Upbeat School Climate Platform
Date: 2023-2024
Location: New York (Remove)
Roles: Head of Product
Organization: Upbeat
The Problem
Following the 2020 global pandemic, MarcoPolo Learning, then an Emmy-nominated developer of an early childhood education company, pivoted from a direct-to-consumer business model to serve the US school market. We needed to develop new analytics features that offered visibility into product usage and met the requirements of school districts.
The Problem
Founded in 2016, Upbeat specializes in research and consultancy services for K-12 school districts, driven by its mission to enhance teacher retention. During the pandemic, the company experienced rapid growth, which resulted in a fragmented portfolio comprising four survey products, four reporting tools, and a consultancy service for school principals, spread across various third-party and in-house platforms.
My role
In collaboration with the design, engineering, and operations teams, we unified all of Upbeat’s offerings into a single suite of tools built around its proprietary research on School Staff Climate. This effort included the launch of a new coaching platform that integrated one of Upbeat’s core services directly into the product ecosystem, and full codebase refresh.
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Over 14 months, we completed all the design work, front-end and back-end development, and a comprehensive database migration, transforming how schools interact with Upbeat’s products.
Shepherding Product Maturity
As a seasoned product leader with over a decade of experience in start-ups, I’ve learned that the real challenge of product upgrades often lies not just in code and pixels, but in fostering a more mature product culture that influences every corner of the business. At Upbeat, I spearheaded several initiatives to drive this transformation.
I introduced ticketing workflows in Zendesk to streamline operations and standardized Agile practices in Jira to ensure consistency and efficiency. I championed the development of Upbeat’s first design system, crafted to visually communicate complex data with clarity, and implemented robust data-governance practices to maintain clean and reliable analytical datasets.
Additionally, I modeled a decision-making framework centered on prioritization and tradeoffs, equipping the team with tools to navigate competing demands effectively and align with strategic goals.