Six years recommending the fix — now the one who ships it and owns the number.
01
The turn
Why a consultant decided she'd rather ship than recommend
02
Three bets that shipped
Proof, not adjectives — what she built and what moved
03
What's in the room
Artifacts and references a hiring manager can actually check
04
The ask
The seat she's ready for, and why now
CHAPTER 01
The pivot began the day a client asked her to stay past the engagement — and build it herself.
Led the save
Embedded as interim product owner at a fintech client mid-engagement; rebuilt onboarding and cut 90-day churn from 46% to 19% in one quarter.
Shipped without a title
Wrote the PRD, ran the sprint, and pushed the redesign to 100% of users herself — while still billing hours as "strategy advisor."
Built the team that outlasted her
Wrote the interview loop and hired four PMs before rotating off — the roadmap kept moving after she left the room.
REVENUE PROTECTED ACROSS THREE PRODUCT TURNAROUNDS
$18M
ARR she led without ever holding the product title
71% 90-day activation · 4 PMs hired and trained · 3 client engagements
CONSULTANT · ADVISORY ONLY
Handed off the roadmap at the airport gate
PRODUCT LEADER · OWNS THE OUTCOME
Ships the roadmap, owns the metric
PRD
Onboarding Rebuild PRD
12 pages that took 90-day activation from 34% to 71%
ROADMAP
12-Month Platform Roadmap
Sequenced three client bets into one prioritized plan
METRICS
Retention Dashboard
The first exec dashboard the CEO checked every Monday
PRICING
Usage-Based Pricing Model
Redesigned tiering, lifted net revenue retention 9 points
RESEARCH
40-Interview Churn Study
Root-caused churn to onboarding, not price
HIRING
PM Hiring Rubric
The interview loop she wrote and used to hire four PMs
LAUNCH
GA Launch Runbook
Shipped the redesign to 100% of users in six weeks
Plus three reference calls —
a CEO, a CPO, and the engineer
who shipped it with her.
The moment I stopped writing the recommendation and started defending the roadmap in front of engineering, I understood the job I actually wanted.
— Maya Chen, on the engagement that became her pivot
14
3
Before: consultant
recommendations only
After: embedded as
interim product owner
Why did the escalations disappear?
As long as she was advising, fixes lived in slide decks. Once she owned the backlog and shipped fixes herself — same team, same product — the issues that used to open every steering-committee meeting stopped happening.
Looking for a Director of Product seat where the mandate is: ship it, own the number, stay through the result.