Hi, my name is Katy.
With over 15 years of experience in product leadership, I've had the privilege of helping several companies achieve significant growth in national and international markets.
At Apptegy, achieved a 400% increase in market share for the flagship multi-channel product, expanding the client base from 800 to 4000, and enabling sales that generated $20 million in ARR—successfully launched a second major product, rapidly growing the client base from 2 to 436 within two years.
At BBA, successfully launched and scaled an e-commerce platform that enabled sales, generating $1 million in revenue in the first year and transforming the product into a national on-campus enterprise solution. Established the company's mobile presence as a leader in the collegiate bookstore market.
At both Apptegy and BBA, built the company’s product team and created an environment that fosters creativity and collaborative culture. Led initiatives to develop talent, creating high-performing teams that drove transformative outcomes in the SaaS product space.
My strength is leading cross-functional teams through collaborative problem-solving and continuous conversation. My passion is building, mentoring, and coaching highly motivated, high-performing product teams. My path is defined by my dedication to creating high-value outcomes that make a positive impact for our users and growth of the business.
I’d love to explore how we can create impactful solutions together.
Experience matters.
My passion is building, mentoring, and coaching highly motivated, high-performing product teams.
“Katy and I worked together for two years in the same Product department at a fast-paced education technology startup. I had the privilege of learning product management best practices under her wing, growing from Product Analyst to Product Manager thanks in large part to her tutelage. She is a strong mentor with a strong sense of self, and has always made herself available as a resource for others still growing into their own career paths.
My time working with Katy has had a profound impact on my professional development. I came into the product world with no prior experience; Katy made it a point to make herself as available as possible to help me grow, on top of managing her own duties. As these duties at times included managing four separate development teams (!), it should be no surprise that Katy has a high capacity for challenging work that requires the ability to devote equal focus to competing priorities.
Katy brings her full self with her wherever she goes, which is one of the most rewarding things about collaborating with her. She is just about as authentic as you can get. She has strong convictions and ideas, and backs both up through methodical research and validation. In my experience, any work Katy does as an individual is always in service of reaching common ground with her teammates so all can work toward meaningful, actionable solutions. Her attention to detail with regard to team processes is a noteworthy example of this; Katy’s eye for efficiency — in communication, in workload management, in product roadmapping — helped propel our Product team to where it is today, both in improving cross-team collaboration and developing an overarching product strategy.
Working with Katy left me a more confident, competent product manager with a clear sense of my self, my responsibilities, and what made me uniquely capable of handling those duties. At the very least, Katy is a valuable teammate because she has the capacity to bring the best out of her coworkers. And that still does not begin to encapsulate the value accrued by her years of experience, passion, and work ethic.”
- Kathleen Conley, Product Manager
My path is defined by my dedication to creating high-value outcomes that make a positive impact for our users and growth of the business.
“Standing on the shoulders of giants", captures the essence of Katy's contribution and the impact she left on Apptegy and myself. Throughout my collaboration with Katy, she consistently proved herself as a well-rounded product manager, a thoughtful leader, and an outstanding colleague.
She set the tone for the product team and laid the foundations for the majority of the products that are growing today in Apptegy. Katy's contributions were a cornerstone for the company's success and product growth.
Katy is a fantastic product manager and a thoughtful leader. I have been consistently impressed by her remarkable perseverance and commitment to overcoming product challenges, proving time and again to be a true achiever in Apptegy. Katy was undoubtedly a pivotal contributor to finding product success for Rooms and business growth for Apptegy.
- Guillermo Araiza, Director of Product
“Throughout the years working in global companies and startups, I have met dozens of Product Managers in different Product Development / IT areas and industries, and by far Katy is the best product manager I have worked with.
If you want to see Katy happy, give her the most difficult problem to solve. She excels at analyzing problems, gathering data, and kicking off conversations to collect information that will help the product development team and product engineering collaborate to create products/features that delight end users and customers.
From inception to launching the product, Katy is always present as a strong product manager with the Development team, customer representatives, and upper management, without missing any change to create impact in every phase.
She is a great mentor, helping everyone around her learn and grow while being open to listening, reflecting, and learning from others too.
Her key strengths include the ability to have very technical conversations with engineers, negotiate with business and customer representatives, and guide the team to achieve their goals.”
- Francisco Hernandez, Director of Project Management
My strength is leading cross-functional teams through collaborative problem-solving and continuous conversation.
“She is an amazing PM. She will always take time to have a conversation with us to make the product more reasonable for clients and devs. She takes our opinion really seriously, and will communicate it to the people that need to hear it.
She’s also good at planning stuff ahead so we never need to wait for the next thing to do. Also she is funny, so no one gets frustrated around her. An amazing PM as well as a human. I can only think good things about her.”
- Nived Vengilat, Lead Dev
“Katy is an excellent product manager. She and I have directly worked together, the last few years. She is incredibly technically minded and detail oriented.
Working with her is always so easy - she finds the joy in solving problems for our clients and is really encouraging, the whole way. Katy truly cares about each person she works with and is very empathetic to the experience of us designers, as well as her developers. She fights for everyone to feel involved and motivated by the work we do each day.
I know I would not be the designer or the person I am today without her mentorship!”
- Nicki Hennington, Senior Product Experience Designer
‘Over the course of nearly 5 years working with Katy Simmons at Apptegy, I witnessed her passion for collective, impactful work firsthand. Katy is someone who deftly navigates the complexities of teamwork in an intense, high-performing environment with skill and thoughtfulness. In my many interactions with Katy, I’ve been consistently impressed with her vulnerability and the unique way she connects to others. Needless to say, she is a force and any organization would be fortunate to have her on their team.’
- John Corey Whaley, Writer and Novelist
“Katy is incredible. We worked on the same product team together at Apptegy, and I was always impressed by her organization and ability to put all of the puzzle pieces together to keep her team on track in an ever-changing work environment.
She stays calm through uncertainty and helps anticipate the needs of her team so they can focus on the work that they need to do. Katy would be an asset to have on any product team, and I consider myself lucky to have worked with her.”
- Blake Organ, Product Designer
“I've had the pleasure of working with Katy in ed tech. She's got a real talent for tackling tough technical challenges and makes it look easy. Her knack for leading teams and nailing product goals is top-notch. Her impact on our products – and our team – is undeniable. Any organization would be lucky to have her at the helm of their product development.”
- Keegan Knapp, Product Marketing Manager
I had the pleasure of working with Katy Simmons at Apptegy and am delighted to recommend her skills. Katy blends strategic vision with attention to detail, consistently driving projects towards user-centric design solutions.
She fosters collaboration, actively involving the UX designers and valuing our insights. Katy is a dedicated and visionary leader, making her an invaluable asset to any team. I wholeheartedly recommend her.
- Kirsten Caldwell, Product Experience Designer