Employer Name  

The College Board

Employer  Website

www.collegeboard.org

Job Title  

Senior Product Analyst

Additional education

Indiana University, M.A., Arts Administration, 1993

Briefly describe what you do   

I work as a project and product manager for a website that supports one of the College Board's K-12 educational programs.

What other jobs have you had?

• Project Manager, DataLan Corporation

• Project Manager, Reader's Digest Association

• Internet Manager, Reader's Digest Association

What are the key skills, abilities, and personal qualities necessary to succeed in this type of work?  

• Business and systems analysis

• Writing

• Communication

• Organization

• Ability to break up a big project into small tasks

• Ability to get people to agree on a goal

• Personal effectiveness (getting a lot done)

• Know what you don't know, and ask others so you can figure it out

What do you enjoy most about your current position?  

I enjoy getting to shape a web product to better serve our customers, and helping to steer the business strategy for the product.

Most important/valuable lesson or activity in college that impacted your career  

You can learn anything you set out to learn, even if it's not what you started out thinking you were going to do for a living!

What advice for someone entering this field?

I got a wide variety of business, IT, and Internet experience before deciding to become a project manager.  This gives me an advantage over people who went straight to project management, because you need to be able to understand what impacts a lot of different areas to be a good project manager.  I also got a professional certification (PMP, the certification given by the Project Management Institute) which opened up a lot of career opportunities to me that would not have been available before.

E-mail your questions to askalumni@trinity.edu
Put the name of the alumni you wish to contact in the subject line, then type your question.