital products to match with new drugs to be released over the next 3-5 years.

As a product manager and agile coach, I mentored senior leaders starting Pfizer's digital transformation and learning Agile software development. We launched the new digital companion that would be the model for the next 14 products. We set up systems and protocols for more product launches as Pfizer embraced Agile and Scrum methodologies using Jira and Marvel.

Serve Anywhere

CB Insights recognized the hospitality product I designed for innovation and called it one of the 89 applications reinventing the restaurant industry.

ServeAnywhere is an education and training software platform for the hospitality industry. Created the product roadmap and helped launch with initial customers. I led a young, cross-functional team of designers, engineers, and marketing professionals using the Agile methodology.

RadiusBlue

One of the first web applications to learn about customers through posts on Facebook and use it to better serve them.

A B2C mobile app for apartment owners, managers, and residents. This software platform aims to increase apartment lease renewals through better engagement with customers, based on their social profiling.
Some of the technologies used include HTML, CSS, JS, Python, SQL, iOS, and Java.

Sitehound SDK collaboration

Created a computer vision product for the retail industry.

2084 Tech used computer vision to recognize repeat customers and send them coupons. On property facial recognition matched with social media searches that are used to wend direct messages to customers with 97% accuracy.
1981 - 1984

Bachelor of Science Degree in Business Administration and Finance

University of Florida - Gainesville, FL

1980 - 1981

Honors Engineering Program in Industrial Engineering

University of Pittsburgh, College of Engineering - Pittsburgh, PA

JANUARY 2019 - PRESENT

HTML, CSS, JS, Python, SQL

Coursera

JANUARY 1980 - PRESENT

Harvard Book Award

Harvard University

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