Resume

Jen Sheldon, Product Innovator and Strategic Leader.

Nearly two decades of experience producing and managing development for breakthrough platforms and products. Deep expertise in user experience design, especially for 0-1 consumer products leveraging emerging technologies to educate, entertain and inform. Passionate about building high-quality creative systems to inspire and support responsible learning for the next generation.

Product Management & Innovation

Head of Innovation, Creative Play Lab, The LEGO Group

September 2021 - present | London, UK

• Shaped innovation strategy and operating model for the Creative Play Lab, empowering global R&D leaders to pioneer breakthrough product lines offering measurable lifetime value to children and families, while providing long-term incremental profit for the LEGO Group.

• Built and managed robust pipeline of relevant core innovations, each forecasting >1B DKK incremental revenue annually, by empowering, coaching and leading 8 multi-functional teams (spanning Design, Engineering, Research, Marketing) across product development lifecycles.

• Partnered with executive stakeholders across departments to align innovation initiatives with LEGO’s long-term strategic vision and business priorities. Took additional concurrent leadership role in Digital Consumer Engagement department to shape and accelerate opportunities for fluid (digital-physical) play development. As Senior Director of Kids’ Engagement, drove strategic pivot from niche beta mobile app to launch successful device-agnostic global membership service. Oversaw award-winning Doom the Gloom internet safety game and Responsible Innovation in Technology for Children policy development.

• Led end-to-end development of DUPLO Interactive Adventure Train, increasing customer satisfaction and lifetime value.

• Guided LEGO City Missions pilot program into fully-scaled global offering through agile, insight-led development. Praised for fostering creativity and problem-solving skills in children and recognized for Best Creative and Innovative Execution as well as Creative Campaign of the Year in industry awards, the product line encourages building with interactive stories rather than instructions.

Staff Product Manager, Sony PlayStation 

June 2019 - July 2021 | San Francisco, CA

• Set vision, strategy, scope and priority roadmap for PlayStation’s new universal search experience & platform services worldwide, unifying and enhancing user experience across console, web and app platforms. Achieved 80% success rate for consumers finding desired content within top 10 results.

• Defined vision, strategy, and roadmap for a personalized new feature discovery system to help gamers learn new ways to play across the PlayStation ecosystem (console, mobile, web).

• Drove unprecedented worldwide take home beta program during pandemic to ensure a performant, polished and on-time global PlayStation 5 launch, reaching 40 million users across 78 countries and generating $10 billion in revenue. Recognized with industry awards.

Product Management Lead, Elephant  

June 2017 - June 2019 | Cupertino, CA

• Lead product management for new platform end-to-end: from discovery, vision, strategy, and requirements to roadmap, distribution, localization and optimization worldwide. Embedded at client. Client: Apple

• Product management advisor for Elephant’s Apple engagements.

Head of Product, English Language Arts, TenMarks Education

June 2016 - February 2017 , Foster City, CA

• Expanded TenMarks Education's personalized learning program, used by 85% of U.S school districts for math, by defining and building a new product category for English Language Arts.

• Defined new Writing product vision, strategy, requirements, roadmap, and go-to-market plan. Managed product lifecycle, from research, design and development to production, distribution and user testing.

• Drove rapid experiments for new feature design by iterating through ideas and testing hypotheses to validate assumptions.

• Led competitive market analyses, design sprints, user research and proposal reviews with senior management to evaluate opportunities to achieve product-market fit.

Director of Product, IfOnly Marketplace, IfOnly

March 2015 -  May 2016 | San Francisco, CA     

• Directed product management and product design for the IfOnly Marketplace: the world’s first online experience marketplace with philanthropic give-back built into every sale.

• Led mobile, discovery, talent portal, and a suite of tools enabling talent (sellers) to consistently deliver high quality bespoke experiences.

• Led usability research on talent (seller) on-boarding and post-purchase experience fulfillment. Defined/refined new post-purchase features for vendors including Fulfillment To-Do List, Order Modification System, and Omni-Channel Communication System.

• Launched companies first iOS and Android apps. Optimized site for mobile use.

Director of Product, Sourcebits Studio, Sourcebits

January 2014 - February 2015 | San Francisco, CA

• Defined vision, strategy, requirements, and roadmap for new social app, and, positioned it in competitive international marketplace. Pitched product and business proposals to angel investors resulting in funding to support product development and launch. Incorporated business to support app, managed P&L, updated investors monthly. Built and directed lean team through product ideation, development, usability research and launch.

• As head of product studio, built and directed usability research lab. Mentored product managers within organization to define new app concepts and feature sets throughout product life-cycles.Led discovery workshops to refine new mobile app ideas for clients.

Principal Product Manager, Reverb Technologies (formerly Wordnik)     

November 2012 - November 2013 | San Mateo, CA

• Defined, from concept through launch and redesign, a personalized news discovery app that helps people make better connections through our understanding of language. The award-winning Reverb app reached #1 in the App Store overall and #1 in the News category.

• Built social and content discovery experiences leveraging machine learning and natural language processing technologies.

• Developed ideas into engineering requirements, detailed wireframes, user experience flows, and test cases for feature validation. Defined and drove implementation and analysis of key metrics and cohort analysis of key features.

• Prioritized roadmap, coordinated with engineering, design, marketing and executives.

Product Manager, Mobile Social Gaming Platform, GREE International    

April - November 2012 | San Francisco, CA

• Launched GREE's social-mobile gaming platform in the U.S. market. Defined social-mobile gaming platform vision, strategy, requirements and roadmap for the global market.

• Lead definition, design and development of new social networking features by assessing consumer needs, writing user stories, creating wireframes, defining product specifications, and working with 1st and 3rd party studios for integration.

• Travelled to Tokyo to build consensus between game studios and cross-functional platform teams.

Product Manager, Social Games, Nickelodeon/MTV Networks    

July - November 2011 | San Francisco, CA

• Defined product strategy, requirements and roadmap for social games including Nickelodeon’s award-winning MMO "MonkeyQuest" and the 5-star social game spoofing MTV’s "Jersey Shore" on Facebook. Kept the “shore” game fresh by leading brainstorming sessions to create weekly content jokes about new episodes to release in time with the show.

• Managed the gathering, processing, and interpretation of user behaviors for live social games. Integrated usability studies, user research and market analysis into requirements to ensure games satisfy evolving player needs and target appropriate audiences.

• Wrote specifications, prioritized features, built consensus, and facilitated communication throughout game development process.
  

Engineering Project Management

Producer, iWork Applications, iBooks 2.0 and iBooks Author, Apple Inc.    

September 2010 - April 2011 | Cupertino, CA

• Managed the iterative design process to re-conceive the iWork product suite- Keynote, Pages and Numbers- for iPad and iPhone. Highlights include leading design and development of interactive in-app tutorials for the debut of the iWork suite on iPad and iPhone, and leading the design of a new batch of transition animations for Keynote.

• Managed product design from concept to functional prototype for two brand new products— iBooks 2.0 interactive textbooks for iPad and iBooks Author, the desktop application to create them. Facilitated brainstorming sessions, design reviews, and project prioritization for new features with senior management.

• Defined and managed agreements with vendors, from RFP & SOW to budget, schedule, content delivery, and refinement.

Engineering Project Manager, iCloud, Apple Inc.    

February 2006 - September 2010 | Cupertino, CA

Cross-functional Engineering Project Management:    

• Drove several major updates to products requiring the support of internet services, including the iWeb rebrand and a full product lifecycle revamp of Backup from requirement analysis through design revisions, re-development for three operating systems, QA, localization, developer seeding, Help/Legal updates and Marketing repositioning.

• Managed research and development of new in-house system and tool to collect, dynamically correlate and display customer support data trends with engineering system logs so managers can quickly understand the impact of their decisions in releases.

Business Analysis and Engineering Support:

• Designed and implemented system to identify, validate, prioritize and track top customer issues. Led support status forum with EPMs and senior management to raise top customer concerns and plan short and long term resolutions for upcoming releases.

• Led Engineering Support for Web Gallery, including initiating, organizing, and providing relevant data to bolster a successful campaign to improve performance of the service worldwide.

• Developed and implemented models to analyze trends in support requests to qualify cross-functional management initiatives.

Design & Production Management

Freelance Producer, UCSF

May - July 2011 | San Francisco, CA

• Managed the design and development of UCSF Department of Medicine's Hematology/ Ontology Division web refresh, including the creation of a new content management system and intranet site.
  

Producer for the artist Camille Utterback

2007 | San Jose, CA

• Managed on-site launch for Camille Utterback's real-time interactive installation of “Abundance” at San Jose City Hall.

• Production design for "Chronicle," Utterback's proposal for the New York Percent for Art Commission Elmhurst Library Project in Queens, New York

Producer and Host, o.s.Earth

2004 | Traveled to clients

• Led three hour real-time “world game” simulations designed by Buckminster Fuller to enlighten players about global economic problems.

• Tailored sims to the agenda of (high school and corporate) clients.

Architectural Visualization Intern for Synthetic Character Group, MIT Media Lab      

August - December 2003 | Cambridge, MA

• Modeled virtual environment in Maya for intelligent character demonstration.

Information Designer, The Capability Group    

December 2002 - June 2003 | Boston, MA

• Designed scalable interactive tutorials for the company’s Six Sigma workforce management method.

• Created customized tutorials and training materials for clients such as American Express.

Web Development Lead, Fraunhofer Center for Research in Computer Graphics    

April - September 2002 | Providence, RI

• Designed and implemented a database-driven intranet site enabling research firm to visually monitor and dynamically update changes to its group grant-writing process.

Technical Artist, LucasArts Entertainment Company    

November 2000 - October 2001 | San Rafael, CA

• Artist credit for producing virtual art throughout the life-cycle of the game “Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds.” Managed image batch-rendering, palletizing, and Photoshop retouching of characters, buildings and vehicles.

• Streamlined art production pipeline with game director, art director and programmers.

Product Designer, Bloophone

August - October 2000 | Paris, France

• Designed and modeled prototype the VoIP telephony appliance “bloophone,” which the company used as its namesake.

• Designed interactive presentation of product features for marketing demonstrations.

3D Visualization Lead, Fraunhofer Center for Research in Computer Graphics    

April - August 2000 | Providence, RI

• Designed and developed augmented virtual tour of International New Media Technology Program.

• ACM Siggraph Panelist on Approaches to New Media Design and Technology Education in New Orleans, LA.

Wellesley College