Meet Tiziana Polis — Product Manager @ Growth Tribe
Meet Tiziana (or Tizi, as everyone calls her in the office) who joined Preply as a Product Manager just over 9 months ago. Today, she shares a little bit about herself, what her typical day as a product manager looks like, why she decided to join Preply, and how she spends her free time in Barcelona.
What’s the scope of your current role at Preply?
I’m a Product Manager (PM) in the Growth Tribe, currently working on business bets for Preply. Our squad’s main responsibility is to explore new business opportunities for Preply. As a PM, I work with a cross-functional team of designers, researchers, copywriters, data analysts and engineers, and together we turn ideas into products that improve our users’ journey in learning a language. Our squad’s current scope (business bets) is great, it pushes the whole team to be ambitious, take risks and enables us to have a huge impact on the business.
What has been your career journey leading up to Preply?
I come from a business background; I studied business management at the London School of Economics and then jumped straight into strategy consulting at one of the Big 4. After two and a half years as a consultant, I moved into the startup world — still within the strategy team — but eventually found my way into Product. My initial experience in strategy was invaluable, and really gave me key skills that have helped me later enormously as a Product Manager. Having built up problem solving, critical thinking and communication skills was a huge advantage when switching to Product. Of course, there’s a whole set of new skills I’ve developed now too!
What motivated you to join the team?
I had three main drivers that motivated me to join Preply: the product, the stage of growth and the people.
- The company’s mission to shape the future of effective learning makes it easy to want to come to work to discuss, create and build products to help our users. And it’s truly a super cool, useful product.
- The second point is about the company’s stage of growth. When I first heard about Preply, the company was at a very interesting stage of growth, which I had not experienced with my previous jobs, and I really wanted to see and live it for myself. I have learnt so much in less than a year here!
- Finally, it’s really about the people here. Preply has introduced me to such a diverse and talented group of people, who inspire me to keep learning every day but also have loads of fun with.
How does your day-today life as a Product manager look like at Preply?
There are probably very few days that are exactly the same as a Product Manager. There are of course the common agile ceremonies: daily standups, refinement sessions, sprint plannings, retrospectives, etc. These are probably necessary to establish some sort of routine…but on top of that you’re constantly involved in different projects and processes. These include (but are not limited to): interviewing users to understand what they need, what they like, what their biggest pain points are; trawling through tableau dashboards or customer support reports; or discussing with the leadership team about new potential strategies and tests we could run. So, in short, the day-to-day in a Product Managers life is very varied and is rarely dull!
How would you describe your current team and what makes your colleagues unique?
Hackers. I’m part of a team of incredible people who are constantly questioning how things are currently done, suggesting new ideas and eventually building them. I’m very happy to be part of a team that is able to continuously reinvent itself.
What inspired you to go into your field of work?
What I love most about Product is that you actually build stuff to improve users’ experiences, and you get almost immediate feedback on whether it works or not. It’s the most tangible impact so far in my career. Another part of my role which I really enjoy is that I learn new things every day. I work with such diverse individuals (data, engineers, design, etc.) whose thought process differs from mine, so there’s always a different or new way of solving problems that I hadn’t thought of myself.
What’s the best part about living in Barcelona?
Before moving to Barcelona I lived in London, and as much as I love everything it has to offer, after 6 years there I missed the sun and warm weather I was used to (being from Peru), so moving to Barcelona was the most amazing next step. It has a great mix of everything I was looking for: fantastic weather, beach in your backyard, mountains, growing international community and a dynamic start-up scene.
What do you like to do in your free time?
I love doing sports — my all time favorite has been running, I’m that weird person who signs up to half marathon races for fun. I’ve also been flirting with the idea of triathlons. Just before the pandemic I took part in a short distance triathlon and I loved it!
Lastly, in the spirit of lifelong learning culture at Preply: What’s one thing you’re learning right now?
I’ve started conversational French lessons on Preply. I know a bit of French already, but I was lacking the confidence to speak it as I hadn’t used it in a very long time. So when I joined Preply, I decided to take advantage of our employee benefit of $200 credits everyone receives to learn anything they want on the platform. My French lessons are great: fun and personalised to my goals. I’ve also started boxing to expand beyond my running obsession — it’s a great sport that combines endurance, strength and coordination!
Would you like to join Tiziana to work on impactful projects, build innovative solutions with talented colleagues, and enjoy the buzzing startup scene of Barcelona?
We’re actively looking for talented candidates to join us in building the most effective language learning platform to help customers across the world to learn languages more effectively. If you’re excited by this challenge apply to one of our open positions!
