Hi, my name's Bertrand.

In case you'd like to know a little more about me, here's a more comprehensive intro.

I'm a Freelance Product Manager & Consultant​, used to be a ​Product Owner​ at Facelift bbt (Social Media Marketing) and​ a Product Manager​ at Smaato Inc. (Mobile Advertising Exchange), both in Hamburg, Germany.

I've got 6+ Years​ of Professional Product Management and Digital Marketing Experience, I'm a Certified Scrum Product Owner® (CSPO®), and I've got ​10+ years of total work experience.

I've got two Bachelor's degrees - one is a B.A.​ ​Marketing​ ​&​ ​Business Information Systems​ (“Wirtschaftsinformatik”), and the other one's a ​B.A. Audio Engineering​. I'm also almost done with an ​M.Sc.​ ​Business Information Systems​ which I work on in the evenings.

I was born & raised in Bonn, Germany in 1988. My dad's German, my mom's South African - so I speak both German and English​ natively. I have an American accent, though.

By night, I enjoy ​playing drums​ - and have done so for 16+ years, recording close to 10 full length records and playing a lot in between small local shows and an arena in Athens, Greece. I'm very fortunate to be endorsed by Masterwork Cymbals and Ice-Stix Germany. Unfortunately, I forgot how to play the piano.

Work Experience

The KadeWe Group GmbH, ​Berlin (GER)​

Freelance Product Owner · JAN 2021 - OCT 2021 (projected)

Building and expanding the eCommerce offering and omnichannel strategy for Berlin-based prestigious luxury retail brand KaDeWe at www.kadewe.de.

Race SCout GmbH/TLGG Consulting GMbH, ​Berlin (GER)​

Freelance Senior P​roduct Owner · NOV 2020 - JAN 2021

Race Scout is an online platform for Team Managers, Drivers, and Petrolheads to manage all their motorsport activities in one place.

Their mission was to create an application that supports drivers and team managers in performing all their tasks – from offering and finding driver seats to settling the bill via our online payment function.

Project has been shelved for pandemic-related reasons.

XING GmbH & Co. KG, ​Hamburg (GER)​

Freelance Product Owner · MAR 2020 - OCT 2020 (projected)

From March until July:

Freelance Product Owner for the Profile Team. Duties included:

  • Shaping, driving and executing the OKR-based product strategy in collaboration with key stakeholders

  • Leading an interdisciplinary team of Engineers, Designers, QAs, and Scrum Masters

  • Determining product requirements, creating concepts and validating them through prototyping, user feedback and A/B testing

  • Cooperating with stakeholders across the organization to be in line with the overall company strategy

From July until October:

Freelance Product Owner for the Entity Pages Team.

Hamburg Tourismus GmbH, ​Hamburg (GER)​

Freelance P​roduct Owner · JAN 2020 - MAR 2020

Product Discovery for an experience platform product. Shaped product strategy, conducted competitor analysis & user research, prepared prototyping.

Project has been shelved for pandemic-related reasons.

SPRING Axel springer digital news media, ​Berlin (GER)​

Freelance Product Owner · AUGUST 2019 - NOVEMBER 2019

Freelance Product Owner for a fixed scope of topics within a large-scale project; managing monetization, payment and third-party view features:

  • Content Access (& Restriction) Management

  • Premium/Upsell Landing Pages & Conversion/Payment Funnels

  • Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Support

  • Facebook Instant Articles Integration

Facelift bbt, ​Hamburg (GER)​

P​roduct Owner, Moderation · AUGUST 2017 - APRIL 2019

Product Owner for Community Management, Benchmarking and Third-Party Integrations (APIs & Data Persistence), managing 2 dev teams (on-site in Hamburg, and offshore in Lahore, PK).

  • Raised NPS by 3.4 points.

  • Improved data delivery speed by 3x with a Kafka/Kubernetes/ProtoBuf-based streaming data architecture.

  • Managed a UI/UX redesign.

  • Migrated an entire application to the offshore team.

Smaato Inc., ​Hamburg (GER)​

Product Manager · FEBRUARY 2016 - JULY 2017

Product Manager & Product Owner for Smaato's Publisher Platform SPX, and related service/infrastructure, managing an agile team of 6 engineers according to Scrum.

  • Increased payout efficiency by 4x by integrating a third-party solution.

  • Reduced support overhead by 40% with a Support section & workflow.

  • Prevented key account churn by building a custom data sync & store.

Smaato Inc., ​Hamburg (GER)​

(Senior) Product Marketing Manager · MAY 2014 - JANUARY 2016

Launched the SPX platform and owning the rollout (i.e. internal) and go-to-market (i.e. external) processes of various products and features.

  • Built an entire Knowledge Base (​see left​)​.

  • Improved internal SPX knowledge by 2-3x thru platform training & an exam.

  • Wrote API documentation.

  • Planned multiple large product rollouts & go to market strategies.

LEAP/, ​Berlin (GER)​

Content Marketing Manager · SEPTEMBER 2013 - APRIL 2014

Content marketing/off-page SEO for a CRO agency. Quality assurance/copy-editing for customer projects (German SMEs).

● Increased conversions for multiple customers by 2-5x.

gigmit.com, ​Berlin (GER)

Marketing & Sales Assistant · MAY 2013 - AUGUST 2013

Designing and coordinating online marketing activities & supporting Marketing and Sales daily business for the live music booking portal “gigmit.com”.

  • Increased inbound website/platform traffic by 10x (with €0 budget).

  • Increased signup conversions by 3x.

  • Opened up new marketing channels.

Smaato Inc., ​San Francisco (USA)​

Intern, Marketing · OCTOBER 2012 - MARCH 2013

Internship at Smaato Inc. in San Francisco.

Social media & email marketing, Content creation (blog), Sales & event assistance.

Universal Music Group, ​Berlin (GER)

Working Student, Supply Chain Management · NOVEMBER 2011 - AUGUST 2012

Working Student, Accounting · DECEMBER 2010 - JANUARY 2011

SAP Labs, Inc., ​Palo Alto, CA (USA)​

Intern, Marketing · AUGUST 2011 - OCTOBER 2011

Intern, Executive Briefing Center · SEPTEMBER 2010

EDUCATION

Otto-Friedrich-Universität, ​Bamberg (GER)​

M.Sc. Wirtschaftsinformatik · APRIL 2016 - APRIL 2020 (PROJECTED)

Business Information Systems​ (Master Of Science), thru extra occupational ​”VAWi” ​online correspondence (distance study) course.

Berlin School of Economics and Law, ​Berlin (GER)

B.A. Betriebswirtschaftslehre · APRIL 2010 - OCTOBER 2013

Business Administration (Bachelor Of Arts).

Marketing ​major, Business Information Systems minor.

SAE Institute Berlin/Middlesex University, Berlin (GER)/Middlesex (UK)​

B.A. Audio Engineering · APRIL 2007 - OCTOBER 2010

Bachelor Of Recording Arts. Sound Engineering, Acoustics and Audio/Music Production.

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