I work at New Knowledge as a Senior Product Manager. New Knowledge is an information integrity company. We help detect and mitigate disinformation and inauthentic behavior online. As a Product Manager, I help shape our solution and work with data scientists and engineers to shape our detection algorithms.
Location: Austin, TX
Discuss your general career path since graduating from UT.
My career has largely been at the intersection of people and technology. I help companies build products that people love. I’ve focused my career on leveraging technology in responsible ways to empower people to do more with less. Since graduating, I’ve worked at enterprise-scale, hyper-growth technology companies including Duo Security, WP Engine, Indeed.com, LIN Digital, and Bazaarvoice.
How did your BDP experience influence your career path and interests?
During the program students don’t just learn new vocational skills, students also developed a new way of thinking across disciplines. Being able to think in a cross-disciplinary manner truly expands your ability to see problems from different perspectives and allows you to create and develop unique solutions that just one discipline couldn’t identify. This cross-disciplinary thinking opens you up in a way that employers value. They see your ability to solve problems across functions and departments, and in our ever-more-connected world, this is a huge asset that makes you stand out in the job market.
What do you value most about your BDP experience?
The BDPs gave me access to classes in various schools across the university that I otherwise would not have been able to take. I was able to study business, theatre, computer science, and digital art & media in my three years at UT. That’s thanks to breadth of classes within the BDP and the amazing BDP advisors who helped me fit all those classes into my degree plan. My Connecting Experiences also forced me to get out of my comfort zone and actually apply my skills to solve real problems. My first project was working with a multimedia theatre company, which is where I figured out I wanted to pursue a career in technology rather than just theatre. My final Connecting Experience was working as the IT Manager for the New Works Festival on campus. That project gave me a portfolio showcasing how I could apply technology to solve real life problems. I leveraged that portfolio while interviewing with companies after graduation, which ultimately helped me break into the tech industry.
In what ways did an interdisciplinary education prepare you for what you are currently doing?
Today’s knowledge workers are no longer solving problems in a vacuum of a single department. They are working on cross-functional, multi-disciplinary, global teams. This is exactly what an interdisciplinary education teaches you to do. As a Product Manager, I work with software engineers, designers, sales, and support teams. Being able to understand their needs and goals, and view problems from different perspectives, allows me to more effectively bring to market experiences and solutions that solve customer pain points, are delightful to use, and have sustainable business models. That is interdisciplinary thinking at work.