Victoria Wood - Senior Product Operations Manager, Shopify

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Work Background

ShopifySenior Product Operations Manager

Aug. 2021Remote[Currently on leave] I lead Product Operations for Shopify’s 300-person merchant marketing org—the team behind Shopify Email, automations, segmentation tools, and more. As part of the Senior Leadership Team, my job is to keep the organization aligned and shipping, while creating the kind of environment where bold ideas, smart risk-taking, and a sense of purpose can thrive. I don’t just build process, I build products for people who build products. I treat the team as my users, draw insights from the business like a PM would research a market, and stress-test every system for feasibility, viability, and desirability. If it doesn’t help people make better decisions, execute with less friction, or foster a healthier environment, it doesn’t ship. I take a product management approach to product ops. That means thinking strategically about how internal systems shape outcomes from roadmap execution, to autonomy, to merchant impact. It means obsessing over alignment and communication. And it means designing ops as an intentional experience not an afterthought. I was a founding member of Shopify’s Product Ops team in Core (the business unit behind the e-commerce platform), wrote the internal Product Ops Handbook, helped scale my org from 170 to 300 in 12-months, and consulted on internal tools used by 11,000+ employees. Every system I build is grounded in human-centered design and minimum viable process because process doesn’t build products, people do. And I build for them. During COVID, I led, designed, and built Shopify’s first Remote Work Playbook for large, cross-continent, multi-disciplinary teams. From colleagues and leadership: “Vicky sees things from many perspectives, finds gaps, and fills them with empathy.” “She has infectious optimism and energy.” “Her superpower is asking the right questions at the right time.”

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