Sari Harrison, Product Manager in Los Gatos, United States
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Sari Harrison

Verified Expert  in Product Management

Product Manager

Location
Los Gatos, United States
Toptal Member Since
July 17, 2020

Sari started as a software engineer and became an engineering manager before discovering her true love—product management. Sari has 15+ years of experience as a PM and PM leader in the B2B2C and B2C spaces. Sari's taught at a product school and mentored and coached PMs regularly. Her specific areas of expertise include mapping, productivity, fitness/well-being, TV, and advertising. Sari is also a subject-matter expert in creating a culture of innovation and organization development.

Product ManagementProject ManagementAgileAgile Project ManagementAgile Product ManagementJira

Project Highlights

Apple Maps
Led the product management (PM) team for four years, during which time we shipped major new features such as transit, indoor maps, and a revamped user experience and became considered a strong competitor to Google Maps.

Expertise

Cross-functional CollaborationFeature PrioritizationInnovationOrganizational DevelopmentProduct RoadmapsProduct StrategyProduct VisionUser Research

Work Experience

Founder

2018 - PRESENT
Second Nature Innovation
  • Taught a product management intro class at the Product School and received 5-star reviews on Yelp.
  • Mentored dozens of product managers at all levels of their careers. Mentees of mine have been promoted to management, landed dream jobs at Google, Facebook, and Shopify and have generally increased their influence significantly.
  • Delivered design-thinking course for the nonprofit Go Laadli. Go Laadli challenges high-school girls in India to solve problems within their own communities. Using design thinking, they tackle problems such as alcohol abuse and school sanitation.
  • Wrote 50+ product management, innovation, and culture blogs published on Medium (Product Coalition, freeCodeCamp, The Startup, The Ascent); 1,200+ followers.
  • Advised several startups on their strategy and roadmap as well as conducting user research and writing specs for new features. For example, Brighten.ai, Meeting Pulse, EmbodiedXR, and Owaves.

Head of Product Outcomes

2019 - 2020
Center for Humane Technology
  • Wrote and published Principles of Humane Technology, which outline the core principles for assuring technology supports our shared well-being, sense-making, democracy, and ability to tackle complex global challenges.
  • Authored and delivered a survey of technologists to establish their understanding and interest in humane technology outcomes.
  • Delivered workshops to companies like Apple and Facebook to help them achieve more humane outcomes through changes to their internal processes, such as how they measured success and their methodology for incorporating user research.

Head of Product

2014 - 2018
Apple
  • Delivered the first version of the transit experience, indoor mapping, ride-sharing integration, street view, revamped driving experience, and many other features.
  • Grew a team from 20 mostly project managers to 75 product and program managers.
  • Established more rigorous hiring standards, skills development, performance management, and process best practices such as writing specifications and establishing KPIs.
  • Drove the vision, strategy, and roadmap/prioritization for the entire Apple maps organization.

Group Product Manager

2011 - 2014
Microsoft
  • Delivered the 1.0 version of Product Ads, an ad product that took retailer inventory and automated search ads campaigns associated with that inventory.
  • Ran a team of 13 product managers that delivered product ads, contextual search ads, and other Bing ad products.
  • Worked closely with key advertisers on go-to-market (GTM) ad products.

Group Product Manager

2007 - 2011
Microsoft
  • Ran a team of 13 product managers that owned PowerPoint for Mac, Outlook for Mac, and SharePoint integration.
  • Worked closely with distributed teams in Redmond and Beijing.
  • Delivered Office for Mac 2011 which was (at the time) the best-reviewed Office for Mac release and the first release of Outlook for Mac.

Apple Maps

https://www.apple.com/ios/maps/

Led the product management (PM) team for four years, during which time we shipped major new features such as transit, indoor maps, and a revamped user experience and became considered a strong competitor to Google Maps.

The Apple Maps team at Apple provides the Apple Maps application, MapKit (for app development), Apple Maps on the Web (for web development), CarPlay app, watchOS app, and macOS app. I ran the entire product management (PM) team of 75 product managers, which grew from 20 when I started.

Product Ads for Bing

I led a team of four PMs to deliver a new ad product for Bing which competes with Google Shopping.

Advertisers can upload their products to Microsoft Advertising and create campaigns that highlight those products when relevant queries are initiated by users. I drove the team that built the product from scratch.
1985 - 1989

Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science

University of Florida - Gainesville, FL, United States

JANUARY 2007 - PRESENT

Certified Scrum Professional

Scrum Alliance

Collaboration That Works

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