Welcome to the Penn Product Group (PPG)!
Let's get this product party started!!! Learn about who we are, what we do, and the opportunities for you in Product Management!!!
Hello everyone! Welcome to PPG’s newsletter! We’re incredibly excited that you all are interested in the club as we have a lot of fantastic stuff in store this Fall!
If you’re short on time, here’s an overview of the newsletter:
We’re so excited to kick off this club and are aiming to educate students about and create a community around the product management discipline, including the recruitment process!
Please make sure to sign up for our groupchat here which is where we will be communicating with you all outside of emails/newsletters
Our first GBM will be (RSVP here):
Date: Wednesday, September 14th
Time: 7:30pm to 9pm ET
Location: Rodin Movie Room 103 (on Floor 1)
Overview:
During the GBM, you’ll get to meet other students, learn about the club and product management, and get FREE SNACKS (we will have vegan options)!
If you’re interested in leadership roles, you can find the application below
We created an Internship/Job database you can access here
Please reach out to us if you have any questions and share this newsletter with friends who are interested!!!
If you haven’t already, please subscribe as well!
Onto the newsletter!
The PPG Story (so far)
For those of you who don’t know me: Hello! I’m Frank Lapinski, a senior who’s made his way from knowing nothing about tech to working as a product manager (PM) @ Microsoft. Product managers are people who find out customers’ problems and work with teams of engineers, designers, etc. to build products that win.
Typically, product managers have at least a few years of experience as engineers or other product adjacent roles before they become a PM. I have never worked as a software engineer and I don’t have a computer science or engineering degree.
In my journey, I realized that getting to PM is difficult without guidance. I had been fortunate enough to stumble on it through sheer luck alone in my freshman year and only through massive amounts of online research, coffee chats, and finding backdoor ways to get PM adjacent experience was I able to get to where I am. Although this is my path and a viable one, there should be more formalized options for all students to PM out there, technically inclined or not.
This is why I formed PPG with Jessey Yang (she’s class of 2024 and awesome!) Between the two of us, we have a large amount of leadership experience.
I was President of the Wharton Undergraduate Energy Group for ~1.5 years and have run an internship in the community solar space. I also actively mentor students in getting to PM. My goal is for each and every one of you to achieve your goals in both PM and beyond!
Hi everyone! I’m Jessey, a junior here at Penn transitioning out of healthcare to pursue my interests in tech! I’ve mainly worked within the realm of social media and marketing thus far and have interests in start-up culture! I started working with Frank on building this club as after I did a project management internship (although somewhat different from product), I realized I wanted to delve further into understanding markets and building products that meet those needs alongside diverse teams. I’m also still at the beginning of my journey in tech, but I’m so excited to share this path alongside you all and support your aspirations :)
What is PPG?
Now that we’ve defined the problem area, the question becomes: how do we solve it?
We determined it means achieving two broader goals with this club:
Exposing students to product management as a career and the broader product lifecycle they’ll encounter in that role, building tangible professional and educational opportunities to develop a skill set that is paramount to the discipline
Helping students become a part of a community of mentors and colleagues who help each other develop their knowledge, skills, and passions further, both related to PM and beyond
In alignment with the following values:
Empathy - We care for each other and support each other no matter what, ensuring we do all we can for each other and encourage each other to reach our goals
Respect - We treat others with decency and ensure that they feel heard and their points are considered fairly
Data-Focused - We use data to plan and make decisions that best serve our users and shareholders, be they club members, clients, or others.
Innovative - We see failure as an opportunity to grow and ensure this club has space for risk taking. Through experimentation we can create novel solutions.
Inclusive - We celebrate everyone for their different backgrounds and aim to make both this club and technology as a whole a space for everyone.
Authenticity - We bring our whole selves, not just our professional sides, to this club and speak honestly and directly with each other
Exploration - We are allowed to question if PM is right for us as well as the way we do things in this club. We are allowed to fail, for if we don’t we fail to learn.
The committees we will create are the following:
Professionalism - Creating any and all initiatives within the club that help further students in their career. This will range from running our job panels and workshops to building out our casing partnership program to building out our job/internship and resource databases
Projects - Providing students with an avenue to build the ideas they’ve always wanted to and fully go through the product lifecycle from start to finish. We’re modeling it somewhat off of UNC’s PM Lab
Consulting - Coming in the spring, this committee will allow students to focus more deeply on a certain subset of the PM skill set by providing deliverables to clients. At this time, we’ll be building out this committee and finding a client for the Spring.
Since this is a new club, we want to make sure that we ramp up quickly but also don’t bite off too much in our first semester on campus. As such we have the following projects we’re hoping to get off the ground this year (gained from feedback you wonderful people have provided with this form):
Fall 2022
Start the club and get the word out (PLEASE SHARE THIS NEWSLETTER)!
Hold at least 3 GBMs, 1 professional events, and 1 social event
Have our first Project Committee cohort build and present their projects
Spring 2023 - I graduate here :, (
Hold at least 3 GBMs, 1 professional events, and 1 social event
Start our 1:1 professional programs (i.e. resume reviews, casing partners)
Kick off our Consulting Committee and successfully build out deliverables to a client
A company visit and/or executive speaker event
As the club continues to grow, we will continue to survey and talk with students (that means you) to make sure that PPG best serves your needs in alignment with our broader goals and values. This club is quite literally made for you :D
How to get involved?
As long as you’re receiving this newsletter, you’re a member. You can go to any of our events and we’ll share our general club resources folder with the email you linked here. As for committees, we still have to finish building them out but you’ll likely have to apply for them. That’s something to consider later though.
Additionally, please make sure to join this group chat!
If you are interested in helping us grow right now, there’s two main ways we could use your help:
Come to Our First GBM!
On September 14th, something legendary is happening at 7:30pm ET! Our first GBM will be hosted!
The details are as follows:
During the GBM, you’ll get to meet other students, learn about the club and product management, and get FREE SNACKS!
We’ll also be sending out a calendar invite to everyone who signs up for our newsletter so make sure to check out your calendar.
We’ll also need to collect some relatively arbitrary incredibly important data from you so please fill out this form to RSVP to our GBM as well.
Join our Leadership Team
Right now, it’s mainly Jessey and I doing the legwork for PPG. As we get more members on the leadership team, we’ll be able to spread the work out a bit more and achieve even more as a club. We don’t have any specific year requirements for most leadership roles (VP of Professionalism and Projects will preferably be non-freshman however) and the application themselves will tell you the required/preferred experience (if there is any).
If you become a leader within the club, you have free reign of how you want to delegate the work you’re doing (except VP of Projects and VP of Consulting [potentially VPs of Professionalism as well] as they’re more structured committees with projects for members). If you want to hold onto it all yourself or delegate it via a committee, all we need from you is to make sure that the work gets done on time and well.
Right now, the following leadership roles are open:
VP of Marketing (Recruiting ASAP!) - In charge of the newsletter, marketing endeavors, and initial design templates. Experience with Canva/Photoshop will be helpful.
VP of Projects (Recruiting ASAP!) - Will help run and develop our first project committee cohort. Should have previous PM experience or similar experience.
VP of Professionalism - Will help develop recruitment resources and professional events
VP of Events - Will plan social events alongside Frank + Jessey and start planning the larger professional events for this Spring (Company Visit/Speaker Event)/Fall 23 (Career Fair/Hackathon)
2 VPs of Consulting - Will be developing the committee and speaking with other clubs to determine the best way for us to build and run this committee. Also in charge of securing our first project for the Spring (only 1 project to start)
VP of Technology - You get to make the website, create our social accounts (manage users, passwords, 2fa), and manage data for club research (i.e. think interest form data analysis, etc.)
And now, for the part you’ve all been waiting for…
Professional Stuff
Oh yea, time to get recruiting! PM apps are open folks so get your resumes ready! If you’d like one for reference, I’ve included mine here.
In addition to this, for those of you who haven’t checked it out, here’s the slideshow giving a broad overview of PM and PM recruiting I made (it’s pretty long so skim through for what’s relevant).
Otherwise, we’ve also included some useful links and such in our Internship/Job Database which you can find here.
This section will be more built out in future newsletters :D
Closing
Well, that’s it for our first newsletter! For those of you who got to this part, we’ve included some memes as your reward.
Otherwise, we’re incredibly excited to meet you all and excited to start an amazing PM community at Penn! Feel free to reach out with any additional questions or comments you have, and we’ll try to address them via email and discuss FAQs at our first meeting. Have a wonderful rest of your week and see you at our first GBM!
Wishing you all the best and expect a much shorter newsletter next time,
Frank Lapinski