Hot on the heels of April’s Learner of the Month, Kripa Sitaraman, Market Competitive Analyst, Product Marketing at VMware, it’s our pleasure to announce that the Learner of the Month award for May goes to...

Isamar Vega! 🎉

A former Product Marketing Consultant/intern at KindWorks.AI, Isamar describes herself as an operations-minded product marketer that “ensures people are finding and using the best products to self-actualize.”

Following the completion of Product Marketing: Core, Isamar explains:

  • Her route into product marketing
  • Which features of the course she found most useful
  • How she’s implemented learnings into her daily role
  • Her advice for anyone considering enrolling in a course
  • Next steps in her product marketing career

Tell us a bit about your career to date and how you got into product marketing.

After eight years in global education startups and higher ed institutions working on issues of education access, I opted to pivot into tech and marketing. A policy graduate degree convinced me that scale was necessary for true change in improving opportunities for people.

However, I realized after a social enterprise and human-centred design fellowship that this can also happen via the private sector. I completed an accelerated MBA at Oxford to explore how to do that. It was nerve-wracking to feel that I was restarting my career, especially as a first-gen uni graduate, but it was an invaluable experience.

At the very end of my program, I identified product marketing as a function where I could continue to learn from different business units while transferring skills from my past experience as a project manager, recruiter, and product service development. There was still a skills gap, and I identified the Product Marketing Certified Core course as a way to bridge that gap.

I convinced the university to partially sponsor the course, and I invested the rest. Soon after, I secured a product marketing internship to start applying the lessons from the certification and even used several of the templates to build internal resources and collateral that hadn't been created yet. I also attended my first PMA networking event and have continued to learn from experienced product marketers.

What did you find most useful from the course(s)?

The templates from each section were super helpful. They helped to frame the video concepts in a useful, actionable way. They provided clear starting points for a particular task.

Do you have any examples of how you've implemented what you've learned into your day-to-day role?

Personas were not yet fully developed at the startup in which I interned, so I used the persona template to create an initial buyer persona.

This then identified gaps in customer research that we needed to fill. Now we're using this to develop lead-qualifying questions, update the customer journey, and create a plan for updating messaging on the website and key pieces of collateral.

What advice would you give to others thinking about enrolling in a course?

I wish every business function had a course like Product Marketing: Core. It clearly explained what all the responsibilities are for a product marketer, and how to tackle them, with examples, frameworks, and templates to get you started.

It’s a major investment, so be clear that you want to learn this skill. Talk to more product marketers than I did. For me, it was the cherry (and sprinkles and chocolate sauce) on top of the end of my MBA year.

What's next for you in your product marketing career?

Secure a full-time product marketing role in tech companies that help people learn, earn, and live better

I'm continuing to ask advice from product marketers as I make this pivot to improve my knowledge and skills. I’m hoping to connect more with local PMA chapters once I can settle into a job.

Learn PMM essentials from the ground up with Product Marketing: Core

Trusted by the world’s biggest brands, Product Marketing Certified: Core's the industry standard, the catalyst to your success, and the only companion you need for personal and professional growth.

Completing this course will help you...

🙌 Grasp every element of the cross-functional and rapidly evolving discipline that is product marketing.

🛠 Market your product through its entire lifecycle and successfully meet your product marketing key performance indicators.

👩🏽‍💼 Stand out in the job market - more and more employers request PMMC certification as a prerequisite for job seekers.

🧗🏼‍♂️ Advance up the career ladder with your newfound knowledge, skills, and product marketing network.

📦 Become the total package. Product marketing is an incredibly varied role. Our curriculum covers all the nooks and crannies.

🔖 Show off to your peers with a shiny new certificate #braggingrights.

Whether you’re new to the industry or a seasoned PMM, B2B or B2C, physical or SaaS, by the end of this program, you’ll have all the knowledge and tools needed to effectively and successfully attract and keep more customers.

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