In this interview, Lynne Levy talks with Laurel, who recently moved from a senior product manager role at a chaotic tech company to become the Director of Strategy and Operations at a nonprofit focused on kidney disease. Laurel describes the overwhelming stress and lack of support that led to burnout, her decision to leave the company, and how a coaching program helped her clarify her strengths, take a restorative break, and navigate a career pivot. The coaching exercises and group community gave her confidence for interviews and aligned her product expertise with a mission-driven organization where she had previously volunteered. Laurel also highlights the value of the program’s community aspect—small‑group brainstorming, shared challenges, and networking—and offers advice for prospective participants to consider whether they want to develop both product technical skills and the relational leadership side of product management.
Chapters
Tell the folks who are listening, where are you now?
Yeah, so right now I'm the director of strategy and operations at a nonprofit working on kidney disease, and my, uh, my mission there is actually working on launching a new organization that's eventually going to split off and be its own thing.
Holy cow, I'm so excited! So you're doing product, you're doing strategy, and you're doing organizational design?
Yep.
Amazing.
You know, the product that I'm working on now is basically all the services that this organization is going to offer.
How excited are you about your future?
It's really exciting. Yeah.
Hey, Laurel, it's so great to see you. How are you?
Hi, Lynne. I'm doing well. Um, I'm really enjoying my new job. Yeah.
I'm so excited for you. You started this week or last week?
Um, I actually started at the end of June, so awesome. Couple weeks ago. It's been a little while already.
So where were you before you joined the program? What was the state of your career, of stress.
Yeah. So when I joined the program, um, I was at a company that I had been at for many years in a variety of roles. Um, I had just gotten promoted to senior product manager. And although I was happy to have that promotion, I was basically surrounded by a lot of chaos. Um, I think overwhelmed is probably the best word to describe it. I had had a wonderful mentor who had just left the organization. There wasn't a whole lot of support, um, for the product function. And I was questioning whether I should stay or go. And if I left, uh, you know, what I wanted to really focus on and super stressed. I was working long hours. I wasn't being compensated adequately. And there were just a lot of demands that were kind of unreasonable.
Absolutely. You had quite the journey. Why don't you walk everybody through, at a high level, your journey when you joined, what you decided, then what happened, and then how you landed?
When I joined the program, like I said, I wasn't quite sure if I wanted to stay at my current company and try to make things work there. Or leave and do something else. Um, I decided pretty quickly that I did want to leave and look for other opportunities, but I really didn't know what domain I wanted to focus on. My career has been pretty varied. I've worked on everything from publishing to localization, medical devices, business ethics, and I knew that I didn't want to be doing exactly the same thing that I was doing, but I didn't know where I want to focus. And it really took me a while to figure that out. But all of the exercises that we did in this program where you're looking at your own strengths and your own story, ultimately brought it together for me. You know, looking at the pieces of my life that I had been working on outside of work, I wound up taking a break from work for a few months, which was incredibly helpful in getting away from that burnout. And just clearing my mind and focusing on actually what I wanted to come next. And then ironically, the opportunity that came my way wound up being pretty close to home in a sense. The organization that I'm working for now is actually a place where I had been involved as a volunteer for many years, but I had always thought like you know, I don't know anything about nonprofits, I've never worked on healthcare stuff directly. And then they actually approached me and offered me this position. And it turns out that combining my product experience with, you know, some knowledge through my own experience of the issues that they're working on is a really good fit.
I mean, this is a massive level up, and it's a massive getting you in alignment in a job where you're passionate. It's a big deal.
Yeah, I also wound up interviewing for many other positions, and the program was incredibly helpful with prepping for those interviews, and It was— it really brought me to a place where I could go in with confidence to these organizations. I knew how to present what I had to offer, and, uh, you know, I wound up having great conversations in those interviews.
She's such a rock star. So I get questions a lot from people Lynne, I don't know. I just want one-on-one. What's this group thing? And the program combines them both together. So why don't you tell folks the— for you, what was the value of the community and the group piece of it?
Yeah, definitely. So it's funny that you mentioned that because I was actually one of the people who was thinking that at the beginning of the program. And I was like, uh, are things just going to be like more diluted in the group? Is it going to feel less personal, but actually it turned out that working in the group setting was one of my favorite aspects of the program because you get to talk with other people who are going through, you know, the same questions and the same challenges that you are. There's a lot of small group conversations where we're brainstorming together And it became a wonderful community where, you know, we're supporting each other, we're telling each other about job opportunities, and ultimately you find out that the things that you're struggling with are really common to other people too. You know, even if they're working at a very different company, even if their title is different within this field, we're all Uh, you know, we're all encountering those similar challenges.
Excellent. And I, I mean, I have, I'm surprised too how group coaching just, it creates this amazing community and it accelerates things for all of you folks. So if you were to bump into somebody in the middle of Cambridge or the middle of Boston and they were to say, all right, should I join this program? What, what questions should somebody ask themselves?
Yeah. So I think they should ask, you know, are they interested in focusing not just on sort of the more technical and specific aspects of product management, but the whole leadership skills side of things? Many of the things that we focus on in the program are really about managing the relationships that you have to manage to be a successful product manager. And that, you know, personally, I think it's super valuable no matter what position you're in, but it's really in my opinion, at the core of product management.
Yeah, I— that's awesome, and I love that because I think for, for all of us, once we realize the human aspect of navigating product management, the rest, the rest is so much easier.
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm so excited to see you as you become— as you are a rock star and as you make a massive difference in your nonprofit. I'm so excited. Laurel, thank you for everything.
