Teresa Torres

World Pulse

Board Member

Product Talk

I help digital product teams adopt continuous product discovery practices including a regular cadence of customer interviews, rapid prototyping, and assumption testing. I emphasize strong critical thinking practices to ensure there is a strong connection between what the teams are learning in their research activities with the product decisions that they are making. 

Recent clients include: Allstate, CarMax, CapitalOne, Snagajob, Spotify, among others.

Product Discovery Coach

Master of Science in Learning & Organizational Change at Northwestern University

Instructor, Designing Solutions for Organizational Effectiveness

Executive Learning & Organizational Change Program at Northwestern University

Instructor, Co-Creating Change

Kindling

Advisor

AfterCollege

- Relaunched www.aftercollege.com to move away from traditional search and toward career exploration and discovery to better meet college students needs. 
- Repositioned employer products away from transactional job listing-based recruiting and toward on-campus relationship-building recruiting.
- Grew engaged users by 65% month over month and reduced audience churn by 3x.
- Redesigned product email strategy tripling MAU in first quarter.
- Introduced user-centered, hypothesis-driven product development practices.
- Launched content marketing strategy targeting college students (blog.aftercollege.com) and employers (employers.aftercollege.com).

Vice President, Products

Affinity Circles

Affinity Circles was acquired by Mingle LLC. 

Affinity Circles operates exclusive social networks for over 150 university alumni associations, professional organizations and honor societies, connecting 18 million members.

President & CEO

- Led an operational turnaround by focusing on core products, implementing new sales and account management processes, growing a key channel partner relationship and reducing operating expenses. 
- Extended operating runway from months to sustained profitability.

Vice President, Operations

- Drove product vision, strategy and execution for 2 revenue-generating product lines, including a social networking platform used by Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Purdue and 150+ other organizations and a corporate recruiting solution used by Google, Merrill Lynch, UBS and dozens of other Fortune 500 clients.
- Drove product discovery through client interviews, user research, usability studies and traffic analysis. 
- Managed a 4-person team of product managers and an interaction designer.

Senior Director, Product Management & User Experience Design

Become, Inc.

Become.com provides shoppers with product research and price comparison.

- Led design on core product from site launch to 3.5 million monthly unique visitors.
- Drove product discovery through user research, usability studies and site traffic analysis.
- Led design and development of key-performing features from concept to launch: “Suggest as You Type” Search Suggestions, “My Favorites” shopping cart, innovative shop filters including Find by Color and community-based shopping lists.

Product Manager / UI Designer

HighWire Press

HighWire Press, a division of the Stanford University Libraries, is the online publisher for over 1400 journals, books, reference works and other scholarly publications.

- Lead interaction designer for several Knowledge Environments (i.e. research collaboration communities) for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Oxford University Press and the International Bone and Mineral Society.
- Managed client design projects from concept to launch.
- Drove the design and implementation of several core features that became part of the Knowledge Environment platform including a suite of personalization services (i.e. saved searches, research folders, etc) and an innovative virtual journal that pooled topical articles from multiple publications.
- Implemented a robust template system that allowed diverse Knowledge Environments to maximize shared code while accommodating customizations.

Interaction Designer

As a product discovery coach, I help product teams make better decisions about what to build. I teach them how to:
- Identify clear business outcomes 
- Uncover unmet customer needs, pain points, and desires
- Discover the right solutions that deliver both business value and customer value

My book Continuous Discovery Habits has sold over 100,000 copies, we've taught over 15,000 students from 102 countries through the Product Talk Academy, and reach 100,000s of product people through our free blog posts and social media content.

If you aren't satisfied with how your teams decide what to build, get in touch.

I help digital product teams adopt continuous product discovery practices including a regular cadence of customer interviews, rapid prototyping, and assumption testing. I emphasize strong critical thinking practices to ensure there is a strong connection between what the teams are learning in their research activities with the product decisions that they are making. 

Recent clients include: Allstate, CarMax, CapitalOne, Snagajob, Spotify, among others. 

onXmaps, Inc.

As the Senior Product Director of Product Design, I lead, coach, and support a talented team of product designers and researchers. 

We utilize a customer-first approach to build the best off-pavement experiences for outdoor adventurers. We work within x-functional teams across the organization to iterate on three incredible products; onX Hunt, onX Offroad, and onX Backcountry.

Senior Director, Product Design & UX Research

Leading a platform product design organization, a CX strategy team, and building a product design practice. My team's shared mission is to move the customer to the center of how we discover and deliver customer experience.

Director, Platform Product Design & CX Strategy

Demonstrating customer discovery and outcome focus within teams. Built an omnichannel design strategy, established service design, and crafted a first draft experience framework for defining differentiated experience standards.

Principal UX, REI Experiences

USAA

Leading customer discovery within innovation, my team was responsible for research and design efforts associated with two growth business teams. These growth business teams aspired to create new and disruptive businesses for USAA Bank to benefit identified customer needs. Accountabilities included product vision, experience strategy, product design, and executive communications.

Director, Innovation - USAA Labs

Driving and influence the exploration of net-new digital business opportunities and partnerships for USAA bank by bringing together product strategy, customer experience insights, and technology. Responsible for developing and utilizing a disruptive innovation framework to build and test business models.

Strategic Innovation Lead - USAA Bank Innovation

Kim Wiessner Makes Art

Kim Wiessner Makes Art: a vibrant collection of handcrafted original watercolor work and printed home goods.

Company Owner

HSBC

Leading global UX initiatives to create, grow and govern global UX systems and best practices which significantly improved digital experiences globally (US, UAE, France, India, Australia, Hong Kong) within a range of business groups; Consumer, Insurance, SMB, Private Bank and Global Banking & Markets.

Global Creative Director, Digital Experience

Shaping insights into robust customer-centered designs through qualitative research and design iterations, many of my projects were omnichannel, including desktop, mobile, kiosk, and ATM. Most were global projects designed with customers outside of the US in mind.

Lead UX Designer

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory - PNNL

Created a significant increase in project value by focusing many US Govt. projects on human-centered design principles; my primary focus was to work with project owners to budget and plan for UX within their current and upcoming work cycles.

User Experience Design Research Scientist

QualitySmith, Inc

(Startup) Under the direct leadership of the CEO, I thrived in this fast-paced, agile, startup environment. I had a range of responsibilities that included UX design, funnel optimization, print and branding development, and SEO. I led experience strategy for 89Glass.com, RoofSmith.com, and QualitySmith.com

User Experience Designer

Walla Walla University

Developed net-new curriculum, led critiques, and helped students learn Adobe Illustrator through a series of design assignments.

Adjunct Faculty of Design

University of Idaho

While completing my design degree at University of Idaho, an opportunity came available to join the U of I web team, full-time. With technical experience in hand, I applied for this position and received an offer. My senior year of college was spent spit between my new 9-5 position working with a professional University of Idaho Web Services team and completing a full load of design classes which included a major thesis project.

UI Designer

A passionate design leader with over 15 years of experience building intuitive and engaging customer experiences. 

As the Senior Director of Product Design at onXmaps, Inc., I lead, coach, and support the talented team of product designers and UX researchers who build the best off-pavement products for outdoor adventure.

My core competencies include human-centered design, design strategy, generative and evaluative research, product discovery, cross-functional collaboration, UX management, customer journey management, platform UX, and design operations. 

I have a UX Management Certificate from Nielsen Norman Group and I have contributed to multiple publications and events on global UX, innovation, and failure as a learning tool. My mission is to move the customer to the center of how we discover and deliver customer experience, and to empower my team to grow and thrive in a dynamic and fast-paced growth environment.

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The Battle

Teresa Torres

Kimberly Wiessner

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