Jessica Jenkins
Chicago,IL
Summary
Product leader with 9 years in K-12 EdTech, trusted with ambiguous, stalled, or under-scoped initiatives — including moonshot bets with no internal precedent — and cross-functional recovery efforts across three companies. Regularly owns platform-level scope beyond single-feature ownership, from running multiple full product lines at once to carrying several concurrent platforms in parallel. Built four flagship products from 0-to-1 in direct partnership with C-level executives, setting priority and scope for cross-functional teams of 8 to 24 across student-facing platforms, content systems, and a new market curriculum entry. An educator at heart, has mentored junior PMs as a matter of course throughout her career, developing them into independent, high-performing owners.
Overview
1
1
Certification
9
9
years of professional experience
Work History
Senior Platform Product Manager
Riverside Insights
11.2025 - Current
- Own product requirements and strategy for Reach, Riverside's next-generation assessment platform, across six workstreams. Leading persona-based requirements analysis across six customer personas — a scope similar organizations typically split across 2-3 PMs.
- Driving the business case for CogAT Lens and Reach — including narrative and detailed decks — toward sprint close in August, with the draft delivered for leadership review ahead of further refinement post-August 1. When the CogAT PM and Program Manager departed mid-sprint, absorbed finalization of assessment requirements on top of existing scope, partnered with a contractor SME on cost estimation to keep the effort on track.
- Architected a suite of individual AI agents (competitive analysis, market research, persona synthesis, standing requirements) as Claude Projects, designed to take a product idea from brief through completed PRD. Partnered with a teammate on the broader agentic workflow framework; now sole owner of the initiative following her departure.
- Piloted the agent workflow across 6 feature sets to date; full company rollout and end-to-end pipeline orchestration are planned pending a dedicated tool.
- Directed phase two of Automated Rostering, including a Homeroom feature enabling flexible class groupings beyond grade-based cohorts. Managed rostering integration partnerships with Clever (bug resolution) and Ednition (ongoing technical partnership); adoption by piloting customers directly converted 3 previously-declined prospects into customers.
- Developed a comprehensive onboarding guide for the rostering pilot in collaboration with Data Integration and Customer Support partners. a new rostering pilot onboarding guide with Data Integration/Customer Support partners and drove customer outreach via HubSpot supporting an ongoing fall rollout recruitment effort alongside Sales.
- Wrote requirements, acceptance criteria, and drove cross-functional alignment on vision and scope for the Embedded Field Testing data pipeline, partnering with Program Management to keep the initiative on track for Fall 2026 field testing ahead of the CogAT Lens launch.
- Identified a gap in SSO login requirements for the new ITS student testing app, missed amid diffuse ownership, by asking clarifying questions during review; stepped in to close it with the missing requirements, acceptance criteria, and test cases needed. Shipped and live.
Senior Product Manager
Amira Learning
San Francisco, USA
06.2024 - 11.2025
- Built Amira Instruct and its educator platform from 0-to-1 in direct partnership with Amira's CEO and CTO, working through design meetings to shape the product; integrated the new platform with Amira's existing Assess and Tutor apps into a single widget-based, role-based dashboard covering subscription management, settings, test assignment/tracking, and student rostering. Shipped for back-to-school 2025 on a 9-month timeline, partnering closely with UX and Engineering; personally designed the icon set used throughout the dashboard.
- Defined rubrics for AI-generated conversation quality and refined prompts for question generation and standards-to-text mapping for Amira's student-facing avatar; redesigned handoff process between AI scientists and curriculum writers, halving turnaround time and minimizing errors in AI-generated educational content.
- Led functional product integration post-Amira's acquisition of Istation, ensuring preservation and accurate representation of contractually committed and customer-expected features from Istation's platform in the merged product.
Product Manager
Istation
Dallas, USA
01.2019 - 06.2024
- Pitched a new vision for Istation's student and educator experience directly to the CPO, then led product development for the resulting platform from 0-to-1 — with grade-banded UX (K-1, 2-5, 6-8) and accessibility by design — built and launched in one year, grounded in teacher and student interviews and small-group research and validated through consensus-building with C-level leadership, Sales, and customer-facing Directors and VPs. Later adopted, with only minor rebranding and ~3-6 sprints of integration work, as the technical foundation for Amira Learning's post-merger integration with Istation, relaunching within 9 months.
- Owned Istation's Teacher Resources platform after it stalled under fragmented contractor leadership and unclear scope — rewrote requirements based on customer analytics and UX research, integrated into daily dev ceremonies, and re-prioritized roadmap to meet a tightened timeline. Realigned stakeholders around the revised plan and shipped within 6 months, followed by a fast-follow release that received positive customer feedback.
- Led product strategy for a platform-wide, data-driven content creation engine that both generated and rendered lesson content with accessibility built in, driving a 60x increase in lesson output — building the case through interviews and small-group research and aligning C-level leadership, Sales, and customer-facing Directors and VPs behind the approach. The engine was retained and expanded by Amira Learning as a core content tool following the company's acquisition of Istation.
- Owned the customer migration plan from Istation's legacy desktop app to its new web-based platform, including webinars and customer communications, achieving 100% user migration within 6 months and enabling on-schedule deprecation of the legacy app.
- Led market fit validation for a new middle-school reading product through user research groups, in-classroom playtesting with middle-grade students, and competitive analysis — directly shaping UX and content decisions ahead of launch.
- Mentored Bonnie M., the Assessment PM, from no prior product management experience to implementing standard product practices and delivering high-impact features independently within months.
- Recognized in formal performance reviews as a reliable operator in ambiguous or high-churn situations — consistently entrusted with leading stalled or under-scoped initiatives.
- Served on Istation's cross-functional steering committee, reporting out and problem-solving directly with C-level leadership across the company on an ongoing basis.
Curriculum Development Specialist
Istation
Dallas, Texas
08.2017 - 12.2018
- Developed standards-aligned digital and print reading resources for grades 6-8, bringing standards coverage to 90% and contributing to an increase in middle-school customers.
- Analyzed student performance data to inform curriculum design decisions.
Education
Master of Education - Adolescent Literacy
Concordia University
Portland, OR05-2016
Bachelor of Arts - Literary Studies
The University of Texas at Dallas
Richardson, TX12-2010
Skills
- Platform and product strategy
- Roadmapping
- Business case
- User research techniques
- Persona development strategies
- Competitive analysis skills
- Agile methodologies
- Scrum framework
- Jira project management
- Stakeholder alignment
- PM mentoring
- Scope management
- Executive stakeholder alignment
- Mentoring and developing PMs
- Competitive analysis
- Go-to-market messaging strategies
- Messaging strategy
- Customer onboarding
- Salesforce integration
- Miro visual collaboration
- Figma design tools
- AI product strategy
- Workflow optimization
Early Career
- Director of Educator Outreach, Gradery — Dallas, TX (2016–2017)
- Teacher & Super User, Fusion Academy — Plano, TX (2016–2017)
- Lead Teacher, JL Long Middle School — Dallas, TX (2012–2016)
- Teacher, Maplebear School — Suwon, South Korea (2011–2012)
Certification
- Certified Scrum Product Owner
Timeline
Senior Platform Product Manager
Riverside Insights
11.2025 - Current
Senior Product Manager
Amira Learning
06.2024 - 11.2025
Product Manager
Istation
01.2019 - 06.2024
Curriculum Development Specialist
Istation
08.2017 - 12.2018
Master of Education - Adolescent Literacy
Concordia University
Bachelor of Arts - Literary Studies
The University of Texas at Dallas