Elizabeth "Beth" Stana

Product Management & Digital Experience Leader

Mobile Phone (678) 575-8130

LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/bethstana

E-mail eastana@yahoo.com

High-energy, results-oriented, entrepreneurial product management and ux design strategic leader who has a passion for technology and experiences that delight the customer. Over 20+ years experience within product, 10+ years in a managerial position, 8+ years Agile experience, with a solid technical design thinking background.

Finishing General Assemb.ly's 12 week immersive and intense study of User Experience Design and Strategy, Human Centered Design Thinking, Personas, Grayscale Wireframing, Prototyping, Sketch.

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner, Project Management Professional. Certified ScrumMaster, Pragmatic Marketing Certified, and many more.

Experience

10/2018 - 01/2020

Director of Product Management

GreenSky, LLC (FinTech, Agile Environment)
$1B SaaS Point-of-Sale Loan Origination built on MasterCard Rails.

  • Wrote the portfolio epics (business cases), feature epics and use case story requirements in Jira.

  • Created the Strategic vision, digital product roadmap, business cases, requirements, innovation for elective healthcare providers and consumers who originate Point of Sale loans. B2B2C. Merchant Acquiring space.

  • Successfully launched new billion dollar SaaS digital product platform and experiences from requirements, to pilot, to general availability within a year. Authored and maintained product roadmap for elective Healthcare division.

  • Instituted a customer-centric approach through a smooth, intuitive, easy user experience for end users.

  • Oversaw UX Design iterations, Customer Experience.

10/2015 - 09/2018

Director of Product Management, Product Manager - Payments

Georgia's Own Credit Union

  • Product Strategy: Responsible for setting one to three year product roadmaps, strategies, KPIs, development efforts, prioritization, in collaboration with key functional areas. Defined, executed and owned go-to-market strategies.

  • Alignment of Strategy to Execution: Collaborated across the organization, partnering with operations (and third party vendors, notably Fiserv) to ensure successful product go-to-market launch execution, maintenance, user experience for ease of use, process flows and client delight, technical development to define business processes, features, functionality, workflow, scalability, latency, and reduction of technical debt, as well as SMEs, finance, accounting, legal, risk, compliance, executives, Strategy Team.

  • Accountability: Directly responsible for product portfolios roadmaps, P&L, KPIs, the net income growth across the product portfolio.

  • Collaboration: Partner with Executive Sponsors and all functional areas across the company to create complete product requirements analysis that combine business, market, design, client, technology, process, client, vendor, user experience and customer requirements.

  • Process Excellence: Led the product management team through ideation, user voice, product feature designs, scoping, business analysis, business case development including forecasting and budgeting of financials, marketing strategy, pricing strategy, go-to-launch, product marketing communications, sales enablement, training across the product portfolio.

  • Vendor Management: Collaborated with FISERV and other vendors to bring products, experiences to market; also involved in contract negotiation.

  • Team Development: Manage, mentor, develop, recruit, retain, train and ongoing coaching to develop product team. Provided formal and informal learning opportunities to continuously innovate the product management team members' expertise.

  • Product Manager: Payments and Digital Product Management (Checking, Deposits, Credit & Debit Cards, Rewards, P2P, Bill Pay, Remote Deposit Capture) within digital experiences and environments. Appointed by Chief Strategic Officer and Chief Marketing Officer to Client Advisory Board of Constellation COOP - http://www.constellation.coop - An online digital banking COOP start up.

05/2015 - 10/2015

Product Manager - Consumer Lending, Mortgage Lending, and Credit Cards

Georgia's Own Credit Union

  • Strategic product direction: Product line plan vision and value propositions, create and maintain product feature roadmaps, track milestones, prioritize and re-prioritize based upon listening to members, branch managers, the front line sales community. Remain acutely aware of market dynamics, technological developments, competitive developments.

  • Leadership: Collaborative monthly stakeholder team meetings to provide transparency of data, the path forward, key achievements, project progress, socialization across the enterprise.

  • Development of strategic measures: KPI's, annual budget, monthly data reporting, developing project charters for strategic initiatives to be included in 3 year organizational budget and project plans, monthly variance tracking and reporting (balance sheet and income statement).

07/2012 - 05/2015

Manager of Product Development (Agile Environment)

Wolters Kluwer, CCH Small Firm Services (Agile environment)

  • Stakeholder Management: Project stakeholder management and project communications management across Development and Product Management, including TaxWise™ Desktop & SaaS Cloud General Manager, Chief Architect, Programming, Quality Assurance, Forms Development, and Finance.

  • Indirect Management: Collaborated across four cross-functional teams (42 individuals) onsite permanent, onsite contract, and offshore contract and offshore permanent teams to align to company strategy, goals, objectives, and project timelines.

  • SaaS Development Manager: Directed geographically distributed onshore and offshore permanent teams, onshore temporary staff, offshore contract team to successfully execute complex multi-million-dollar enterprise wide cloud, SaaS, and desktop-based tax software application development projects across the software development life cycle, from project charter through successful execution within the constraints of scope, time, cost, level setting efforts, risk, procurement, quality, resources and risk. Led two Agile development teams utilizing all Scrum ceremonies.

07/2011 - 07/2012

Product Manager - Tax, Accounting, Financial Reporting

E*TRADE Financial Corporate Services (Agile environment)

  • Responsible for defining scope, business cases, and documenting feature, functional, business requirements for a variety of equity plan-related products and services used by E*TRADE’s corporate equity stock option clients and plan participants through formal Functional Requirements Documents (FRD). Define product requirements documents (PRD), technical design specifications and business user acceptance testing (B-UAT) criteria. Decision maker for User Experience Requirements documents (UXD).

  • Focused on accounting, tax and reporting analytics projects that impact equity plan –related products and services. Entails end-to-end responsibility for the product development life cycle for individual features, from translating business requirements documents (BRD) delivered by the Segment Leaders into detailed functional requirements, to independently working with the technology and quality assurance teams on design, implementation and testing, to manage internal and customer roll-out.

  • Led cross-functional teams in a matrix environment – including Development, Operations, Customer Service, Marketing, and Quality Assurance – to ensure that product design and implementation accurately reflects the full range of market, business, functional and user requirements. Designed, managed and regularly communicated product launch go-to-market strategy with key business stakeholders, including sales, operations, marketing, training, across the organization.

03/2002 - 06/2007

Retirement Plans Product Manager & Marketing Communications Manager

AXA Enterprise, Enterprise Mutual Fund Distributors

  • Capped off a progressive tenure noteworthy for two promotions within 18 months with this role continuing to drive build-out/expansion of the $5-7 Billion dollar Retirement Plans business and its branding/messaging and marketing/sales strategies. Oversaw all facets of the product segment’s P&L, revenue and profit goals, pricing, and positioning. Established marketing plans, analysis, and metrics for gauging performance/efficacy of initiatives; monitored competitive landscape and regulatory/legislative fronts.

  • Grew division AUM from 40% to 65% in less than 5 years, business that represented 50%+ of all new net assets ($550M+).

  • Created, developed, wrote and implemented national retirement plan marketing and sales campaigns for distribution to plan sponsors, participants and financial advisers. Oversaw all aspects of each campaign, including writing, branding, messaging, positioning strategies, graphic design, intra/internet, and company wide training for retirement plan product lines: 401(k), 403(b), Individual(k), Profit Sharing Plans, SIMPLE IRA, SEP IRA, Traditional IRA, Roth IRA, and Coverdell ESA product lines.

  • Directed national launch of the individual (k) product, which went on to capture $500M AUM in less than 12 months, ranking #2 within the BISYS administration platform. Created branding/messaging, benchmarked marketplace and conducted SWOT competitive analysis.

  • Drove strategic development of rebranding/repositioning • initiatives.

  • Led the design and direction of product design for all retirement plan product line scope: definition, pricing, messaging, packaging, branding, target market, and P&L analysis.

06/2000 - 03/2002

Product Marketing Specialist, Regional Internal Wholesaler Western U.S.

AXA Enterprise, Enterprise Mutual Fund Distributors

  • Piloted the Western U.S. market introduction of a new line of business (institutional retirement plan products). Developed overall market entry strategy as well as start-up and organization sales penetration activities. Exceeded initial sales projections delivering net sales increases of 125% in 2000 and 86% in 2001 despite a highly challenging market environment.

  • Promoted into the newly created Sales Support Division, providing strategic marketing support to wholesalers company-wide in order to fuel sales of mutual fund retail, retirement, and 529 products. Created a comprehensive, multi-pronged marketing strategy, plan, and materials, transforming a very simple, one dimensional approach into a full-fledged program featuring branding and messaging, website content, Intranet, and e-newsletters.

  • Played key role in developing 350+ new financial adviser distribution relationships through wirehouses, independent planners, regional brokerage houses, and bank/insurance distribution channels.

  • Widely acknowledged as the company expert on all matters relating to the retirement plan industry, legislation, products, and technical requirements.

  • Devised the marketing/communications strategies pivotal to successful vendor change (from Trustar to BISYS) for the company’s flagship product.

  • Developed marketing communications/program materials including proposals, brochures, e-newsletters, website messaging, statement stuffers, forms, kit configurations, and legal prototype plan language.

Education

04/2020 - 07/2020

General Assemb.ly UX Design Immersive Bootcamp

A 12-week immersive and intense study of User Experience Design and Strategy.

UX Design Practices: UX & UI Design, Information Architecture, Competitive and Comparative Analysis, User Research, Affinity Diagramming, Persona Creation, Sketching, Wireframing, Prototyping, Presentations, Storytelling, Visual Design.

2009 - 2011

Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia

Masters of Taxation, • 3.7/4.0 GPA

1990 - 1994

University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia

BBA in Marketing, 3.5/4.0 GPA

2019 - 2020

University of Maryland Global Campus (4.0/4.0)

Persuing MicroMasters in Cloud Architecture (online)

Certificates

04/2020 AWS TECHNICAL ESSENTIALS

03/2020 AWS CERTIFIED CLOUD PRACTITIONER

12/2019 AWS EDUCATE: START-UP DIGITAL BADGE

05/2019 FORRESTER CX CERTIFICATION - FOUNDATIONS

02/2019 AMERICAN BANKERS ASSOCIATION CERTIFICATE IN DEPOSIT COMPLIANCE

12/2018 AMERICAN BANKERS ASSOCIATION CERTIFICATE IN LENDING COMPLIANCE

03/2018 PRAGMATIC MARKETING CERTIFIED: LEVEL 6 of 6

09/2017 CERTIFICATE OF ACHIEVEMENT, HIGH IMPACT PRESENTATION COURSE - DALE CARNEGIE

03/2016 PROJECT MANAGEMENT INSTITUTE: PMI - AGILE CERTIFIED PRACTITIONER (PMI-ACP)

04/2015 CERTIFIED SCRUM MASTER - AGILE ALLIANCE - BRAINTRUST CONSULTING

09/2014 PROJECT MANAGEMENT INSTITUTE: PMP

10/2014 USE CASES TO USER STORIES COURSE WITH DR. ALISTAIR COCKBURN – LEADING AGILE

03/2014 CERTIFICATE: VIRTUAL REQUIREMENTS GATHERING & WRITING CLASS WITH DATA - PIERSON REQUIREMENTS GROUP

04/2014 CERTIFICATE: CREATING A WINNING WORK BREAKDOWN STRUCTURE – RMC PROJECT MANAGEMENT GROUP

06/2013 CERTIFICATE: USE CASES AND WIREFRAMES TRAINING – BRIDGING THE GAP