Karen Brohard

Technical Program Manager, San Francisco Bay Area

Certifications

  • Google Project Management Professional Certificate (2023)

  • TU Delft Engineering Project Management: Mastering Project Complexity (2023)

  • University of Washington: IT Project Management (2022)

  • General Assembly Data Analytics Certificate (2019)

Tools

 Jira, Confluence, Smartsheet, Lucidchart, Wrike, Monday, Figma, Tableau, Periscope, ClickUp, Asana, Airtable, Smartsheet, Lucidchart, Google Workspace

Methodologies

  • Agile, Waterfall, Scrum, Kanban, Six Sigma

  • Software development, hardware development, full stack development projects and programs

Experience

Motive / Sr. Technical Program Manager

SPAN.io / Staff Technical Program Manager

San Francisco, CA |  June  2023 - Apr 2024

  • R&D organization leader, reported  directly to Senior Vice President of R&D to streamline the organization, including implementing formal Agile product development, weekly executive reporting, budgeting, resourcing. 

    • Presented regular updates to the CEO and leadership team as TPM responsible for delivery of growth and revenue-generating products for the company.

  • Co-led the successful application of a grant with the  Department of Energy (DOE), securing funding to advance development of hybrid inverter program, with monthly virtual and annual in-person conference presentation updates.

  • Launched company wide  strategic software API initiative for partners to manage their SPAN fleets, which launched on time and up to partner specifications. 

  • Led in-house process to define PDP,  program tracking and schedules for software and full-stack programs, implemented by all engineering teams.

  • Revisited SPAN’s  data tooling to address the requirements of machine learning, improving data completeness and accuracy from SPAN panels. 

  • Led software and hardware programs from planning through execution, including strategic leadership-level and long-term research projects.

  • Led cross functional hardware teams for product assessment, concept and design, planning phase, and EVT A/B for stealth projects within R&D.

Cana (The Production Board Company) / Lead Program Manager

Redwood City, CA |  Mar 2022 - May 2023

  • Launched MVP of redesigned company wide progress tracking dashboard increasing cross-Team collaboration and alignment.

  • Mapped, tracked and monitored status of projects and initiatives across Software and Firmware organizations. Consistently reported and communicated project status to all stakeholders, including CEO and board members.

  • Led cross-functional resourcing - worked with leads to scope out milestones and features against resources required to achieve them by due date, including descoping, milestone scope changes or adding new resources.

  • Defined projects based on milestones’ scope across Science, HW, SW and FW orgs. Divided plans into quarterly deliverables with due dates. Subsequently built out bi-weekly sprints for Science, SW and FW to accurately track delivery and accountability.

  • Identified and corrected scope creep and timeline slippage through daily tracking and OKRs. Defined and deployed a risk management process to enable a timely and proactive approach to milestone derisking.

Roam Robotics / Technical Project Manager - Hardware

San Francisco, CA |  Dec 2020 - Mar 2022

  • Defined MVP and communicated project milestones, progress, and potential timeline slippage for hardware team.

  • Informed and advised management on additional required resources to achieve milestones, resulting in 4 critical new hires.

  • Lead monthly check-in meetings to discuss possible bottlenecks or potential enhancements to improve the project, and defined and delivered daily status for each project across 6 teams, including leadership.

  • Increased individual utilization rate by 18% through optimizing weekly meeting and communication cadences.

Wells Fargo / Product Manager (Contract)

San Francisco, CA |  Jul 2019 - Mar 2020

  • Created project charters and executed on MVP, milestones definition, feature scoping, and due dates for internal project launches.

  • Designed comprehensive training program for tools and monthly reporting to record tool usage post-launch.

  • Increased tool usage by 88% across Product and Design teams.


Stanza / Product Manager

San Francisco, CA |  Oct 2018 - Jan 2019

  • Created, defined MVP and launched a new dashboard to be used by NFL, MLB, NHL and NBA teams and 74 publisher websites.

  • Formalized idea feature submission process to ensure all features were scoped, resourced, and prioritized.

  • Create A/B Testing experiment to increase engagement by 41% on calendar sync landing page.


Hearst Communications / Product Manager

San Francisco, CA |  Oct 2017 - Oct 2018

  • Created and launched a new cover story product for the San Francisco Chronicle generating $488K of new annual revenue.

  • Launched a new real estate inventory platform on SFGATE.com from start to finish, showcasing 10k+ Bay Area listings.

  • Coordinated with designers to optimize user experience for customer-facing advertising tools, resulting in a decrease of 8+ hours per week of customer support.

Education

San Diego State University

Communication Major, Spanish Minor

June 2011