Cathy Thompson
Summary
Dynamic Senior Digital Product Owner at Allstate with expertise in Agile methodologies and stakeholder engagement. Successfully managed 40+ cross-functional projects annually, ensuring timely delivery with minimal defects. Proven ability to create impactful product roadmaps and foster collaboration with UX/UI teams to enhance user experiences.
Overview
18
18
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification
Work History
Senior Digital Product Owner
ALLSTATE
08.2021 - Current
- Senior Marketing Product Owner for a web-based B2C policy and billing management portal that manages a Scrum team of up to 12 developers and 2 QC resources residing in India and Ireland.
- Defined product vision, strategy, and roadmap in alignment with company goals.
- Ensured product compliance with regulatory standards and industry best practices.
- Led agile ceremonies including sprint planning, reviews, and retrospectives to ensure team alignment and continuous improvement.
- Prioritized and managed product backlog to maximize value and align with stakeholder expectations.
- Managed risks and resolved issues that affected product scope, schedule, and quality.
- Created detailed product requirements documents outlining functional specifications for new products or features.
- Collaborated with stakeholders across the organization to ensure successful delivery of projects.
- Actively sought out ways to improve customer experience through innovative solutions.
- Established and tracked KPIs to measure product success and inform future development priorities.
- Performed competitive analysis of other digital products in the marketplace and made recommendations accordingly.
- Tested applications for functionality, usability, compatibility, security, accessibility, scalability.
Product Manager
FIRST ORION
07.2018 - 08.2021
- Product Manager for a web-based call protection solution to prevent scams and call spoofing.
- Utilized KPIs, competitive analysis, stakeholder requests, and user feedback to create and maintain the product vision and roadmap.
- Collaborated with UX/UI to create page design and feature enhancements.
- Collaborated with stakeholders to define product requirements, develop and manage the product roadmap, and create user stories to help guide the development of effective new features.res.
- Created materials to communicate progress updates at regular intervals with senior leadership.
- Worked closely with engineering team to ensure feature specifications are understood and implemented correctly.
- Managed user stories in JIRA, facilitated grooming sessions, managed the team backlog, prioritized upcoming work, and wrote and executed test cases and plans for each release.
- Designed and facilitated a two-month training for Product Analyst Apprentices that consisted of SDLC, Agile Methodology, Scrum Framework, Product Management Lifecycle, and Product Execution Management.
AVP, Marketing Agile Product Owner
SYNCHRONY FINANCIAL
09.2016 - 07.2018
- Marketing Product Owner for B2C Retail Card Financial Servicing Platform.
- Communicated regularly and negotiated with stakeholders to reach consensus on product features and priorities, to accomplish company strategy and goals.
- Collaborate with UX/UI to create effective page design and site feature enhancements.
- Collaborated with cross-functional teams to ensure product features are delivered on time and meet quality standards.
- Led agile ceremonies including sprint planning, reviews, and retrospectives to ensure team alignment and continuous improvement.
- Defined user personas and user stories to guide product development and ensure user-centric design.
- Prioritized and managed product backlog to maximize value and align with stakeholder expectations.
- Identified and managed risks, and resolved issues that affected product scope, schedule, and quality.
- Ensured product compliance with regulatory standards and industry best practices.
- Coordinated release planning activities including feature sets, launch dates, marketing campaigns.
- Performed QA and UAT testing of new features prior to their release into the production environment.
AVP, Collections Remediation Project Manager
SYNCHRONY FINANCIAL
05.2014 - 09.2016
- Managed Collections Remediation projects from analytics, tollgate, execution, validation, to close.
- Created and managed a process to track the Collections Remediation project status across all lines of business, and communicated it to executive leadership weekly.
- Managed, tracked, and presented collections financial impacts and project accruals to executive leadership.
Business Analyst II, Project Manager
PNC MORTGAGE & SOGITI USA
05.2013 - 05.2014
- Consultant, Business Analyst II, PNC Mortgage (Dec 2011 to May 2013)
- Managed projects within the PNC PMO to mitigate government compensatory issues and coordinate the transfer of seriously delinquent loans within the mortgage portfolio.
- Monitored project timelines and budgets by tracking milestones, deliverables, tasks.
- Managed and led meetings and workshops with multiple departments to solidify requirements.
- Facilitated brainstorming sessions with cross-functional teams for problem solving activities.
- Maintained continuous alignment of program scope, regulatory requirements, and corporate requirements with strategic business objectives.
- Created and maintained effective relationships with cross-functional business partners to execute projects using waterfall project management.
Project Management Coordinator, Business Analyst, Team Lead
EXCELLENCE IN MOTIVATION (EIM)
01.2007 - 12.2011
- Website Administrator for custom-built incentive programs for Fortune 500 companies.
- Defined, researched, analyzed, and documented website, system, and business process requirements with project subject matter experts, stakeholders, and sponsors.
- Created and managed internal and client requirement timelines to manage implementation, cost, dependencies, and workload per project.
- Worked with the client on User Acceptance Testing to review and assist in the understanding of requirement changes and User Interface functionality of the websites.
- Conducted client-based website demonstrations and training on new functionality and UI changes.
- Tier 2 call center support for website escalations and client contact for operational support, such as troubleshooting, ad hoc requests, and data analysis.
Education
BA - Behavioral Science
The Ohio State University
Skills
- Scrum Framework
- Agile methodologies
- Roadmap management
- Strategic planning and alignment
- Matrix/cross-functional team management
- Market research analysis
- Root-cause analysis
- Sprint management
- Stakeholder engagement & management
- Business requirement analysis
- Customer journey mapping
- UX/UI collaboration
- User story creation
- Product backlog management
- User Acceptance Testing
- Risk mitigation
- Scheduling & timeline management
- Performance & KPI metrics analysis
Certification
- Certified PMP, PMI, 2013
- Certified CSPO, 2017
- Certified SAFe, 2022
Training Seminars
- SAFe 5.1.1, 2022
- Scrum Product Owner, 2017, Scrum Alliance
- LEAN SIX SIGMA – Yellow belt, 2013, PNC University
- Project Management Exam Prep, 2012, Project Management Institute
- The art of negotiation, 2011, Employers Research Association
Tools And Software
- JIRA/VersionOne/ Confluence
- Figma/Zeplin
- PowerPoint
- Visio/Mural
- MS Project
- MS Office Suite/Teams/SharePoint
- Zoom
- Snagit/Balsamiq
Industry Experience
- Insurance
- Telecommunications
- Mortgage & Foreclosure
- Financial Credit Card Services
- Employee Incentives
References
References available upon request.
Timeline
Senior Digital Product Owner
ALLSTATE
08.2021 - Current
Product Manager
FIRST ORION
07.2018 - 08.2021
AVP, Marketing Agile Product Owner
SYNCHRONY FINANCIAL
09.2016 - 07.2018
AVP, Collections Remediation Project Manager
SYNCHRONY FINANCIAL
05.2014 - 09.2016
Business Analyst II, Project Manager
PNC MORTGAGE & SOGITI USA
05.2013 - 05.2014
Project Management Coordinator, Business Analyst, Team Lead
EXCELLENCE IN MOTIVATION (EIM)
01.2007 - 12.2011
BA - Behavioral Science
The Ohio State University