Product Manager

What’s ASA all about?

American Student Assistance (ASA) is a pioneer of student-led career learning helping millions of middle and high schoolers plan their futures – on their terms. Our mission is to radically transform the way careers are planned and pursued, and we’re doing this by creating digital tools that empower students to explore education and careers that align with their goals.

As a Product Manager within ASA’s product team and will be responsible for the delivery and success of your products under management. This role spans a full product planning, design and build, partner identification and management, and vendor relations. You will work closely with senior management, our outside development and creative teams, our partnership development team, and our tightly integrated data team. This is a highly visible role as you will be part of the team that leads ASA into its next stage of its digital strategic vision.

You are a dynamic, self-starter with demonstrated leadership skills to help create world class consumer products. You are committed to the voice-of-the-customer in everything you build. You have a passion for a younger demographic and have experience working within social platforms for both marketing and product delivery. To be successful in this role, you must be able to thrive and succeed in a fast-paced environment, balance strategic vision with attention to details, and approach problems from a customer data and systems-design perspective. You will be working closely with a variety of stakeholders across the organization and must consistently manage through influence. You will need to be highly collaborative and a creative problem solver, who can effectively communicate and influence at all levels of the ASA organization.

You will be shaping the digital direct-to-kid strategy and roadmap using data, user research, and the latest trends in entertainment and informal learning for young users and families.

You will engage regularly with the Marketing, Legal, and external consultants to ensure and optimize content moderation and usage for younger users. You will stay on top of the latest safety requirements for digital engagement for kids under 18 and under 13. You have a passion for creating safe, appropriate, and engaging experiences for users under thirteen.

Essential Functions:

(To be considered to perform this position, the person must be able to perform essential duties and responsibilities listed below):

• Manage the day-to-day relationship with outside vendors for delivery of product sprints within your products under management.
• Ensure regular reporting on development project health and progress.
• Keep ongoing tracking of product issues and risks.
• Manage the inclusion of key internal stakeholders as subject matter experts at critical times throughout the sprint development cycle.
• Working with senior ASA executives and the product development team to identify the appropriate partner strategies.
•  You will be directly responsible for releases and helping define a unified product experience for both internal and external customers and partners.
•  Our development methodology blends internal and external teams using Agile development methodologies. You will work with development team members and other ASA managers to develop a roadmap and define the associated release requirements for the development team.
•  Assist in establishing and maintaining standards and guidelines for the design, deployment, and maintenance of information and advanced data analytics.
•  Measuring the success of the product from multiple perspectives and being able to report out to executive-level leadership.
•  Use data-driven decisions to prioritize, enable, and deliver.
•  The ability to drive cross-team collaboration and building relationships with key stakeholders, often negotiating and balancing different team’s needs
•  Make tough prioritization choices and find creative solutions to hard problems. You are the voice of the customer and must insist on “kids first” in all prioritization decisions.

Experience:

1. 5 – 7 years’ experience in product management.
2. Experience in consumer products and/or social media is preferred.
3. Experience across the full product life cycle; incubator or innovation experience is highly desired.
4. Expert at managing both internal and external development partners. 
5. Experience with agile development and design thinking is a must have. You have written user stories and have successfully document product requirements.
6. Outstanding ability to synthesize a variety of primary and secondary market research and analytical data to find trends.
7. Strong financial and legal acumen and ability to partner with the finance and legal teams.
8. Experience presenting market opportunities to a broad range of stakeholders, including executive staff.
9. Relentless passion for the voice-of-the consumer.
10. Experience transferring opportunities to activate and operationalize the initiative.
11. Experience in launching apps, platforms, or digital experiences.
12. Understanding of trends and safety considerations in children’s media and technology – Familiarity with COPPA and other data protections and regulations is a huge plus.

Education:

1. BS in business, marketing, or similar discipline is required.

Skills:

1. Outstanding diplomacy, negotiation and managing through influence skills.
2. Superior written and verbal communication skills; the ability to present concepts and strategies to large internal and external audiences to secure buy-in and to effectively communicate with internal colleagues and external partners.
3. Ability to display data/analysis visually in order to create powerful presentations.
4. Strong organizational, analytical and critical thinking skills.
5. Strong leadership and collaborative skills with the ability to manage cross-functional teams.

Benefits & perks

• Generous PTO including vacation/sick/personal time, 17 paid holidays, an annual week-long winter holiday break, and Summer Fridays
• Hybrid work freedom with the ability to work from home and in our Boston office – which offers a fully stocked kitchen and weekly catered meals

• Paid sabbatical for employees with 5+ years of service to enjoy 4 weeks off with a $2K stipend so that they can recharge, spend time with family, or learn a new skill
• Tuition reimbursement & student loan repayment – because education is at ASA’s core

• Awards & recognition programs with cash prizes

Of course, our benefits package also includes the fundamentals: top-tier health insurance, employee and employer contributed retirement plans, FSAs (including employer-funded dependent care FSA!), life and disability insurance, and more!

Our culture & commitment to diversity

ASA’s greatest strategic asset is our people. As a mission-driven, public-purpose organization, we know our success depends on attracting – and retaining – a diverse workforce that practices what it preaches.

Our culture is an inclusive one that celebrates individual abilities alongside collective strengths. Rooted in three core values – knowledge, inclusion, and trust – ASA’s culture embraces expertise, professional development, self-advocacy, and empowering one another to succeed; we build diverse teams that work together in pursuit of shared goals; we foster trust through authentic communication that drives true business growth. To ensure these values are upheld, an employee-led culture committee meets regularly to plan training sessions, events, and the odd Bingo championship.

Does a career at ASA align with your professional goals? Great! We look forward to reading your application.

American Student Assistance