Jessica Park

Where are you currently working and what is it that you do there?

I work at Intuit and lead marketing for our QuickBooks banking and lending products.

What does your typical day-to-day look like?

I lead a team of marketers responsible for driving growth of QuickBooks FinTech products. We launched one of our newest products last year, QuickBooks Cash, which is essentially a bank account on steroids for small businesses. We're still early in the product life cycle of that product, so we’re currently focused on really understanding our target customer needs and ensuring we're delivering value for them.

On the lending side, we support small businesses through QuickBooks Capital, which has been around since 2017. We have been supporting small businesses impacted by the pandemic by participating in the Paycheck Protection Program, which has been an $800 billion effort to provide stimulus funds to small businesses across the US. This has been a huge effort that we launched and we've funded over $1 billion in PPP loans to more than 30,000 customers, helping keep more than 220,000 employees on payroll.

So it's very exciting. Lots going on, moving very, very fast. But it's always fun when you're in an emerging, evolving, or expanding category and things are moving quickly because that lights that fire for all of us to be moving fast, especially when we see our competitors are coming out just as fast as us.

Can you tell us a bit more about your education and your career up to this point? How did you get where you are?

I have a Bachelor of Arts and I worked primarily in the financial services industry in communications and marketing. I moved over into tech a few years ago. I went to a small startup and then joined Intuit after that.

I find that Intuit is the perfect place for me because I love the fast-paced, customer-obsessed and innovation-driven culture that you find working in a tech company, but I also get to support financial products, which I'm extremely interested in and passionate about. Intuit's vision is to be ‘the source of truth for your business' and we're working tirelessly to help small businesses more easily, quickly, and cost-effectively move and manage their money, which we know is absolutely critical to their success.

What was it that led you to study at BrainStation?

I was so amazed at the digital focus and I hadn't really seen any other schools like that. There were a lot of traditional institutions trying to jump into the digital space, but I didn't feel like it was hands-on enough, and instead focused mostly on theory. BrainStation was very hands-on and provided the real training that you’d need to have in the field.

I was working at a traditional financial institution and I was wanting to move into tech, but I didn't really know how. As a Marketer, I was interested in getting closer to product marketing and I was thinking about product management as well. I wasn't really sure. And so I took the Product Management Certificate Course as a way to just jump into product management and understand that area, but specifically for digital products. It was a really great course. I found that I learned the foundations of product management but also understood it with a digital-first mindset.

I was so amazed at the digital focus and I hadn't really seen any other schools like that. There were a lot of traditional institutions trying to jump into the digital space, but I didn't feel like it was hands-on enough, and instead focused mostly on theory. BrainStation was very hands-on and provided the real training that you’d need to have in the field.

What would you say was the highlight of your learning experience?

I enjoyed meeting all of my classmates and professionals and working with them. It was neat having our own individual project that we'd work towards. But then there were also in-class projects that you got to work on with your classmates. I enjoyed that, especially because in a real work environment, you're always working as part of a team. I thought that was cool because it was great getting a chance to learn about other industries and companies, and it also was nice to meet other professionals and expand your network.

What would you say was the most challenging part of the learning experience?

The most challenging thing for me, is that I was really excited about the product that I was building in the course but then couldn’t continue to work on it after the course. I know some other people were able to, but I think that was the hardest thing for me, just getting really excited about it and then having to let it go at some point.

What was the product that you were working on?

I was working on a fitness app and it would actually probably be huge because of the pandemic and work from home fitness surge! I’m a trained yoga instructor and my sister is a ballet teacher. She works at the National Ballet School. One of the biggest things that I've noticed is that individual teachers don't have much power. Loads of students get very attached to certain teachers. Often I want to specifically book my schedule around a specific teacher and there’s no way to connect one-on-one and just follow a teacher from studio to studio. So it was about trying to form that connection of giving more power to the teacher to student relationship.

How has your BrainStation experience impacted your career?

I would say it really helped. It prepared me for transitioning into the tech world, moving from Waterfall to Agile -- I had never worked in environments like that before.

Learning at BrainStation helped prepare me a lot for that. With SaaS products, you're just constantly iterating and learning and you're so much closer to the customer, I find, compared to the traditional way you create a product, where you launch it and you might not change it for two years.

Would you say those are the most valuable skills that you learned?

Just being able to build a product and understand how products are built in a tech environment. It’s something that I could have eventually learned on the job, but it was nice being able to already have a foundation before I made that switch, it's a pretty good way to fast track that kind of learning process.

What advice would you give to other professionals who may be thinking about taking a BrainStation course or program?

I'd say do it – BrainStation was awesome. Something super special about BrainStation is the culture. There's a lot of testimonials about the technical skills learned, but the culture is so special and it had such a positive impact on me. I really enjoyed going to the class. I love all of the people I met and the Instructors were phenomenal.

Something super special about BrainStation is the culture. There's a lot of testimonials about the technical skills learned, but the culture is so special and it had such a positive impact on me. I really enjoyed going to the class. I love all of the people I met and the Instructors were phenomenal.