Kate Grzeca

Senior Product Manager

As a Product professional, my goal is to create value for the customer by owning the nexus of the business' strategy and developing technology. In a world where everything is a priority, I help cut through the nice-to-haves and find what solves the real customer problems. With years of experience working on technology projects across industries, I have built technology to help provide care to marginalized communities, to improve the efficiency of internal teams, to market new consumer packaged goods to end users, and to help connect seniors with supportive care and housing. I enjoy working with cross functional teams and learning new technologies.


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Experience

Ally Financial, Jan 2022 ~ current

Senior Product Manager, May 2023 ~ current

Rotational Product Manager in the Lending line of business, supporting product operations and all lending product domains in the rotation (both customer facing and backend systems). Establishing Product best practices by encouraging continuous customer discovery, improving digital product KPIs, and empowering product teams to challenge assumptions in pursuit of better customer outcomes. 

Technical Product Owner - API Teams, Jan 2022 ~ May 2023

Coordinated across business lines to build internal APIs that power features used on the main bank landing page in both the website and on the mobile app for a variety of financial products. Ensure the common API teams build value for both our internal consumers (engineers) and our customers through customer engagement, product discovery, requirement gathering, and project coordination.


Key Achievements

  • Led requirements gathering for establishing new account limitations when fraud is suspected in order to protect the customer and the business. Included the technical requirements for how to block the account access, establishing the correct access levels for applying block, and how to remove efficiently once needed, for the best protection and outcome
  • Brought together UX, legal, and engineering to build a single esign experience that crossed lines of business
  • Updated several business-critical APIs that provide services for observing customer privacy, informing the customer of call wait times, and managed customer PII

Caring.com, Product Manager, Nov 2018 ~ Jan 2022

Lead planning to build modern Contact Center applications with a microservice architecture that is replacing a legacy monolith system. Collaborated with a variety of internal departments to understand business pains and prioritize development to achieve the business' vision and strategic goals. Coordinated API integration work between internal teams and external customers. Ran sprint planning, sprint backlog grooming, daily stand-ups, stakeholder meetings, and retrospectives. Researched user behavior and wrote queries to analyze data (using SQL and Looker) to inform the product direction. Lead product teams to think innovatively.


Key Achievements

  • Implemented data-driven changes to the Reviews program that reduced non-converting calls and optimized agent time
  • Prototyped and launched a service to score calls based on a variety of metrics that are adjustable by the Call Center team
  • Launched tooling allowing agents the ability to cross-sell leads to new business verticals (UI, external integration, data)

YouTech, Technical Account Manager, Apr 2016 ~ Nov 2018

Led, planned, and coordinated the technical side of promotional campaigns and integrations for Kroger, focusing on their Best Customer Bonus segment. This included up to 10 large-scale and highly-visible campaigns at a time (averaged 2k offers & 15 million downloads per campaign). Documented feature requests and requirements from external clients. Represented YouTech's business value and provided product guidance at client quarterly meetings.  Collaborated with a variety of internal technical teams to execute solutions that would meet our clients' business challenges and surpass expectations. Translated between business needs and technical requirements over the phone during technical issues. 


Key Achievements

  • Coordinated the integration of new coupon hosting environments using REST APIs
  • Launched personalized push notifications of coupon offers for Kroger customers 
  • Launched APIs that allowed coupons through new digital channels (mobile, voice assistant, etc.)

PHC, Deputy Director (Operations & Special Projects), 2011 ~ Apr 2016

Oversaw all elements of PHC's large-scale service events, which are the organization's signature offering. Managed the staff and strategy for operations, technology, and marketing. Worked with developers and engineers to build custom technology solutions for the events to meet the needs of homeless San Franciscans. Promoted 3 times in 5 years and directly supervised up to 4 employees at a time. 


Key Achievements

  • Launched a custom-built volunteer management web portal that integrated with Salesforce CRM as the backend
  • Launched a private app that tracked event participants' needs within the event and across events and synced that data back to the organization's Salesforce CRM
  • Led the website redesign and oversaw the yearly creation of the annual report for donors and stakeholders

VOLUNTEERCarolina Raptor Center, Raptor Rehab, 2023 ~ current

Year-round, once a week clinic shift at a raptor rescue and rehabilitation center. Prepare meals and medications, provide minor treatments and rehabilitation therapy, and handle raptors of all sizes as needed and appropriate in conjunction with medical staff. 

VOLUNTEERWildcare, Clinic, 2012 ~ 2020

Year-round, once a week clinic shift at a local urban wildlife hospital. Assisted with medical care, provided minor treatments and therapy, and handled wildlife as needed and appropriate to assist medical staff. 

Skills

Code Literate 
Read: Python, Javascript, Golang, JSON
Write: SQL, HTML, XML
B2B, SaaS, fintech, Call Center tech
JIRA, Confluence, and Azure DevOps

macOS and Windows OS

Microsoft products with advanced Excel

Datadog, Draw.io, Figma, github, gSuite, inVision, Logz.io, Looker, Miro, Notion, Pentaho, PowerBI, Salesforce, Slack, Splunk, Twilio, and Zoom

Education


Franciscan University

Bachelor of Arts, Cum Laude

History / Theology


Pacific School of Religion

Master of Theological Studies

History / Ecology 

Certificate in Women’s Studies

Nonprofit Management


UC Berkeley Extension

Courses toward a certificate for project management with a focus in Agile management