Laura Watrous

• Expanded role to include oversight of multiple Platform Product Teams and newly formed Line of Business 'Kids AVOD' Teams.
• Hire and coach team of product managers/owners across very different areas of focus.
• Lead development and execution of comprehensive product roadmaps to drive growth and ensure alignment with business goals.
• Identify new OKRs when necessary to support initiatives driving specific KPIs.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure objectives are clearly articulated and understood, to ensure successful and efficient delivery of value.
• Establish and maintain strategic partnerships with key stakeholders, including marketing, programming, and sales to gather insights and feedback to inform product strategy and prioritize feature development.
• Collaborate with marketing team to develop go-to-market strategies for new product launches.
• Coordinate with Nickelodeon Brand Insights Team to conduct market research and analysis to identify customer needs, new product opportunities and ensure product direction.
• Analyze market trends and competitive landscape to identify new product opportunities and drive innovation.
• Reintroduction of Games to Nick Mobile Apps, resulting in increases of 27% for iOS and 19.45% for Android, Day 1 Retention is at its highest since Nov 2018.

• Initially responsible for OTT product strategy across ALL Viacom Streaming Brands (MTV, CC, VH1, Nick, etc); expanded oversight to include all digital products and platforms.
• Coordinated efforts of three CTV Teams across multiple platforms to ensure OTT products successfully launched new BET+ Subscription streaming service on time for critical market introduction.
• Developed and maintained strong relationships with key stakeholders, including executives, cross-functional teams, and external partners, to ensure product success and alignment with business goals.
• Guided product teams in developing and executing strategic plans to drive product growth and engagement.

Sr. Director Product Management

• Product SME on Migration of sites to Viacom Central Platforms across all platforms including web.
• Product Manager for Nick and Nick Jr App suite of digital products - responsible for product strategy across portfolio of platforms.
• Led team of Product Owners across Native Platforms.
• Responsible for product process improvements and working with engineering to develop Platform teams/structure within Nickelodeon organization.
• Created vision statements, strategic plans, and roadmaps.
• Reviewed creative briefs from various stakeholders and converted business ideas and research into actionable product releases.
• Worked with Product Owners to maintain prioritized backlogs focusing on continuous delivery.
• Worked closely with engineering leads and BALA to develop COPPA Scan Process for legal and compliance reasons, ensuring data safety of our digital kids products.

Associate Director, Product Management

• Promoted to own entire process of building Nick App for Android - Including, finding/selecting vendor, maintaining clarity of vision.
• Kept laser focus on containing scope and negotiating quick decisions but not sacrificing quality.
• Navigated new and un-documented landscape of contracts, and legal requirements within extremely diverse device landscape.
• Responsible for Amazon promotional opportunity to bring App to Kindle Fire devices by Holiday 2014; lead our key stakeholders (including our then EVP and GM) through critical negotiations needed in order to identify and prioritize features to get us to launch.
• Received coveted 'wake screen' promotion from Amazon (first App in Viacom portfolio of Apps to achieve this).
• Launched product in Google Play Store 3 months later to support KCA 2014; App opened to 4-star reviews and quickly surpassed install numbers from initial release.
• Localized App for International Latin American market.

Sr. Product Manger - Community Product

• Developed user experiences based on cooperative design research with University of Maryland HCIL 'Kids Team'; identified innovations to increase usability and experience.
• Community Product Manager - primarily focused on production and management of day-to-day operations within Nick Club.
• Extensive collaboration with Integrated Marketing team on ideation of games based Advertising sponsorship opportunities.
• Developed and implemented Virtual World experiences (eg. Cabin Wars, Halloween, Star Lounge) focused on user engagement and retention within Nick Club, resulting in increases in membership and daily active users, consistently performing within top 10 most visited pages on Nick.com.
• Early successes in this role lead to extended role of Games Product Owner focusing on bringing HTML5 Games to our Web and Native products.

• Formalized process and drove efficiencies within Nicktropolis (Virtual World) Team.
• Sponsorship budget for 2008 was roughly $550,000 and was part of larger site-wide promotional buys, which totaled over $2M.
• Early adopter and initiator of SCRUM processes, prior to company-wide initiatives.
• Successful Delivery on several projects: Product/Feature Launches: MyNick, Nick.com Guest Mode, KCA, Halloween, "Kids Pick the President", etc.
• Nickelodeon's One Brand 2009 Redesign: Shows Section and 'Club' aka Nicktropolis Relaunch.
• Custom Integrated Sponsorships within Virtual World: General Mills, Transformers, Goldfish, Kraft/Lunchables, etc.

• Led team of consultants to produce and implement enterprise solution for Digital Asset Management (DAM), which projected annual savings of $560,000,
• Successfully managed multiple projects simultaneously by prioritizing tasks according to urgency, resource availability, and alignment with organizational goals.
• Gained strong leadership skills by managing projects from start to finish.
• Created cost analyses, business cases, budgets, staff allocations, proposals, functional requirements, wireframes and project plans.
• Coordinated all aspects of web development for intranet, external B2B and direct B2C solutions.