
Katie Welker-Muraguri
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Dallas, TX, United States
Toptal member since October 4, 2022
Katie started her product career 14 years ago in manufacturing and transitioned to technology more than 10 years ago. She's worked in communications, fintech, property management software, automotive, eCommerce, and healthcare across the web and mobile platforms. Most recently, Katie was a senior product management consultant with a global digital experience agency, creating strategies and building transformational products, experiences, and teams.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Leadership
- Online Payments
- Product Development
- Product Discovery
- Product Launch
- Product Management
- Product Strategy
- Stakeholder Management
Work Experience
Senior Product Manager | Cloud Security
Cisco
- Created the partner-build-buy strategy for leadership for a new product.
- Drove updates to standardize the product development process.
- Created a new pricing and packaging strategy to optimize margins for new and existing services.
Senior Product Management Consultant
Bottle Rocket
- Defined product strategy and delivered a top-grossing mobile application in the solar lending industry.
- Developed the product strategy and delivered a direct-to-consumer mobile application for a top beauty brand.
- Created a product strategy that secured a $6+ million contract to build a new digital experience with a top-five public automotive company.
- Developed a platform product strategy that secured a $4+ million contract and delivered a new platform for a top health benefits company.
- Helped define, standardize, and scale a new product organization at Bottle Rocket, growing from a team of two to 20+ in less than 18 months.
- Mentored and coached incoming and existing product managers and business analysts.
- Collaborated with a handpicked internal team to translate analog discovery processes into digital ones in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Principal Product Manager
ResMan
- Appointed by the CEO to create a product strategy and deliver a new resident experience, including the introduction of resident payments.
- Managed and led a team of five product managers and two UX designers.
- Established operating processes and laid the foundation for product organization showcasing best practices in product development, deliverables, launch, and release for a streamlined approach.
- Created and established UX practices for the organization.
- Oversaw product lifecycle functions, ensuring time frames were met within budgetary allotments to achieve targeted revenue and usage goals.
- Drove a considerable increase in the overall quality, helping to reduce the number of support tickets to product and engineering by more than 20%.
- Analyzed and prioritized inputs from product analytics, financial data, customers, and internal stakeholders into justifiable product requirements driving product vision.
Senior Product Manager | Mobile Lending
Citibank
- Created an innovative lending platform, transforming user experience while applying for personal loans.
- Defined and developed the first mobile experience in a native framework for personal installment loans. Created a platform in an agile scrum environment, simplifying application flow, eliminating non-applicable questions, and streamlining navigation.
- Collaborated with cross-functional teams to define a roadmap and gain organizational buy-in.
- Served as a mobile subject-matter expert (SME) for a lending platform, providing direction on best practices for mobile app user experience, conversational interfaces and interactions, and overall implementation.
- Gained internal stakeholders' buy-in to use the conversational format in the new Citi app strategy.
Manager | Consumer Platforms and Social and Mobile Solutions
MoneyGram
- Delivered an industry-first transactional, conversational product on a 90-day timeline as requested by the VP of global head of product and innovation and leveraged cloud technology in partnership with Amazon Web Services.
- Drove the first new product development and launch in five years, partnering with Facebook's Messenger Platform. Provided 1+ billion Facebook users access to send and receive money with MoneyGram.
- Built social and mobile scrum teams to develop domestic and international applications and collaborated with cross-functional teams to drive new social and mobile application requirements.
- Completed mobile user testing to determine pain points and needs and deliver simplified mobile experiences.
- Optimized customer experience by simplifying steps and gaining completed transactions by over 50% faster.
Lead Product Manager
Securus Technologies
- Managed two product managers focused on driving product penetration, consumer usage, and revenue for five customer-facing products valued at $300 million.
- Led a UI and functionality overhaul of a consumer website and account management portal, transforming an antiquated system into an intuitive new user-focused experience, resulting in an over 200% increase in revenue.
- Developed SMS payment programs from concept to launch to create a new revenue stream and drive consumer usage, resulting in a revenue increase of more than $2 million in the first year.
- Collaborated with development teams to create an Android application that supported video calls between family or friends and inmates.
- Managed consumer points-of-sales, including funding, mix, velocity rules, vendor management, and negotiation.
- Performed pricing, forecasting, P&L analysis, reporting, and budget planning for the entire portfolio of products to determine feasibility and gain leadership buy-in.
Product Brand Manager
Ampad/Esselte
- Managed promotional planning, partnering with channel marketing team for seasonal business that accounted for 65% of total business. Identified and presented $600,000+ cost-saving opportunities in package design and product formulation.
- Developed 25+ SKUs and environmental strategies specific to the company's education channel.
- Managed Breast Cancer Awareness marketing program across brands for a $1.2 million mass-market program.
- Increased sales and account retention by 10% and managed and developed 18 catalog sales reviews resulting in a 15% increase in company sales.
Project History
Bottle Rocket Studios | GoodLeap Pros
https://goodleap.com/partners/Led the product strategy and delivery of GoodLeap Pros, the number one native mobile point-of-sale application for the solar lending industry.
As a senior product management consultant, I was responsible for the following:
• creating, validating, and executing the product strategy;
• stakeholder management of client leadership team;
• partnering with client teams to design and build brand new services;
• working with the design team to define user experience;
• collaborating with the user research team to validate user experience;
• partnering with the engineering team to create, test, and deploy the product; and
• creating and managing the go-to-market strategy.
Other areas of responsibility included evaluating internal product practices with a plan to establish a product organization within the client's business and training the client teams in product management principles and best practices.
GoodLeap Pros was delivered in nine months and is now the solar lending industry's leading point-of-sale application.
MoneyGram | Sendbot
Created and executed the product strategy, product development, and product launch for an industry-first transactional and conversational MoneyGram Sendbot in partnership with Facebook (Meta).
I led a handpicked team in partnership with our global head of product to create and launch a money transfer bot in 90 days.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
• Created the product strategy.
• Found and vetted vendors for new services such as cloud, AI, ML, and NLP.
• Partnered with the engineering team for product development.
• Prioritized and planned features.
• Collaborated with information security, legal, and compliance teams to ensure we maintained compliance.
• Partnered with the marketing team to execute product launch.
Securus Technologies | Friends and Family Portal
https://securustech.net/I led the redesign and recreation of the Friends and Family portal, which provided a digital way for users to buy, use, and manage communication services. I also created new SMS payment programs for users to purchase communication services.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
• Validated the user problems to ensure we were focused on solving the correct problems.
• Determined the portal's viability for the organization with a business case and P&L.
• Partnered with the business to access needs across the organization.
• Partnered and managed the third party for user experience and design.
• Worked with the engineering team to understand and refine requirements.
• Established SMS programs with telecommunications providers such as AT&T and Verizon.
• Actively participated in UAT.
• Created and presented training content.
• Recreated the customer support experience.
• Planned, launched, and managed the go-to-market strategy.
• Measured success and reported on performance.
In the first 12 months after launch, the Friends and Family portal saw a 200% increase in revenue, and the SMS payment programs created a brand new revenue stream of over $2 million.
Education
Master's Degree in Business Administration (MBA)
Kaplan University - Fort Lauderdale, FL, USA
Bachelor's Degree in Advertising and Marketing
Middle Tennessee State University - Murfreesboro, TN, USA
Certifications
Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP)
ISC2
Skills
Tools
Jira, Microsoft Word, Apple Keynote, Slack, Confluence, Asana
Paradigms
Agile Product Management, Azure DevOps, Scrum, Agile
Industry Expertise
Health Insurance
Other
Product Strategy, Agile Delivery, Product Development, Stakeholder Management, Feature Prioritization, Product Strategy Consultant, New Product Development, User Needs, MVP Design, Product Roadmaps, User Requirements, Business Requirements, Reporting, Requirements, Product Launch, Product Management, Product Delivery, Feature Roadmaps, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Digital Product Management, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Digital Product Development, Feature Planning, Roadmaps, Sprint Planning, Agile Product Delivery, New Product Rollout, Business Analysis, Project Management, Feature Backlog Prioritization, Miro, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, Lucidchart, Marketing, Business Administration, Online Payments, Mobile Payments, Leadership, User Experience (UX), User Interface (UI), User Research, iOS App Design, New Product Business Cases, iOS, Android, Web, Mobile, Objectives & Key Results (OKRs), Partnerships, Vendor Selection, Digital Solutions, User Validation Testing, User Acceptance Testing (UAT), Release Planning, System Requirements, Design Requirements, Product Discovery, Customer Discovery, Web UX, Web UI, SMS, SMS Marketing, Profit & Loss (P&L), Product Analytics, Sales Training, Training & Training Content Development, Pricing, Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG), Margin Optimization, Software as a Service (SaaS), Product Growth, User Interviews, Software Development, Mobile Applications, Team Mentoring, B2B, Business Cases, Project Planning, Aha!, Sociology, Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Cloud Security, Secure Web Gateways (SWG), Property Management, Mentorship & Coaching, Product Design, Operating & Service Model Improvement, Customer Support, Customer Insights, Financial Analysis, Budget Management, Stakeholder Interviews, Startups, Lending, Fintech, Loans & Lending, Consumer Loans, Consumer Lending, Native Mobile Apps, Conversational Design, Personal Finance, Cross-functional Team Leadership, Cross-functional Collaboration, React Native, Flutter, Responsive Web Apps, Responsive Web Design (RWD), eCommerce, User Flows, Teaching, Process Improvement, Product Leadership, Consulting, Interviews, Chatbot Conversation Design, Chatbots, Amazon Machine Learning, Remittance, Money Transfers, Vendor Management, Estimation & Planning, CRM Systems, Client Portals, Videos, Interactive Voice Response (IVR), Patents, Financial Forecasting, Email Marketing, Pricing Strategy, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Channel Strategy, Channel Management, Go-to-market Strategy, Brand Strategy, Omni-channel, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Cloud Services, Browsers, API Design, Web Applications, Digital Transformation, Product Coach, Project Timelines, End-to-end Implementation (E2E), Product Requirements Documentation (PRD), Technical Requirements, User Stories, User Surveys, Website Redesign, Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), Cybersecurity, Information Security, Information Systems, Security Management, IT Security, Identity & Access Management (IAM), Security, Architectural Engineering, Security Software Development
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