With our continuing drive to innovate our offering, we wanted to introduce to you the dynamic leader of our product team. So, in this Meet the IA Team blog post, we speak to John Park, our Director of Product & Experience. Here, John discusses his background and experience and how it brought him to his new role at Income Access, in addition to how he approaches product development and what motivates him the most.
Tell us about your professional experience to date and how it has culminated in your current role heading up our product at Income Access?
John Park (JP): My development career got off to a start by programming in C, C#, Visual, and Java.
I spent 14 years at IBM, first developing core engine technology for IBM’s DB2 database software for seven years, then switched to the more business side of things by taking on a product management role which I stayed in for another seven years.
After working for a 400K+ person company, I decided I wanted a change of pace, so I went to work for a local company, called SAP Hybris – a Montreal-based eCommerce business, with a team of about 80K people. There, I wore multiple hats as a Product Owner, a Project Manager, a Marketing Consultant and a Managing Consultant.
I then decided that I wanted to work at a smaller digital marketing company, which is what brought me to my current role as Director of Product and Experience at Income Access, which is where I now call home.
Can you reflect a bit on how your background has contributed to your overall approach towards product management?
JP: My approach to management is a well-rounded blend of lessons learned from the variety of experiences I have had over my career in the tech space. It’s a mix of marketing, sales, development, product ownership, project management, support, design, communication and emotional intelligence.
At the end of the day, when delivering a product – any product – knowing your user and the market you are going after is the core to success. Developing an effective product is a combination of making your offering customer-focused, eliciting feedback and performing alpha and beta testing. By doing this, you get a better comprehension of your user and their needs, so you can develop a product keeping that top of mind. Of course, various testing phases are also paramount to ensure your product actually works!
What would you say your biggest motivational drivers are in your role?
JP: For me, at Income Access, it is its employees and its clients that motivate me the most. In the role I’m in, I am able to clearly see the importance having a well-developed product is for both internal and external parties.
I enjoy identifying potential challenges with the current offering and working towards making it the best it can be. Everyone’s input is valued and so many individuals contribute to innovating our product, so seeing the work all the teams do in order to support the company and its clients motivates me to contribute, lead and help get Income Access to the next level of play in our market.
We’d like to thank John Park for his dedication and hard work towards making our Income Access product better and for providing us with his insight and background so we could get to know him better.
To discover more about the Income Access affiliate software, please reach out.
