Program Manager at Topspin
San Francisco Bay Area
- Current
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- Artist Platform Program Manager at Topspin
- Past
- Education
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- Post University
- British Columbia Institute of Technology
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Tara Brown’s Summary
Software Innovation, Team Leadership, Customer Focus. Program Manager / Product Manager and Web Services Enthusiast experienced in the design, development and project management of world-class software and services. Possess a professional passion to innovate, adopt and form communities around new technologies. Skilled Mentor and People Developer that enables others to meet and exceed performance expectations. Exceptional communication and interpersonal skills with keen ability to build relationships of trust across groups and with Online Communities and Customers. Successfully broadens scope of influence beyond workgroup boarders through effective cross-group collaboration.
Tara Brown’s Experience
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Artist Platform Program Manager
Topspin
(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Computer Networking industry)
July 2008 — Present (1 year 1 month)
Master facilitator of a large product development team of product managers, designers, engineers, and testers. Expertly guide the team through project, iteration, and daily planning, execution, and completion of platform capabilities.
* Lead the project, iteration, and daily planning processes and execution to ensure that product capability goals are met.
* Contribute to the determination of what customer commitments can be made regarding product capabilities and ensure those commitments are met.
* Ensure that the product backlog contains the right level of organization, clarity, and conditions for completeness.
* Enact the appropriate Agile practices and coach team members to develop the right habits.
* Expedite the completion of high priority items and actively facilitate the removal of blockers.
* Actively communicate program status with the appropriate level of details and implications to the appropriate company functions. -
Sr. Lead Program Manager
Microsoft
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; MSFT; Computer Software industry)
June 2000 — July 2008 (8 years 2 months)
Office Live Workspace
- Employ strategic thinking to manage long-term planning process of innovative new services, projecting trends and devising strategies for Company to capitalize on opportunities.
- Work enthusiastically with team and other groups to achieve both strategic business and deadline-driven product goals.
Office Live Small Business
- Skillfully balanced Executive-level vision with Customer feedback through a prescriptive definition of Customer and key User scenarios that could be delivered within date-driven schedule.
- Contributed to overall product vision and goals, with Lead responsibility over feature areas. Throughout design and development process, kept team focus and decision making around clearly defined feature goals to ensure on-time delivery.
Hotmail
- Lead Program Manager for Microsoft Outlook Live and Microsoft Outlook Connector and features of MSN Hotmail and Calendar -
Web Developer/Project Mgr
BCAA
(Non-Profit; 501-1000 employees; Consumer Services industry)
November 1997 — June 2000 (2 years 8 months)
- Analyzed, designed, developed, and managed company-wide Intranet for 1000 users. This project reduced print expenditures significantly and improved Travel and Membership Agent efficiency at 24 service centers;
- Analyzed, managed customization, tested and implemented the Document Management System;
- Analyzed automobile insurance point of sale system and then managed outsourced vendors for the development, testing and implementation of two (2) versions of the private insurance system application. Version 1.01 developed using Visual Basic and Version 2.01 developed using Oracle forms and an Oracle database backend;
- Managed all in-house training for the Intranet and Document Management System;
- Consulted for on-going development of corporate Internet Website. -
Web Developer/Project Manager
Yaletown Technology Group
(Partnership; 1-10 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)
May 1995 — October 1997 (2 years 6 months)
- Analyzed, designed, developed and implemented web database applications for external clients using Microsoft WIN NT 4.0, Internet Information Server 3.0, Microsoft Visual Interdev, and SQL Server 6.5;
- Managed, designed and developed corporate Internet and Intranet using Microsoft WIN NT 4.0, Internet Information Server 3.0, Microsoft FrontPage and Adobe Photoshop
Tara Brown’s Education
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Post University
Bachelor of Science , Technology Management , 2002 — 2003
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British Columbia Institute of Technology
Associates Degree , Technology Management , 1992 — 1995
Additional Information
Tara Brown’s Websites:
Tara Brown’s Interests:
beta testing social networking applications, gaming, horse riding (dressage), music, digital photography, professional networking, user experience, usability research, international travel, mountain biking, movies, snowboarding, anything Canadian
Tara Brown’s Groups:
-Organizer, BarCampSeattle. An ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn about technology in an open environment.
-Microsoft Business Division Diversity Leadership Team. Represent Office Live organization in Company-wide effort to successfully recruit top women and unrepresented minorities and to promote advancement of top performers (FY08).
-Member, Office Live Mashup Girls, & Mix ’07 Mashup Team. Lead a team of women at Microsoft to build new concept protoypes based on web services mashup concepts.
-Beta Tester, various online services (http://tarabrown.pbwiki.com)
-Discussion Alias Owner, Canadians @ Microsoft Social Group. Organize events for 700+ Canadians working at Microsoft; and consult with Canadian Consulate for corporate relationship building purposes.
-Member, Seattle World Affairs Council. Participate in forums of discussion around critical global issues that relate back to the globalization and marketization of Microsoft services.
Tara Brown’s Contact Settings
Interested In:
- career opportunities
- consulting offers
- new ventures
- job inquiries
- expertise requests
- business deals
- reference requests
- getting back in touch
