United States

Texas A&M University - San Antonio

The University of Texas at San Antonio

Brian Smith

Senior Product Manager, Conversational AI

Introduce yourself, define mentoring expectations and goals. Learn and grow together.

General mentorship

How to set up the team for success by defining and measuring team's performance.

Choosing metrics and team goals

Understanding factors that lead to a motivated team - recognition, communication and more.

Keeping team members motivated

Understand the process of training, motivating and directing your team members.

Managing people

Making remote and globally distributed teams work for you and your needs.

Working remotely

Strategies for maximizing your design internship or co-op program.

Getting the most out of my internship

Tips for transitioning into a new role or company.

Changing roles

Get actionable feedback on your resume or portfolio.

Resume and portfolio review

How to create a positive workplace culture that drives collaboration and productivity?

Fostering a good team culture

Practice HR, technical and behavioural interviews with mentors.

Practice mock interviews

Learn essential burnout prevention techniques and replenish physical and emotional energy.

Managing burnout

How to successfully prepare and position yourself for a job promotion?

How to get promoted

How to ask for a promotion and negotiate for salary raise?

Negotiating a job offer

Steps to building and maintaining a strong, cohesive and effective team.

Building an effective team

Learn the tips to successfully manage a team in a remote environment.

Managing a remote team

Talk to people who have learned to manage their imposter syndrome.

Dealing with imposter syndrome

Talk to people who've broken into the tech industry and learn their stories.

Breaking into tech

Best practices for running productive design critiques.

Running effective design critiques

How to define and execute a successful launch and managing stakeholders expectations. (eg. MVP)

Launching new products or features

Methods of prototyping and solution validation. When to use which kind of prototype (eg. Webflow, Notion, etc)

Prototyping methods and tips

Manage team expectations and get the most out of your meetings.

Running effective meetings

Identify and define potential product problems and generating possible solutions.

Identifying problems vs solutions

Learn how to properly present your work and share ideas and opinions.

Presenting your work with impact

Tips on how to work and collaborate with designers.

Working with designers

How to work with team members with different skill sets but towards a common goal?

Working cross-functionally

Methods and models of exploring, deciding and delivering design.

Building a design process

How to think about design career paths and what progression looks like for designers?

Design career path

Learn the career path and progression for product managers.

Product management career path

Managing being the only designer at your company and working with non-designers.

Being the only designer

Explore different generative and evaluative research techniques. User research synthesis and presentation.

Conducting good user research

Ways and resources to improve your design skills.

Improving design skills

Navigating the working relationship with PM's and engineers as a designer.

Working with product and engineering

How to set up product analytics and metrics to track success?

Leveraging Product Analytics

How to create personas, and leverage them in design.

Creating and leveraging user personas

Ways to provide constructive feedback to team members.

Giving effective feedback

How to define an ambitious product vision and how to best communicate it to stakeholders?

Creating a product vision

Tips on how to work and collaborate with engineers and developers.

Working with engineers

Learn the best ways to answer technical interview questions with frameworks

Acing technical interview questions

What is a successful user onboarding flow and how to achieve it?

Onboarding new users

Best practices for documenting projects, epics, and stories

Writing product requirement documents

How to conduct interviews, what to ask, and how to analyze your results? (eg. user interview)

Conducting effective customer interviews

What are design systems and how to work with them?

Building successful design systems

Talk to other immigrants about the nuances and challenges of working in the tech industry.

Being an immigrant in tech

Keeping your sanity, career growth and job satisfaction.

Surviving a merger or acquisition

Navigating micro-aggression, getting paid what you are worth and finding a community.

Brian Smith🇺🇸