The Initial Coordinates
What do you want to be when you grow up? That question haunts every kid's childhood. I was dead set on becoming a doctor. I carried that dream until organic chemistry kicked it right out of me. No need for a second round, please, and thank you. Life's a lot like a product roadmap. You start with a clear direction, but the path ahead has other plans. Honestly, those unexpected turns made all the difference.
Route Optimization: The Library Years
I landed on a Master's in Library and Information Science. Sure, it sounds like a mouthful, but it clicked. Finally, a program that combined everything I loved: research, books, organizing, and yes, even tech. Most importantly, no organic chemistry. When I say tech, I mean early tech. This was back when Google was still a novelty. Librarians were the original web developers, and when putting card catalogs 'in the cloud' felt revolutionary. Library science was going digital, and I was here for it.
I worked in various libraries - medicine, law, education, and even a stint in public libraries. At the time, I didn't realize I was building a product manager's toolkit. Every day, I was deep in information architecture, crafting user research methods, developing classification systems, and finding ways to make complex information accessible. Looking back, I was doing product work without knowing it. Just swap 'card catalog' for 'user interface' and 'reference desk' for 'customer research.'
Scenic Detour: The Comedy Connection
Comedy has always been part of my life. I watched my first stand-up special when I was 10. I participated in my first improv set at 11, and by the time I was 16, I had experienced a live taping of Saturday Night Live. So, when I hung up my library card to focus on my family, the opportunity to build my own comedy world emerged. I was on a decade-long journey of building, scaling, and maintaining an improv theater and school.
Building a theater from scratch helped me further develop what would later be evident product management skills.
What I called audience members was stakeholder management
Shows are just product development
Audience reactions are live user feedback
So much of my library and improv life was me practicing to be a product manager.
System Recalculating: The Accidental PM
Cut to 2020, the world is suddenly remote, and I find myself at an edtech startup. It's when I officially became an "Accidental Product Manager," though I'd been unknowingly preparing for years.
I'm in my first big product meeting about making our educational content more discoverable. The team discusses AI-powered search solutions and machine learning algorithms while I'm sitting there thinking about all those times I helped people who walked up to the reference desk asking for "a book about horses." It was giving real 'they brought the theater kid to fix the corporate presentation' energy, except I had card catalog energy instead of jazz hands. We had thousands of educational resources that needed organizing without the fancy AI tools everyone talked about.
Here's where my weird background clicked into place. The library scientist in me saw a taxonomy problem. The improv director in me saw an opportunity to build on what we had. While everyone else was lamenting our lack of machine-learning capabilities, I was channeling my inner librarian, creating semantic relationships and search patterns that actual humans would use. Here's the thing, teachers don't search like algorithms think they should. They search like people who must find the perfect lesson for 30 restless sixth graders on a Friday afternoon. My years of running reference interviews (fancy librarian speak for "figuring out what people want versus what they're asking for") meant I understood the difference.
We ended up building something that didn't just organize content. We built in a way that understood the messy reality of teaching. Like improv, where success isn't about following a script but creating genuine connections, we created a system that measured engagement through real classroom impact. Those years of organizing information and reading audiences weren't just random chapters in my career story; they were the foundation for bridging the gap between technical possibilities and human needs. It turns out that my "non-traditional" background wasn't a liability. It was precisely what made me an effective product manager from day one.
In other words, my superpower.
Navigation Tools: The Power of Not Knowing
In improv, the moment you think you know exactly where a scene is going is usually when it falls apart. The same goes for product management. The most significant breakthroughs often come when you admit you don't have all the answers.
I've learned that not having a traditional PM background isn't a weakness; it's a secret weapon. When engineers start talking about Kubernetes clusters, I'm not afraid to ask the "stupid" questions (also, there is no such thing as a “stupid question”). Those questions often help everyone understand the problem better, like in improv, where the best scenes come from genuine curiosity rather than trying to force a pre-planned joke.
My diverse background means I speak multiple languages. I can translate engineering constraints into business value, turn user feedback into technical requirements, and explain complex systems in ways that make sense. It's like being fluent in improv, stand-up, AND interpretive dance. (Let's be honest; we could all live without the interpretive dance.)
New Destination Acquired: Tech 2.0
Remember that original plan to become a doctor? If you'd told college me that ditching organic chemistry would lead to a career translating technical complexity into human solutions, I would have laughed harder than when someone suggested we do a long-form improv set in complete silence. (Spoiler: We tried it. It was exactly as awkward as you're imagining.)
The thing about messy paths is they give you perspectives you'd never get from following a straight line. Every reference interview at the library, every late-night improv show, every time I had to make a tough call about theater operations alone. Looking back, it was all just product management boot camp without the fancy title.
When people ask how to get into product management, I'm honest with them. The best preparation often comes from experiences that seem unrelated. That weird mix of skills you've picked up along the way? That's not baggage - that's your competitive advantage. I'm proof you can turn library science and improv into tech leadership.
The best part of my journey has been realizing that success doesn't come from following someone else's path. It comes from bringing your whole, messy self to the table and saying 'yes, and' to whatever comes next.