#GirlsWhoProduct: Gabrielle Bufrem
By Katsiaryna Drozhzha on May 28, 2018.
Gabrielle Bufrem is a Product Manager at Pivotal Labs in Paris where she works with a range of clients from enterprise to start-ups in order to build user-centered products. She is originally from Brazil, has lived in 13 cities around the world across 10 different countries, and has built products across North America, Europe, and Asia. She is passionate about the intersection of product management and design — so much so that she is currently conducting research with Brown PHD students on how to improve collaboration in design. She loves to travel and explore different countries, is a barista and coffee lover, and hopes to soon be the proud owner of a puppy.
When and how did you first become fascinated with a product management role?
I keep joking that I have been a PM all my life, I just didn’t know about it.
To be honest, I didn’t know that Product Management was a real job until I started working at Google as a Business-Associate intern. The products that I was dealing with were more like ‘ready to be shot out to the customers’ and I wanted to get involved in the earlier part of the process. I wanted to be a person shaping the product and creating technology because I was fascinated with the idea of setting the direction to the product, being the driver behind its execution and prioritization, while making sure that we’re building the right thing.
Was it difficult to land your first job?
I would say it was a process and not the most straightforward one. I started getting into technology during my volunteering for a tech NGO called The School Fund. It’s a website that connects people from all around the world to talented children in developing countries to help fund their education. I have always been into the cause and education, and this experience made me fall in love with technology. When you work in the NGO, you need to make things work despite lack of proper training. It is a fantastic place to learn.
When I graduated, I joined a trainee program at EF Education First where I worked directly for our company’s president in innovative solutions in technology. I had been doing PM work without the title, a trend I see across my colleagues and the industry overall. After my management trainee program by manager asked me what kind of job I wanted to keep challenging myself. I said that I wanted to be a Product Manager, that even though I did not have the proper training, I’d teach myself, learn from others, and continue to build digital products as I had been as a trainee.
What was your first step in becoming a professional?
I was actually doing a product management work previously to becoming a product manager. I think that it’s the like true with a lot of people in the profession. In my case, I was already managing an app and I was deciding what we were going to build, but I just didn’t have a job title. For me, to be an attractive product manager, I needed to learn from someone else. I found an amazing mentor at the company that I worked for. He allowed me to shadow him and learn in practice from what he was doing. I joined him for planning meetings, startup events, always making sure to take notes. I knew it would be really important for me to accompany that person because he was a terrific Product Manager.
I also got really close to our product designers and engineers and I asked them what they valued in a product manager and how I could become a better PM for them. I tried to find people with each side of the puzzle and ask them how I could become better for their discipline.
What is the best way to forge your own path and find somebody to guide you through?
I think it’s not about a mentor finding you; it’s about you finding a mentor and your path. If you are determined enough, you will find the right person. For me, I did it by going to a lot of Meetups and events that, sometimes, I had not even been invited to. I would show up and try to get in and meet interesting people there. Or, I would join other teams at UX meetups or internal corporate events, for example. It was a great way to start connections. A mentorship relationship to me is about finding mutualistic symbiosis — you should both grow from the connection. I am very thankful to my mentors and always try to give back to both them and newcomers to the product management community.
You have done a lot for human cause, including volunteering, working for NGOs etc. What did you bring from all of this experience to your profession of a Product Manager?
From all of my volunteering experiences, I became more self-aware, empathetic, and more appreciative of small things. Volunteering allowed me to see and work in very different realities than my own, enabling me to see things from different angles teaching me to have firm opinions loosely held. It also taught me to be a doer: there is no “job description” for a volunteer — you do what needs to be done. There is typically one for a product manager when you start, but, for me, a lot of the job is to be a loyal server/leader to your team, and for that, you also do what needs to be done!
In addition to volunteer work, studying International Relations also helped me be a better product manager. My job as a PM is doing International Relations. For example, in dealing with the stakeholders where everyone has different needs and values, my job is to understand those, empathize with them and, see what steps I can take to prioritize effectively so that the critical needs are met, and the values are respected.
In your experience working abroad, have you seen gender discrimination at the workplace?
Yes, I did notice cultural and gender differences in the workplace while working abroad. Let’s take as an example my recent experience in Singapore, where I worked for four months. Even though it was a great experience to work in Asia, I felt more repression there for being a woman. There were situations when I would share an idea, and no one would react. When a man would share the same idea minutes later, everyone agreed with him. There’s this kind of unspoken repression: no one says it to you, but you can feel it in the room, especially when you are the only women there.
Despite and because of the challenges, I think that living in different countries made me a better product manager. When I used to live in Brazil or in the United States, I would take things for granted since the culture is what I was used to. When I moved to France, a lot of my assumptions were questioned. It made me go back and look at what that society values, how those values were different from my own, and how that changed that society’s behaviors. If you think about it, it is not that different from building products: your users are, for the most part, not you. Most of the time, they’ll be using it in a different environment than the one you live in. They have different values than you do, and also behave in a different way. Moving abroad was my crash-course in product management.
Where to get international experience in the role of a product manager?
First and foremost, look within your company. Do they have some product teams in which you would work with people from different countries? Does your company have an international office that you can apply for a transfer or an assignment in? Does any of your user-research make sense to be done abroad? I feel that I am extremely lucky at Pivotal to get the opportunity to travel and work in different countries. Ask your company; maybe they have such opportunities too. Going to the conferences is also a powerful tool. For example, I have recently spoken at the conference in London where I learned a lot about UK policy for technology that I don’t think I would have learned otherwise being in France.
How can we help other women fight injustice and gender inequalities in a product world?
It is extremely powerful to have other women peers helping and supporting you. It’s not all roses, of course. It’s still a male-dominated field, and I see a lot of males in the profession. One thing that is helpful for me is to find “your people”. Look out for other women who are in the leadership in these companies, women who can help you, and stick together with them. A lot of my friends are product managers. We all help each out. For example, when I submit pitches to conferences, they review my applications, we review each other’s promo packets and are always available to strategize when need be.
Another organization that has been a great help for me is Women in Product. I feel that it’s such a beautiful community and going there makes me very happy. This group is a great support to women in product management and is very active on Facebook. I feel like every time I post something there; I can easily get around 15 replies in a day. It’s also an excellent opportunity for beginners to get advice from product managers with more experience. Sometimes I see posts like ‘Hi, I am looking for a job. Can someone review my resume?’ or ‘I am interviewing for this or for that. Can someone help me?’ There is only one rule: if you ask for something, you should give something back. It is one of my favorite places to get inspired, and get /give help!
Do you think that women have natural attributions that make them better PMs?
I think that both women and men have amazing qualities. It’s more about whether you love the job and how excited you are about it. We all have our goals and inspirations and some of those work well with being a product manager. I think that sometimes women need to go for it more even when they feel like they do not meet all the qualifications (most people don’t and that is okay). What I really like at Pivotal is that whenever we have like a job opening we say something like: ‘Women are less likely to nominate themselves. Please, nominate yourselves.’’ We expose that to people so that they are more inclined to apply.
What advice would you give to women who want to become product managers?
I think that the best way to enter into product management is to start doing it. Regardless of which role you are, find the way to start PMing on the side. Product management is that type of job that you don’t get by reading a book or taking a course. Product Management needs hands-on learning, so the more you can show that you have done something, the better. Create a product, show it to your manager, and say “hey, I have been working on this and that and this is where I want to go.” For example, I have heard this inspiring story from a woman who created a website (her product) called ‘Stellar Peers’ that helps people practice PM interviews. PM interviews are hard and require a lot of practice: she detected a need, solved it (very effective by the way), and now she can showcase concretely something that she built herself. Show rather than tell to get into product!
Get connected with Gabrielle on Linkedin , see what she has to say on Twitter.
About #GirlsWhoProduct
#GirlsWhoProduct is a series of interviews with women that have been able to beat the ‘product’ ceiling and get into the profession. Our mission is to inspire, connect and empower more women to get into product roles and help them consider ‘product’ as a venue of personal and professional growth.
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