Director, Product at 500 person profitable non-startup company. I got my BS in Cognitive Science and HCI. I initially worked at Cisco setting up a beta testing

Director, Product at 500 person profitable non-startup company. I got my BS in Cognitive Science and HCI. I initially worked at Cisco setting up a beta testing program for Linksys consumer products. I transitioned from there into UX design and moved to DIRECTV to do it full time. I quickly realized there that design was an idea factory to see what sticked with upper management, not necessarily users. Product management would be the happy medium where I could design a nice experience while also satisfying business & technical needs. I pursued my MBA and created my own PM internship at a Series A startup during the summer between my 2 years. I got more into entrepreneurship and declined some seed funding to go with a Head of Product position following B School. It was a flop within a couple months due to relationship issues with a hot headed boss. I then took an Associate Product Manager position and pushed back into doing my own startup. That failed so I got back into PM, promoted to Director within a year and hear I am. A PM needs many skills but certain ones will get you in the door: 1. Analytics: Since you haven't developed a gut yet for the industry, you need to understand data & numbers. Metrics, visualizations, statistics, etc. This is especially important if you want to own P&L, get in front of management, etc. 2. Design intuition: What can be honed prior to getting into PM is knowing good design from bad design. Learn how to make critiques but also know what would work better than the current iteration. 3. Productivity & Organization: Project management is just a small piece of what's necessary. You need to have everything figured out, organized, and be able to answer questions of what's a priority, what's done, etc. 4. Hold your own: You need conviction and backbone to push new ideas and initiatives into an organization. You'll need to be armed with justification but also have confidence that it is in the user's best interest. Best of luck!