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
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 Product Owner · JAN 2020 - MAR 2020
Product Discovery for an experience platform product. Shaped product strategy, conducted competitor analysis & user research, prepared prototyping.
Project was shelved for the time being for circumstantial 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)
Product 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.