Erin was a tremendous help during my job search. She's really approachable and fun to work with, all while being adept at identifying areas of improvement and ways to make an argument, story or slide deck stronger. It was always clear that she genuinely cared about me and my success and would go out of her way to be available and helpful.

What does a coach mean to me? We all had that time in our lives when everything we thought we knew turned on its head. We lost confidence, faith in people, and ourselves. That happened to me. I am grateful I had Erin as my professional and life coach, who helped me piece everything together again. Erin always had an open mind and a welcoming presence that allowed me to be myself as we piece my world together. She gave me pep talks and reinforcements when I needed a coach. Erin was my work advisor when I needed new perspectives. She was a friend who celebrated the wins with me. I really don't know if I could have overcome some of my biggest professional challenges without Erin coaching me on.

What does a coach mean to you?

Erin is the Gold Standard for me when it comes to Product Managers.

When I work with any Product Manager, be it a client or a colleague, I can't help but gauge them comparatively to Erin because of the impact she's had on my professional development. I've had the pleasure of working with Erin at 2 different companies where I was in support roles. In those years of working directly with her across (different teams) I can confidently say that she brings an enviable level of leadership, openness, communication, and knowledge to a product team. To me, personally though, the thing that sets her so far above other Product Managers in my mind is her amazing sense of empathy and willingness to mentor others. She is the one responsible for my mindset around data driven decisions and finding the real "problem" you're trying to solve rather than focusing on the solution first.

In my own journey towards becoming a Product Manager I can't help but think "Erin is who I want to be when I grow up". 

Erin is incredible at the PM role. When she led the Creator Experience team at Patreon, our team was a powerhouse. As an engineer, it was pure delight to have my project tasks groomed, prioritized and well laid out with well defined specs at every planning meeting - all I needed to do was confirm priorities and point tasks. In hindsight, our team was spoilt by the meticulous work Erin did behind the scenes to keep the team running. Erin is very organized, super at paying attention to small details and keeping all stakeholders in the loop with stellar communication. Erin is a gem of a PM who understands technical constraints, the importance of paring down tech debt, and at the same time is able to prioritize projects that fulfill both user needs and business needs. I'd work with Erin again in a heartbeat.

tl;dr If you need to grow your competent, ambitious team to be highly effective product leaders, call Erin.

I've had the pleasure of working with her during my early and later product years; both times she leveled up my and my colleagues ability to cut through complex problems to deliver better shared understanding, execution or problem framing for our teams.

The challenge with many product instruction styles is that it's very theoretical and dogmatic e.g. this is how it has to be done without any clear path to get there in the real world. When our team had to learn more about how to shift our thinking to understand platforms, she was able to distill the high level (what's different about this type of product) to the specific how to get it going (clear actionable changes to personas, stories, systems, etc). Erin went through the extra effort of learning how we currently work to ensure that the training would be valuable for us. She effortlessly helped people with very different learning styles. She also made the training a working session so our team was able to both learn and evolve our specific project thinking during the session.

As a new PM or as a Senior PM, I've been able to see how her instruction continues to level up my ability to be an effective product leader for my team.