Jenny
The PM with a goal
As a long-time product manager, Jenny has made a lot of stride towards where she ultimately wants to be: heading a business on the strategy front.
Jenny and I are both alumna of Penn, but we never interacted despite our very similar sounding first and last names. While I was in NY, Jenny launched her career in consulting in Washington, D.C. before finding herself in San Diego at Zynga.
The gaming and tech world gave her a totally different perspective. She found new friends (and a boyfriend) and saw her career take off. But she knew she wanted to be in the heart of tech: Silicon Valley, so she moved to Tubular Labs in San Francisco before pivoting to IMVU and now as Director of Product Management at Jam City. She saw the flywheel effect of being in product management for at least five years (the typical “minimum” requirement PM roles have).
Jenny credits her success to being very deliberate about goal-setting. To her, being successful requires constant work: you need to set appropriate goals and track your progress or else you’ll be subsumed by the details.