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Episode 115 - Supporting Product Managers & Standing Up for the Value of Product Management (with Princess Akari, Founder "People in Product")
Coaching
Getting into Product
Mentorship
Nigeria
Women in Product
Episode 115: Supporting Product Managers & Standing Up for the Value of Product Management
Princess Akari, Founder "People in Product"
13 Mar 2022
13 Mar 2022
About the Episode
An interview with Princess Akari. Princess is a product manager at Brass where she's helping to disrupt the Nigerian banking industry. She's also passionate about supporting local product managers & standing up for the very value of product management via her community PeopleInProduct, the "Alcoholics Anonymous of Product Management".
We talk about a lot, including:
- Her day job as a product manager building mobile applications for a disruptive fintech, and how they're taking on the banking industry in Nigeria
- Why someone who starts out with a degree in civil engineering and a job as a structural engineer subsequently moves into product management
- Her journey into product management, how it was difficult to get community support to ease the transition and how this gave her the idea to start up her own community
- The mission behind PeopleInProduct and how they aim to be a warm, inclusive community where people can share their issues & doubts but also celebrate their successes
- The problem with many Nigerian product companies not really understanding the value of product management, and how that manifests itself in the financial packages and the respect they're given
- How she feels that there's a need product managers to be more explicit about the value they're creating for the company & standing up for themselves
- How everything's always worse for women, how they're discouraged from coding or design and forced into "easy" product management jobs, and then struggle to get their voices heard once they're in there
And much more!
Check out PeopleInProduct
If you like the sound of PeopleInProduct and want to join in, or maybe use it as inspiration to set up your local version, why not check out PeopleInProduct?
Contact Princess
You can reach out to Princess on Twitter, LinkedIn. She also writes on Medium.
Related episodes you should like:
- Diving into the Deep End as a Woman in Product (Darby Maloney, Product Manager @ Divvy & Occasional Swimming Pool User)
- Climbing the Product Management Career Ladder ... and Working Out if it's For You (Katerina Suchkova, Founder @ Ahead of Product)
- Taking Control of your Career with Life-Changing Conversations (Julie Starr, Author "The Coaching Manual", "The Mentoring Manual" & "Brilliant Coaching")
- Getting Strategic to Land Your First Product Management Job (Crystal Parker, Product Manager & Entry Level Career Coach)
- Standing Up for Diversity & Inclusion When No One Looks Like You (Merina Khanom, Product Manager @ BBC iPlayer)
- From Physiotherapist to Product Manager (Samuel Ogunkoya, Product Manager @ ProducteevTech)
- Product Management in Africa & Dreams of an African Silicon Valley (Layo Ogunbanwo, Founder @ Practical Product)
- From Engineer to Product Leader & Getting Away from the "How" (Rekha Venkatakrishnan, Senior Manager, Group Product Management @ Walmart Global Tech)
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