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The Product Manager

Hannah Clark - The Product Manager

107 episodes

4 days ago

There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors in product right now—especially when it comes to AI. Shiny tools and slick prototypes are masquerading as production-ready solutions, and teams are feeling the pressure to keep up. But what happens when the hype outpaces the fundamentals? Hannah sits down with Matt Graney, CPO of Celigo, to talk about bad product plays in disguise—from vibe coding and no-code illusions to AI-fueled shortcuts that chip away at real product rigor. With decades in B2B product a...

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There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors in product right now—especially when it comes to AI. Shiny tools and slick prototypes are masquerading as production-ready solutions, and teams are feeling the pressure to keep up. But what happens when the hype outpaces the fundamentals? Hannah sits down with Matt Graney, CPO of Celigo, to talk about bad product plays in disguise—from vibe coding and no-code illusions to AI-fueled shortcuts that chip away at real product rigor. With decades in B2B product a...

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Episodes (20/107)

The Product Manager

The Most Misleading Plays in Product, Unmasked

There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors in product right now—especially when it comes to AI. Shiny tools and slick prototypes are masquerading as production-ready solutions, and teams are feeling the pressure to keep up. But what happens when the hype outpaces the fundamentals? Hannah sits down with Matt Graney, CPO of Celigo, to talk about bad product plays in disguise—from vibe coding and no-code illusions to AI-fueled shortcuts that chip away at real product rigor. With decades in B2B product a...

2 weeks ago

20 minutes

The Product Manager

The Product Leader’s Guide to Buyer Psychology

Every product team faces the same monster: conversion optimization. But in 2025, the game has changed. With AI agents influencing discovery and AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) reshaping how people (and machines) interpret messaging, teams are now marketing to both human and agentic audiences. In this episode, Hannah Clark sits down with Chris Silvestri, founder of Conversion Alchemy, to unpack how product teams can use psychology and UX insights to craft messaging that drives both adoption a...

3 weeks ago

30 minutes

The Product Manager

Why It’s So Hard to Adopt New Skills (with Maxine Anderson, Co-Founder & CPO at Arist)

Every product manager obsesses over leadership styles, onboarding flows, and GTM strategies—but what if the biggest differentiator of success comes down to something much simpler? Learning. In this episode, Hannah Clark sits down with Maxine Anderson, Co-Founder and CPO of Arist, a text-based learning platform that flips traditional corporate education on its head. Maxine started her career in rural Oregon classrooms, where she saw firsthand how inaccessible and ineffective most learning envi...

2 months ago

28 minutes

The Product Manager

How American Express 4x Its Experimentation Velocity in 1 Year (with Jean Castanon, VP of Digital Product at American Express)

Every product leader wrestles with the same tradeoff: move fast and risk breaking things, or move slow and risk irrelevance. But what if the real accelerator wasn’t cutting corners—it was systematizing experimentation? In this episode, Hannah Clark sits down with Jean Castanon, VP of Digital Product at American Express, to explore how his team quadrupled their testing velocity in a year, redefined what “success” in experiments really means, and built a referral program that became Amex’s seco...

2 months ago

19 minutes

The Product Manager

How to Navigate “Growing Pains” in Scaling Orgs (with Matthew Wensing, Head of Product and Design at Customer.io)

Startups don’t get easier with age—they just get more complex. Much like teenagers, scale-ups are constantly outgrowing their structures, still figuring out their identity, and not always great at setting realistic goals. But this awkward “in-between” stage isn’t a failure—it’s a rite of passage on the path to becoming a mature company. In this episode, Hannah sits down with Matt Wensing, Head of Product and Design at Customer.io, who has seen scaling from nearly every angle: founder, product...

3 months ago

45 minutes

The Product Manager

How to Balance Speed and Value: The Essential Role of Empathy in the AI Product Era (with Megan O'Rourke, Executive Director of Product at Metalab)

The Tin Man’s silk heart in The Wizard of Oz is a perfect metaphor for AI right now—it can convincingly mimic empathy, but it’s not the real thing. In this episode, Hannah Clark sits down with Megan O’Rourke, Executive Director of Product at Metalab, to explore the delicate balance between AI-powered productivity and human-driven resonance. They dive into why empathy and storytelling are irreplaceable in both product development and leadership, and the risks we run if we trade them away for e...

3 months ago

41 minutes

The Product Manager

How to Adapt to the New Gold Standard in Product Management (with Maryam Ashoori, VP of Product and Engineering at IBM Watsonx)

Product management isn’t just evolving—it’s getting completely rewritten. In this episode, Hannah sits down with Dr. Maryam Ashoori, VP of Product and Engineering at IBM Watsonx, to talk about how AI is reshaping not only the tools product managers use, but the very nature of the role itself. Maryam brings two decades of experience in AI across design, research, and engineering, and shares what she's seeing from the front lines of one of the most powerful Gen AI platforms on the planet. They ...

3 months ago

29 minutes

The Product Manager

How I Survived the Past 3 Years in Product Leadership (with Michael Luchen, Product Transformation Architect)

When AI was just a sci-fi footnote and “product transformation” sounded like a buzzword, Michael Luchen was already in the trenches. In this episode, Hannah sits down with the original host of The Product Manager Podcast to unpack three years of change—from his early missteps to building scalable systems and navigating the AI tidal wave with nuance and strategy. Michael, now a self-described "Product Transformation Architect," brings candor and depth as he reflects on what it really takes to ...

3 months ago

29 minutes

The Product Manager

Vibe Coding 101: A Zero-to-One Hands-On Workshop (with Drew Falkman, Principal at Moves The Needle Studio)

If you’ve heard the buzz about Vibe Coding but aren’t quite sure what’s real and what’s hype, this episode is your shortcut to clarity. Recorded live at our hands-on Vibe Coding Workshop, this 30-minute seminar with Drew Falkman (Principal at Moves The Needle) unpacks what Vibe Coding actually is, where it fits in the product lifecycle, and how non-technical folks are already using it to ship tools and prototypes—without writing a line of code. Joined by co-host Katie Sanders, Hannah leads a ...

3 months ago

20 minutes

The Product Manager

How to Turn Neurodivergent 'Challenges' Into Leadership Superpowers (with Frankie Berkoben)

ADHD might be the product trait nobody’s putting on their resume—but maybe they should. In this episode, Hannah sits down with executive coach Frankie Berkoben to unpack the complex intersection of ADHD, executive function, and product leadership. Together, they explore how ADHD traits like systems thinking, emotional intelligence, and comfort with ambiguity make product people exceptional—and why those same strengths often lead to burnout, inconsistency, or shame in traditional work environm...

4 months ago

48 minutes

The Product Manager

Finding Your Unfair Advantage in Product’s Wild West Era (with Margaret-Ann Seger, Head of Product at Statsig)

Product-market fit isn’t enough anymore. In an age where AI is making it easier for anyone to ship a half-decent product, the real battleground is distribution. Margaret-Ann Seger (Head of Product at Statsig) joins Hannah Clark to talk about how AI is reshaping go-to-market strategy, why speed and feedback loops are becoming product differentiators, and how her team at Statsig is baking collaboration and empathy into every part of their product dev cycle. From lo-fi GTM experiments to the pow...

4 months ago

26 minutes

The Product Manager

The Systems Thinking Process Used by the Most Adaptable Product Leaders (with Sheryl Cababa, Author of Closing the Loop)

What if instead of racing to solve problems, you paused to map the entire system first? In this episode, Hannah sits down with Sheryl Cababa—author of Closing the Loop: Systems Thinking for Designers and founder of Optimistic Design—to talk about what it really means to design for complexity. From AI adoption to organizational policy changes, Sheryl brings a systems lens to the decisions leaders make (often too hastily) in fast-moving environments. They explore how design leaders can avoid sh...

4 months ago

42 minutes

The Product Manager

What Does Engineering Excellence Look Like in the Age of AI? (with Anish Dhar, Co-founder and CEO of Cortex.io)

The “AI is coming for your job” headlines have been exhausting—especially if you're a software engineer. But as Cortex.io founder Anish Dhar explains, engineering isn’t dying; it's evolving. In this episode, Hannah sits down with Anish to unpack what engineering excellence actually means in 2025, why measuring developer productivity is still wildly misunderstood, and where AI coding tools fit into the real world of production-scale systems. Spoiler: you can’t vibe-code your way to a million u...

5 months ago

29 minutes

The Product Manager

How to Make Passion Your Differentiator in an AI-Driven World (with Norma Løvhaugen, VP Strategy at Neat)

What does passion really look like on a product team? In this episode, Hannah sits down with Norma Løvhaugen, VP Strategy at Neat, to unpack how passion fuels team collaboration, customer empathy, and a culture of innovation. They explore the difference between building products with passion versus simply shipping features—and why that distinction matters more than ever in an age of generative AI. Norma shares how Neat channels passion into a uniquely cohesive product experience, from obsessi...

5 months ago

38 minutes

The Product Manager

Mastercard’s SVP of Global Products on How to Enter New Markets (with Simone Paul Tamussin)

Expanding internationally is more complex than ever, with economic uncertainty, shifting regulations, and unpredictable tariffs creating constant challenges. While overseas opportunities can be tempting, businesses must navigate a landscape full of blind spots and evolving risks that demand careful planning and adaptability. Simone Tamussin, SVP of Product Management at Mastercard Gateway, shares valuable insights from his experience working with companies facing these hurdles. He discusses c...

5 months ago

24 minutes

The Product Manager

Managing Stakeholder Perception: How Product Leaders Build—and Lose—Influence (with Carolyn Dolezal & Kate Leto)

Two seasoned executive coaches, Carolyn Dolezal and Kate Leto, share candid insights on the realities of executive leadership and how to truly earn the trust and confidence of your team and stakeholders. They debunk common myths and explore how personal agendas can undermine leadership effectiveness, while offering practical advice for building influence even when the odds aren’t in your favor. The conversation also covers how to recover from early leadership missteps and develop the skills n...

5 months ago

35 minutes

The Product Manager

How Parenting Made Me a Better Product Leader (with Anuj Jhunjhunwala, Director of Product at Merge)

Becoming a parent profoundly changes how you approach product leadership, blending personal and professional challenges in unexpected ways. Anuj Jhunjhunwala, Director of Product at Merge, shares how parenting teaches lessons in influence without authority, clear communication, and time management that directly apply to leading products. Anuj offers candid insights on how managing toddlers parallels managing stakeholders, why career growth feels more like navigating a mountain than climbing a...

6 months ago

32 minutes

The Product Manager

The AI-Enhanced Team: A New Playbook for Product Leaders (with Andrew Saxe, VP of Product at Smartling)

As we navigate the AI revolution, we’re collectively creating a new reality that’s far from utopian, and both leaders and individual contributors are struggling to find their way through the uncertainty. Questions around workplace ethics, output quality, and long-term impacts are top of mind for many, but this presents an opportunity to learn from each other’s breakthroughs and shape the future we want to see. Andrew Saxe, VP of Product at Smartling, shares his experience leading a company th...

6 months ago

27 minutes

The Product Manager

How to Be ‘Limitless’: The Mindset Shift That Opens Doors (with Uma Subramanian, Founder of Limitless Leaders)

What's holding you back from reaching your next level? For many, the biggest obstacle is often a mental one, not a physical one. By shifting your perspective and zooming out, you can find pathways around the challenges that seem insurmountable. Uma Subramanian, founder of Limitless Leaders and former Microsoft leader, shares her journey of achieving extraordinary success by adopting a limitless mindset. Uma explains how she overcame limiting beliefs, reframed her mindset, and transformed her ...

6 months ago

32 minutes

The Product Manager

How to Use AI to Research Like a Researcher (with Cori Widen, User Research Lead at Photoroom)

Research has often suffered from shortcuts, assumptions, and poorly conducted user interviews, long before AI entered the picture. While there are concerns about AI exacerbating these issues, today we’re exploring how AI can actually improve research practices by standardizing and democratizing good research at scale. Cori Widen, User Research Lead at Photoroom, joins us to share how AI is being leveraged to transform research practices at her company. She discusses the cultural mindset that ...

6 months ago

23 minutes