About
“Marie is one of those incredibly skilled leaders that possess a great deal of product knowledge, management skill, and the ability to deftly manage the demands of her product team, engineers, and the demands of the clients.”
— Cross-functional peer, Customer Success
My career started with code, not roadmaps. I want to understand how something actually works, not just how it's described in a meeting, and that habit has never left me.
How I Got Here
Before I ever wrote a product spec, I wrote the software itself. I worked as a programmer, then as a people manager. But I had an entrepreneurial itch too, one of my degrees is actually in business and entrepreneurship, and eventually I acted on it. I started my own software business, running every part of it myself, from client work to delivery.
I loved building things for people. I did not love doing everyone else's job at the same time, since sales, negotiations, and accounting were never where my strengths were. So I went back into the corporate world, where I could focus on product and let other people own the rest. That experience still shapes how I think, because I know what it costs to run a company, not just build inside one.
Growing Through Change
Most of my career has centered on scaling organizations that were changing shape while they grew. I've led product and engineering through multiple acquisitions, and I've helped shift companies from project-based delivery to a real product-led way of working.
What I care about most is how organizations make decisions, not just what they decide. That means clear ownership, operating rhythms that hold up under pressure, and enough structure for teams to move fast without losing each other. It's the work I keep coming back to, no matter the company. I've done this work everywhere from two-person teams to large, established organizations, and each size has taught me something different.
AT A GLANCE
Experience
20+ years in SaaS and enterprise product
Background
Former founder and programmer, from 2-person teams to enterprise organizations
Education
Master's in Product Management, University of Maryland
Market
B2B and B2B2C SaaS
Focus
AI product strategy and operating model design
Style
Remote-first, cross-functional leadership
AI, Before It Was Trendy
I built my first AI-driven product over a decade ago, long before generative AI became a required line on every roadmap, and that early experience shaped how I think about AI today. It has to earn its place by solving a real problem, the same bar I'd hold any feature to.
Years later, I led the first generative AI product capability at one of my organizations, working closely with engineering and data science to build something that reduced client workload rather than something that just looked impressive in a demo. That work taught me that the hardest part of AI isn't the model. It's figuring out where it actually belongs in someone's workflow.
Building AI products this early gave me practical fluency that's hard to get any other way. It's also part of why I've started building free AI-powered tools for other product managers. Product work is often invisible to the people making decisions about headcount and promotions, and I like giving something back to a community that's shaped so much of my own career.
Never Done Learning
I believe you never finish learning. There's always more to understand, and staying curious is how I keep growing into the work.
That belief is part of why I went back for a master's degree in product management, with a computer science degree already behind me from earlier in my career. The coursework pushed me in directions I didn't expect, sharpening how I think about negotiation, how I approach financing decisions across a product's life cycle, and how I lead teams through genuinely new territory rather than just familiar problems in a new setting.
That same instinct shows up in the certifications I keep earning, everything from agentic AI to accessibility, because I'd rather stay a step ahead of where the field is heading than catch up after the fact.
Design From Day One
I care about accessibility as much as I care about the roadmap, and I hold a certification specifically in accessibility competencies because I wanted to understand it at a real level, not just a surface one. Accessible design isn't a feature you bolt on for a subset of users. Done well, it makes the product better for everyone, clearer, more forgiving, easier to use under stress or distraction, which is most of us on most days.
I want design at the table from the very beginning of a project, not looped in after the decisions are already made. Some of the work I'm proudest of came from insisting on that seat at the table early, when it would have been easier to bring design in later.
Hands-On, and Proud of It
I like being deep in the details of a project, working closely with my team, understanding exactly what's being built and why. I also like stepping back into strategy, thinking about where a whole portfolio needs to go over the next few years. Most people are drawn to one or the other. I've never had to choose.
But if you ask me what I'm proudest of, it's not a launch or a metric. It's the people I've helped grow into stronger product managers. I've hired people without traditional product experience and backed them with real ownership from day one. I've watched people go from unsure of their own judgment to confidently pushing back on me in a room full of executives, and that shift, from asking permission to owning the decision, is something I actively coach for.
Where I Am Now
I'm currently doing contract work evaluating generative AI systems by setting up AI assistants and then testing how they reason, where they break down, and what it actually takes to govern them responsibly. It's the same instinct that has always driven me: I want to understand how something actually works, not just how it's described. This experience has given me a real, ground-level view of what AI can and cannot do, which is the kind of understanding I can only get from being this close to it.
What I'm looking forward to most is getting back to building a team again: mentoring product managers, giving people real ownership early, and helping them grow into confident decision-makers. I also want to build great products again, the kind that make a real impact and mean something to the people who use them. I want to bring all of that, along with a current hands-on understanding of AI, back into a product leadership role.
Outside of Work
Outside of work, I spend time with family, read constantly, and enjoy board games with the people I love. I also share my life with several cats, who treat every video call like it's for them. If you've ever had a cat walk across your keyboard mid-sentence, we probably have a lot to talk about.