April 27, 2021 by Kristine Oak

Talk Summary: A product manager's role and focus can differ greatly based on the industry you're in as well as the size/type of the company you're working for. So how do we define what makes a good product manager? As someone with a background and experience in physical product development as well as user-centered-design, Kristine had to adapt to not only being a product manager but across different industries (sports tech, fashion tech and consumer tech) and companies of varying size. Over time Kristine has built a framework of the key ingredients to being a good PM regardless of where you work - her PM Philosophy.

Speaker: Kristine Oak, San Francisco

Kristine is a product manager in the consumer contributions team at Yelp. She is driving initiatives around engaging consumers with content and the community on Yelp through new and existing ways, with a vision to build a vibrant community around trusted content on Yelp. Prior to Yelp, Kristine was a product manager at a fashion tech and sports tech company, where she led teams from initial ideation to execution on consumer facing products & experiences. Kristine is a graduate of Northwestern University with a degree in manufacturing and design engineering, and Engineering Design Innovations (human-centered design). Kristine has always advocated for solving user pain points and applying the design thinking to bring ideas to life. She spent her pre-Product Manager years conducting a ton of user research and user focused brainstorming and discussions.

Moderator: Sunnah Wang, London

Sunnah is a technical recruiter at Yelp London. In her four years at Yelp she has recruited for the product and engineering orgs, and is currently recruiting engineers based in the UK. She spent the past 8 years living in San Francisco, and recently relocated to London to help grow the Europe offices at Yelp. Sunnah is particularly interested in providing job opportunities for women and people of color in the tech industry so that we can create a more equitable and just future.

About Yelping From Home:

Yelp’s mission is to connect people with great local businesses, and two of the teams working behind the scenes to make that happen are our five star engineering and product teams.

Playing an active role in our community is a value that we have strongly prioritized over the years. Typically we would invite you to come to Yelp’s HQ to network, grab a slice of ‘za, and learn about the technology and culture behind Yelp. With stay-at-home orders across the globe, Yelp (like many of you) has had no choice but to adapt to these changes. We understand that this is a strange and challenging time for many, so we’d like to invite you to join us as we navigate this new normal for the tech community together.

To stay connected, create space for folks to collaborate and share some of the things Yelp has been working on, we are launching our very own virtual tech talk series. This series of talks will feature Yelpers from engineering and product and will focus on themes such as career development, technical skills, workplace challenges and Yelp’s response to COVID-19.