Sofia Lazaro
EXPERTISE
BIO
Sofia Lazaro is a growth-oriented product manager specializing in delivering customer-centric MVPs, validating product-market fit, and standardizing agile processes for startups and fast-paced organizations. With experience spanning XR technologies and eCommerce, Sofia has led cross-functional teams to bring innovative products to life, including scaling intake processes, launching commercial software, and driving measurable ROI. Passionate about leveraging data and customer insights, she thrives at the intersection of strategy and execution. Currently offering fractional product management services, Sofia partners with startups to prioritize, innovate, and scale effectively.
WORK EXPERIENCE
Founding Product Manager
Dauntless XR
November 2022 - Present
▪ Owned the end-to-end product lifecycle at a startup, from ideation to launch resulting in the successful completion of 5+ XR software development projects across 3 Federal agencies. Executed all key activities including user research, requirements gathering, user story writing, backlog management, prioritization, user testing and go to market launch. ▪ Led the commercial adaptation of two products developed partially under Federal R&D for commercial release, resulting in 100+ Quest app downloads within the first 45 days of launch with no paid marketing budget. ▪ Collaborated directly with the CEO and CTO to develop and refine the product vision, established clear key performance metrics and continuously refined the engineering backlog for both the defense and commercial use cases. ▪ Partnered with engineering, design, business and government stakeholders to define and create product roadmaps and prioritize the development backlog to meet the product vision on time and on budget with the expected ROI. ▪ Facilitated regular product review sessions with leadership and government stakeholders to track progress, address challenges, gather feedback on designs and upcoming releases and adjust prioritization as needed. ▪ Executed strategic product marketing activities, including authoring LinkedIn articles, website blogs and eBooks related to the company’s technology resulted in an increase in organic website traffic by +11% YOY.
Senior Manager, Online Product Management
Home Depot
May 2022 - November 2022
▪ Scaled cross functional feature intake processes (developed in prior role) to take 100+ ideas from various internal teams and stakeholders, developed them into 30 themed feature sets, and partnered with product and analytics to determine potential ROI. Led finance, UX and engineering to develop business cases and prioritize asks for SPP based on feasibility and overall ROI to the business. ▪ Accountable for the use of 10M+ annually in capital investment for the development of innovative product solutions for the HD Home division, driving key initiatives in eCommerce, merchandising, and customer experience. ▪ Supported the creation of an internal product marketing team, developing templates and communication cadences from the online technology group to merchandising stakeholders to improve transparency. Collaboration resulted in creation of a regular feature release communication channel via email and quarterly demos.
Senior Manager Category Management, Site Experience
Home Depot
May 2021 - May 2022
▪ Executed the creation of a new organizational team with 3 managers and 15 senior analysts within HomeDepot.com to act as partners to the merchandising organization and intake priorities for operational software projects. ▪ Led engagement with senior directors and VPs within online merchandising, product management and engineering to develop and pilot internal intake process designed to collect and distill development requests from online merchandising for the product management and engineering organizations.
Manager, Product and Category Experience - Specialty Products
Global Custom Commerce / Blinds.com
June 2019 - May 2021
▪ Coached and managed a high performing team of 5 product managers to ensure responsible spend on capital dollars (~10M across teams) allocated to online and store configurable product shopping experience development. ▪ Collaborated with cross functional design and engineering managers to ensure consistency in architecture decision making and design where necessary, developing documentation and regular communication channels to individual scrum teams to cut meetings while maintaining development standards and a consistent customer experience. ▪ Leveraged macro data-driven insights and customer feedback to provide direction on the prioritization of product features for projects led by direct reports.
Product Manager, Specialty Products
Global Custom Commerce / Blinds.com
July 2018 - June 2019
Managed 2 associate product managers to provide training in product management skills (such as requirements gathering, user story writing, scrum ceremonies, backlog management and prioritization) and coached both individuals to their promotion to Product Managers. Served as product manager multiple on mobile, app and web software products from ideation to MVP launch to that spanned stores, e-comm and internal workforce applications. Acted as product manager for the development of Home Depot’s online custom countertop configurator, enabling customers to quote their kitchen countertops online. Resulting software showed 10% increase in measurement appointment booking over prior estimate tool. Managed the development and launch of an internal workforce application to optimize the sales quoting process, achieving a 90%+ adoption rate within the internal sales team and reducing quote generation time by 40-60%. Conducted an in-depth technical and scope assessment, leading to the cancellation of a previously funded project due to its projected budget overrun and inability to deliver a profitable MVP. Drove the requirements gathering, backlog management and development and rollout of a mobile, app and web solution for problem-based shopping, improving the customer experience in high-assortment aisles (e.g., pest control) which resulted in improved conversion rates by ~4% compared to typical browsing.
Associate Product Manager
Global Custom Commerce / Blinds.com
July 2017 - July 2018
Supported and shadowed a senior product manager to gain comprehensive knowledge of product development processes, initially responsible for writing user stories and prioritizing tickets to support development team operations. Achieved PSPO 1 Scrum certification within the first year, demonstrating proficiency in agile methodologies and applying them to deliver working software. Led a go-to-market project requiring the development of a new product page type for the online launch of a new line of customizable door locks. While owning the creation and prioritization of the product backlog, collaboration with developers and designers led to the creation of a user-friendly configuration page, enabling customers to easily navigate and select from hundreds of custom options. The new product line achieved its key sales benchmarks from merchandising for 90-day post-launch period.
CERTIFICATIONS
Professional Scrum Product Owner
Scrum.org
Issued: 8/1/2017
Verified Enterprise Product Manager
8+ years of experience
Preferred commitment: Part Time
Languages
Skills
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