About
Login
Sign Up
The Well Logo

Coffee With: Product Manager Toye Adeyemo

Estimated reading time ~ 4 min
content block

Toye Adeyemo
Location: Chicago, IL
Job: Product Manager, Aprimo (formerly Teradata)
Education: B.A. in Digital Media and M.S. in Economics, DePaul University
Twitter: t_o_y_e

What was your first job?

As an undergrad at DePaul University in Chicago, I juggled a bunch of different part-time jobs to help fund my education: bank teller, gym manager, tutor, intramural referee, and resident advisor. After graduation, I went to New York City for the first time to work as an operations coordinator at Fordham University. I really enjoyed the experience and learned some valuable lessons that I apply in my work as a product manager today.

Tell us about your path into the tech world.

I ended up returning to DePaul to get my master’s in economics. I definitely don't have the traditional tech background. I attribute my path into technology – and, ultimately, product management – to my interest in entrepreneurship and an idea I got from one my grad school professors to "create my own job.” One of the ventures I worked on was accepted into a tech accelerator, and from there, we secured enough funding for me to be able to work on it full-time after grad school. While the application we were building did gain some initial traction, we made a few key missteps and eventually closed shop. After that huge failure, I had to figure out a new plan, which led to me eventually landing a job in product management. It turns out the experience and skills I gained building my startup were key to my success in product management – a field I had not previously known even existed.

Toye Adeyemo pic

How did you teach yourself about the tech industry and gain specific technical skills?

When I was running my startup, I had no real experience in building a technology company, nor did I have connections to people in a position to invest in my idea. Those challenges became an opportunity to push myself to learn more. I became immersed in all things tech, reading everything I could about investor funding and successful ventures. I applied to tech accelerator programs and began learning to code using a combination of free and paid websites, from Lynda.com and Codeacademy to Udemy. If it wasn't for the hours I poured into online courses, I would struggle to communicate and collaborate with developers and other product managers about software development, which is a big part of my job.

Tell us about your current role as a product manager for Aprimo.

I have been at Aprimo, a Chicago-based integrated marketing software company, for a few months now. We were actually recently acquired by a private equity company, so our new culture and focus areas are still being defined. I tend to spend the majority of my day working on user interaction and engagement – essentially making our application easier for people to use. This means making tasks as streamlined and intuitive as possible (which are often two very different things).

How would you describe product management?

Product manager roles and responsibilities can vary across companies, but PMs typically work at the intersection of business, design, and technology. We are the people in an organization who determine if a product or feature is valuable to the company’s end-user, viable for our business, or even technologically feasible. Aprimo is focused on solving hard problems for marketing professionals, and my job involves meeting with real users to better understand how they are interacting with our software. I uncover and help address any pain points in our software’s workflow, bringing insights to my team so we can discuss updates and features that will help our users save time or money. When we're launching a new product or feature, I spend a lot of time meeting with the marketing, sales, and business development teams to discuss our launch strategy.

What's a particularly fulfilling project you’ve worked on?

At my last company, I was tasked with increasing usage and traffic to a new feature we had just launched. I had some experience creating a user growth strategy before, but not for a web application that saw upwards of 30 million monthly users. Working strategically with several departments, I coordinated a plan that not only reached our target, but also surpassed the goal a few months ahead of schedule.

What’s your secret to staying productive?

Organizing, prioritizing, and executing: Organizing the tasks in front you, prioritizing those tasks, and executing based on priority. A lot of my work as a product manager has some sort of timeline attached to a deliverable, so it's important to always be thinking about the bigger picture and how to add value to the team.

What’s your favorite recent read?

The Dream is Real by Kenny Burns. It highlights the importance of how hustle and calculated risks can lead to success and also describes how success and failure are interconnected.

What’s your advice to someone interested in breaking into product management?

One of the main skills I look for when we're hiring a product manager is problem solving. To be a good problem solver, you have to constantly be thinking of ways to improve products or processes. You go and get the answer. My advice is to always be learning something new to build up your technical knowledge. Seek out volunteer opportunities, like working at a hackathon – that can be a great way to meet people and form relationships that lead to job referrals.

Also, reach out to people doing the job you want. Even within my company, I've already had several lunch meetings with people who reached out to learn about my job. I happily talk about product management, run through the skills we look for in candidates, and sometimes even suggest projects that would make them stand out as a candidate. Maximize every opportunity to gain new skills and experiences.

Image courtesy of Jason Jones, Lake Shore Photography

Jopwell helps America's leading companies connect with and recruit Black, Latinx, and Native American professionals and students at scale. Sign up to find your dream job.