When I was little, I wanted to be an inventor. I still want to be an inventor. I love using my creativity, and building solutions that improves peoples lives brings me real happiness. The closest I’ve gotten to this dream is a product manager. So professionally, I am a product manager for software companies and tech startups. You can think of a product manager as an intra-preneur vs an entrepreneur. I work with all areas of the business, from sales, marketing, and business development, to customer service, engineering, and of course directly with customers. My job is to identify user needs and pain points with our product. Once I understand the issues well enough, I pitch solutions to leadership, think banks or investors in your case, on how software can solve those problems. If they like it, they fund the idea and I get to work with a software engineering team to build the thing, and in that role I work really hard to ensure we build what was intended, and not a watered down version that misses the mark, on time and in-scope.
I’ve worked for a newly acquired financial startup out of Silicon Valley, and a Series F mega-start up out of Boston. I’ve been in product for the last 9 years, the bulk of my career, across industries including: education, financial, analytics, agriculture, and most recently, climate change. About six months ago, I interviewed with Amazon and Google, but when asked to move to Silicon Valley, I couldn’t do it. It didn’t make sense financially, and I don’t think living there would bring me happiness, be as fulfilling, or give me the opportunities to grow that Des Moines can. I decided I wanted to stay in Des Moines and become more involved in my Community, which is how I’ve found myself with you all.
I’m a Des Moines native, I went to East High School, as did my parents and grandparents. I graduated from the University of Iowa with degrees in marketing and management, was a marketing institute scholar where I helped businesses build marketing plans, and co-founded Arts Enterprise, a student organization that brought art and business students together to build transferrable creative skills. I currently own a home with my dog/son Leo, and live 3 doors down from my sister/best friend.
I specialize in integrations and partnerships, but my heart lives with the user experience. I love speaking with customers about their pain points, that feeling of truly understanding the issue and defining a solution, and watching that solution come to life and bring those customers happiness.
My superpowers as a product manager are my ability to read between the lines in what a customer says vs what they mean to identify the root issue or pain point, and my ability to launch. I’ve launched and led products through the full lifecycle 10+ times.
Ashley Kasper 