Welcome! By the end of this lesson, you should know who I am, what Advancing Women in Product or AWIP is, and why you should learn product management from AWIP. My name is Nancy Wang. At the time of recording, I'm the head of product management and engineering for a business unit at Amazon Web Services, or AWS for short. As you may know, AWS is part of Amazon that runs half of the modern Internet. I lead product management efforts for a product line at AWS called AWS Backup, which is the Data Protection platform for Cloud native services. I lead a team of product managers, engineers, and other design professionals. You may have read my column on Forbes or in other media, or have heard me speak at conferences across the country. Before joining Amazon Web Services, I was a product manager at a Silicon Valley unicorns startup, the fastest ever growing enterprise startup called Rubrik. When I was there, I lead our product expansion from perpetual licensing into software as a service, SaaS and patented six innovations. Before Rubrik, I was also the youngest female product manager at Google Fiber, where I helped build up the gigabit Internet speeds that we now take for granted. Previous to this, I also worked in federal and intelligence communities in Washington DC and completed a computer science degree from the University of Pennsylvania, go Quakers. Now that you know a little bit about me, I'd love to learn more about you. What is your professional background and what are your professional goals? During my career, I've hired and trained many new product managers, specifically at Google and Amazon. I've also asked other distinguished leaders in product management and related fields to help instruct on their areas of expertise. You'll see their Q&A's throughout this course. Feel free to follow me on my journey on social media as well as my colleagues on Advancing Women in Product. We are all excited about your next steps on your product management journey. What is AWIP? AWIP or Advancing Women in Product is a 501C3 non-profit that trains new and current product managers with skills-based workshops and mentoring. Started by Google and Amazon PMs in 2017 in my San Francisco living room, at the time of recording, has grown to over 15,000 members worldwide with chapters in San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, New York City, Paris, and Chennai, India. You're welcome to join us at www.advancingwomeninproduct.org and also follow us on social media. AWIP's Coursera Specialization is informed by years of experience developing skills-based training for real PMs. As some of the largest companies, we hone the skills that are most relevant for you to get hired and promoted into key PM positions. A hundred percent of this curriculum content is created and also taught by current PM leaders who are working full-time at the top tech companies and who also make hiring and promotion decisions. So that is the AWIP difference, and why you should be taking this course. One of AWIP's teaching methods that you'll see throughout the course is called See One, Do One, Teach One. This technique originates from medical schools and surgical residencies where lives are literally on the line. First, I'll show you how to perform a specific PM skill. Then, you'll do this on your own version and upload it. Finally, throughout this course, you'll also get the chance to review a classmate's version as well as critique it. It's important that you give this effort your all in all of the following exercises, because doing so will only develop your mastery that much faster. My colleagues at AWIP also look forward to reading your work. Since there's so many exercises throughout this course, the best approach to doing this course is to build a product in parallel, whether that's on your own or within your current company and your current role. Now, an alternative of that is think about one product that you enjoy or would like to make. Use that product in your head and envision all aspects of that product in the exercises throughout the course. Save a brief description of this product so you can copy and paste this description into each exercise rather than have to type it multiple times. By the end of this course, you'll have a product management portfolio ready to share. That is the goal that I have for every student taking this course.
