Jeff Stern, Product Manager in Philadelphia, PA, United States
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Jeff Stern

Verified Expert  in Product Management

Product Manager

Philadelphia, PA, United States

Toptal member since April 19, 2022

Expertise
Virtual Product Management
Bio

Jeff is a senior product manager with 8+ years of experience in consumer and enterprise products. Bringing his background in user experience to his product management practice, Jeff launched a Webby Award-winning application for Girls Who Code. He also served as a technical advisor for its New York Times Best Sellers book series. He is passionate about putting beautiful and useful products into the world, thrives in ambiguous environments, and excels at leading teams to achieve their goals.

Project Highlights

Learning Platform for Computer Science Education Nonprofit
Led the initial product development of Girls Who Code HQ, the platform that now serves over 100,000 students learning to code.
Wonderus | Slack and Web-based Knowledge Management System
Founded and created Wonderus, a knowledge management system that integrates into Slack.
Tidelift | Catalogs to Manage Open-source Software
Led the development of a new product that's now the primary way that customers engage with service.

Expertise

  • B2B
  • B2C
  • Data Science
  • New Products
  • Product Management
  • SaaS
  • UX Design
  • Web Development

Work Experience

Senior Product Manager

2019 - 2022
Tidelift
  • Led the company through a major product iteration and launched a new product that's a key driver of revenue and customer adoption.
  • Pursued a product-led growth strategy, emphasizing the value of building free trials and free tiers to support customer acquisition.
  • Became a domain expert in open-source software, developer tooling, and developer experience.

Director of Product

2014 - 2018
Girls Who Code
  • Launched Girls Who Code HQ, an enrollment and curriculum platform for 100,000+ students and teachers.
  • Launched Girls Who Code Loop, a Webby Award-winning iOS and Android application for Girls Who Code alumni.
  • Established and advocated for a product and design culture and hired Girls Who Code's first designers and developers to work on student-facing products.
  • Served as technical advisor for Girls Who Code's New York Times Best Sellers book series.
  • Started as a teacher for Girls Who Code's summer programs, directly teaching 40 students about computer science.

Project History

Learning Platform for Computer Science Education Nonprofit

https://hq.girlswhocode.com/

Led the initial product development of Girls Who Code HQ, the platform that now serves over 100,000 students learning to code.

Girls Who Code was growing quickly and needed a platform to handle all student enrollment and curriculum. I led end-to-end product management, from the initial idea through launch. This included managing a distributed, cross-functional team of designers and developers and managing stakeholders throughout the organization.

Wonderus | Slack and Web-based Knowledge Management System

https://wonderus.app

Founded and created Wonderus, a knowledge management system that integrates into Slack.

Wonderus is used to document a team’s language—acronyms and all—and make it readily available in Slack and other apps the team uses. I created Wonderus because I felt the pain of having to onboard and understand a company's unique language. I took Wonderus from an idea to a launched product, and it has paying customers in organizations around the world.

Tidelift | Catalogs to Manage Open-source Software

Led the development of a new product that's now the primary way that customers engage with service.

Tidelift helps software developers manage their open-source software, ensuring that they use safe and secure packages. Other products in this market act as scanning tools that provide developers with long lists of errors and place the burden on users to address them. We decided to flip this model on its head by introducing Catalogs, giving developers a catalog of approved open-source software to work from and making it easy for organizations and engineering managers to manage their catalogs.

Education

2020 - 2021

Master's Degree in Urban Spatial Analytics

University of Pennsylvania - Philadelphia, PA, USA

Skills

Tools

Figma, Slack, Zoom

Paradigms

B2C, Spatial Databases

Platforms

Productboard

Other

Product Management, Edtech Design, SaaS, New Products, Data Science, Web App Design, Project Management, B2B, UX Design, Web Development, Development, Analytics, User Experience (UX), Web Product Management, New Product Development

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