Jim Myers
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Chicago, IL, United States
Toptal member since June 7, 2021
Jim is a driven, collaborative, hands-on leader with extensive product management, business transformation, and leadership experience. He has experience leading product innovation and strategic initiatives across organizational silos. Jim is equally adept at working with engineers, marketers, customers, salespeople, financiers, accountants, and executives.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Agile
- Business Cases
- Competitive Strategy
- Derivatives
- Facilitation
- Product Management
- Roadmaps
- Team Leadership
Work Experience
Founder
Big Delta Consulting
- Worked closely with executive teams to identify product vision, strategy, features, backlog prioritization, and go-to-market strategies.
- Created product roadmaps and prioritized product backlogs. Led design, engineering, risk, compliance, and marketing teams to develop achievable work plans, release schedules, epics, and stories.
- Advocated for a product-led growth approach to innovation, feature prioritization, product marketing, and introduction to target market and clients.
- Collaborated with the data team to conceive and utilize events and metrics that provide insight into product usage, adoption, and user testing to measure, enhance, and optimize the user experience.
- Scoped, developed, and tested POC, MVP, and minimum sufficient products to rapidly understand user needs, technological capabilities, and user appetite for new products and features.
- Led competitive research and analysis, including identifying key competitors, market opportunities, feature gaps, market entry strategies, and relative product strengths and weaknesses.
Bankingtech Product Manager
Viably Capital, Inc.
- Product-led growth champion focused on creating a product capable of prompting target businesses to switch to Viably as their primary banking partner.
- Led vendor selection and implementation for Viably's know your client (KYC) and know your business (KYB) processes and technical implementation.
- Worked closely with design, development, risk, legal, marketing, and customer success teams to develop products, processes, and policies in light of input from all key stakeholders.
- Performed competitive analysis, including identifying key competitors, market opportunities, differentiating features, and market entry strategies.
- Utilized user observation, workshops, individual interviews, and surveys to ascertain user needs, wants, satisfaction, pain points, and opportunities for improvement.
Product Manager
Autonomous Technologies LLC
- Worked with the CEO to create product vision, go-to-market strategy, and product roadmap for the financial services platform.
- Utilized company-specific data in order to create value-added metrics to allow users to assess the Qatar securities markets.
- Conducted market research to allow the CEO to understand the contours of the broader competitive landscape and determine the appropriate niche to attack over the short, medium, and long term.
Director of Product Management
Publicis Sapient
- Worked with clients to develop product road maps with a detailed list of features, budgets, business cases, and prioritization rationale. Socialized and iterated on the same to create MVPs and 3-5-year plans for development.
- Transformed multiple companies' system architectures, applications, and business processes using a combination of service design and business process optimization. Led interviews, workshops, discovery, and read-out sessions to gain executive buy-in.
- Led Agile transformation projects. Deployed, taught, and coached implementation of the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). Transitioned divisions of companies from having a project to a product mindset.
Director of US Equity Index Derivatives Trading
Vision Financial Markets
- Developed the business plan and business case for a new type of electronic traded derivative liquidity provider. Pitched and led the initiative to Vision Financial Markets and developed a division within the firm.
- Selected appropriate vendors to supply critical infrastructure for derivatives pricing, risk management, trade entry, portfolio management, and exchange communication.
- Recruited and led a team of portfolio managers, traders, and clerks to provide liquidity in newly electronically traded markets at the Chicago Board Options Exchange and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
Partner and Director of Derivatives Trading
Blue Capital Group
- Populated and prioritized product development road map. Developed business cases for key features on the product road map.
- Provided liquidity to derivatives markets in US equity index derivatives. Achieved returns on capital in excess of 100% in six of nine fiscal years.
- Developed high-impact approaches in order to proactively expand the product portfolio in light of industry trends namely the migration from floor-based to electronic trading.
- Pioneered relationships with key market participants to increase exposure to order flow and information.
Portfolio Manager and Director of EMEA Operations
Alpart Trading
- Developed and executed a business plan to expand the company to Germany and expose the firm to new trading modes and new types of products utilizing new types of trading platforms.
- Managed vendor relationships and developed key strategic partnerships.
- Created a prioritized product road map for both proprietary and third-party software.
Project History
Head of Product, Banking
Launched product on time with agreed-upon scope in an aggressive timeline.
• Worked closely with design, development, risk, legal, marketing, and customer success teams to develop products, processes, and policies in light of input from all key stakeholders.
• Led vendor selection and implementation for Viably's know your client (KYC) and know your business (KYB) process and technical implementation.
• Performed competitive analysis, including identifying key competitors, market opportunities, differentiating features and market entry strategies.
• Utilized user observation, workshops, individual interviews, and surveys to ascertain user needs, wants, satisfaction, pain points, and opportunities for improvement.
Business Transformation of Asset Management Firm
Transformed the manner in which a client attracted, serviced, and interacted with clients, resulting in increased revenue, profits, and customer satisfaction.
• Mapped current state operating model across the division, including the roles of people, processes, systems, and data across the entire business lifecycle.
• Managed the process re-engineering effort using industry trends and best practices focused on end-user experience, tool standardization, data governance, and business value.
• Produced a comprehensive, prioritized set of strategic initiatives and implementation strategies in identifiable projects and phases with recognized OKRs and KPIs.
• Developed POCs for robotic process automation (RPA), artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and natural language processing (NLP) applications for both asset allocation and know your customer (KYC) applications.
Product Manager for Trading, Pricing, Portfolio Management, and Risk Management Platform
Acted as the product manager in the selection, customization, and implementation of a platform that included both off-the-shelf and custom components for the pricing, trading, and management of equities, bonds, and exchange-traded derivatives.
• Developed a prioritized road map complete with feature-level business cases. - Led outreach operation to software vendors and consultancies to match up internally developed feature scope with the existing capabilities of off-the-shelf software and custom solutions.
• Spearheaded the migration of key servers off-premise to be co-located more closely to exchanges trade matching engines.
• Led the development of key metrics to monitor the platform and quickly execute remediation steps as needed.
• Devised and executed change management plan, product documentation, and educational outreach across the organization.
Education
MBA in Strategic Management, Finance, Entrepreneurship
University of Chicago - Chicago, IL
Bachelor's Degree in Industrial Management
Carnegie Mellon University - Pittcburgh, PA
Certifications
Certified SAFe 5 Agilist
Scaled Agile, Inc
Skills
Tools
Jira, Confluence
Paradigms
Agile, Requirements Analysis, Quantitative Research, Agile Product Management, Scrum, Scalable Application, Agile Software Development, Change Management
Industry Expertise
Football, Financial Services, Insurance, Digital Banking, Health Insurance, Life Insurance, Capital Markets
Other
Finance, Product Management, Business Cases, Business Process Modeling, Derivatives, Roadmaps, Futures & Options, Team Leadership, Product Vision, B2B, Digital Product Management, Product Development, Wireframing, Management Consulting, Strategy, User Personas, User Interviews, Process Improvement, Business Analysis, Process Flows, Process Design, Process Mapping, Conceptualization, Ideation, Planning, Technical Writing, Journey Mapping, Process Modeling, User Needs, Business Requirements, Competitor Analysis & Profiling, Financials, Requirements & Specifications, Project Scoping, Production, Feature Backlog Prioritization, User Journeys, Agile Leadership, Business Transformation Program Management, Business Strategy, Servant Leadership, Strategic Planning, Cross-functional Collaboration, Consulting, Fantasy Sports, API Integration, Technical Business Analysis, Business Consulting, Business Process Management (BPM), User Workflows, Algorithmic Trading, Trading, Competitive Strategy, Business Planning, Legal, Entrepreneurship, New Products, Product Entry, Portfolio Management, Risk Management, Vendor Management, Market Entry, Business Process Automation, Service Design, Facilitation, Workshop Facilitation, Ideation Workshops, Option Pricing, Relationship Management, Product Roadmaps, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Product-market Fit, Startups, Fintech, Product Strategy, Data Analytics, Analytics, Business Intelligence (BI), Product Requirements Documentation (PRD), SaaS, CRM Systems, Fintech Consultant, Technical Product Management, Technology Consulting, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Business Models, Product Growth, Objectives & Key Results (OKRs), User Experience (UX), New Product Development, Qualitative Research, User Feedback, Product Strategy Consultant, Design, ROI, Insurance Broking, Data Strategy, Insurance Product Manager, eCommerce, Mobile, Data Privacy, Know Your Customer (KYC), Go-to-market Strategy, International Finance, Market Research & Analysis, MVP Design, Online Banking, Product Launch, System Integration, Web Platforms, APIs, International Data Privacy Regulations, Identity, User Research, Market Fit, Chief Product Officer (CPO), Software as a Service (SaaS), Agile Coaching, Growth, Business to Business (B2B), Product Coach, Direct to Consumer (D2C), Target Operating Models, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Interim CPO, Conversational AI, Data Products, Web Development, Subscriptions, Gaming, Gambling, Platforms, Project Management, Coaching, Technology Strategy & Architecture, IT Service Management (ITSM), Bid Management, Online Payments, Invoice Management, Automation Tools, AI Agents, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Healthcare & Insurance, Marketing, Forecasting, Sales, Negotiation, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Feature Prioritization, Risk Modeling, Vendor Selection, Feature Roadmaps, Stock Market, Bonds, Pricing Models, Compliance, Servers, Data Centers, Reinsurance, Functional Requirements, Market Strategy and Research Product Manager, Scope of Work (SOW), UX Design, Research Analysis, UX Wireflows, Biometrics, Mobile Apps, Know Your Business (KYB), Lucidchart, Machine Learning, Innovation, Innovation Strategy
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