Bringing Women in Product Together
Contributed by Cait Porte
The Boston area is home to some of the country’s top tech companies – Akamai, Wayfair, TripAdvisor, Hubspot, IROBOT and most recently, GE decided to relocate the company headquarters to the Boston Seaport district. In 2014, Boston was 4th in the nation in total venture capital funding (coming in behind California and New York). Last year, employment in the product sector grew 8.5%, compared to a measly 1.5% for overall job growth. And yet, with all of this growth, there was nowhere for female product professionals to connect, learn and share.Boston Women in Product (BWP) started in late 2015 when three women realized they wanted a way to connect with other product professionals in the Boston area to address the challenges of working as a woman in a product role. With the support of the Boston Product Management Association (BPMA), Cait Porte, Sarah Ptalis and Vanessa Ferranto built the BWP group with the goal of bringing together product-focused women.
The BWP is a community that empowers women to be influences in their role, inspiring them to make a difference and grow in their career. Our mission is to inspire, equip and help advance women in product by encouraging career leadership, development, support, mentoring and building relationships with like-minded women.We are kicking off the group by hosting a three-part storytelling series. This series will feature women in product roles from Boston-area businesses sharing their experiences in leadership. We invite you to come share your experiences with your peers, network with female technologists and maybe even meet your next mentor!Our first event is Thursday, March 3rd from 6:30-8:00pm at Workbar in Cambridge. The event will feature Sarah McCrary, VP of Digital Strategy for Heartland Payment Systems and is sponsored by Blueport Commerce.
Brought to you by the BPMAFounders: Cait Porte, Sarah Ptalis, Vanessa FerrantoSponsors: Blueport Commerce
Group and Event Information:Purchase your tickets on EventbriteJoin our group on MeetUpConnect with us on LinkedInReferences:http://growwithtrellis.com/blog/the-top-10-boston-tech-companies/https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/01/31/tech-hiring-there-demand-for-everything/oDBAAlKJOYuxTqHiX7uhUI/story.htmlhttp://www.boston.com/jobs/2013/12/23/the-year-the-fastest-growing-jobs/GGDo2PVgihmpsurdiPGUhO/story.html#slide-1Image from Flickr Commons
Cait Porte is the Director of Product Management and Consumer Experience for Blueport Commerce in Boston’s South End. She is responsible for being the voice of the customer when structuring the immediate and long-term strategy for product development. She focuses her time in three key areas (business, technology and user experience) in order to create the optimal customer experience. Cait works to support and prioritize customer requests and acts as the product owner within the development scrum team. Originally from Long Island, she moved to Boston 7 years ago to start her career in Product Management. She has consistently delivered optimized e-commerce experiences by identifying revenue enhancing opportunities within new and existing product lines. She has spent time at both small start-ups and large global organizations in product management, responsible for identifying and implementing the product strategy for e-commerce platforms. She has also worked for small divisions of Experian and Reed Elsevier, focusing on enhancing existing products and bringing new products to their respective markets. Cait got her MBA from Babson College in 2014. While at Babson, she has focused on entrepreneurship and innovation, paying particularly close attention to the start-up community.