Kate (Aviza) Weissbacher

Hello! I’m Kate.

I’m a product leader (10+ years) with a proven track record of creating value by seeking out the heart of the business problem and bringing clarity to ambiguous domains. I coach my team and drive organizational alignment by defining an inspiring vision and clear product strategy rooted in understanding customers’ needs, data, and rapid experimentation to validate direction.

My product experience spans the supply chain, homeownership/mortgage, and restaurant technology. Within all of these complex and highly variable domains, I have built products that drive operational efficiencies and empower internal users and systems.

I value focusing on the customer and understanding their motivations through research, discovery, and championing a rapid test/learn strategy to determine the right thing to build. I do this through strong partnerships with engineers, product designers, business stakeholders, data scientists, and third party vendors.

I’ve built and led new cross-functional teams in many different environments, including remote, in-person, domestic and international. I’ve had the opportunity to navigate the operational and organizational challenges that come with scaling. I love experimenting with new ways of working.

Experience

Toast (2022 - 2024)

I was an Associate Director, Product Management at Toast and oversaw a high performing product team. I matured and grew the product vision and strategy for the platform product that powered the menu and the configuration publishing platform. The overarching goal was to create operational efficiency and empower users so that restaurant operators can make changes to their menu and operations with high confidence and low friction. By creating smooth restaurant operations, the restaurant can then provide exceptional and innovative experiences to their guests.

Better.com (2020 - 2022)

I was the Product Lead for the Better Insurance domain, which covered the affiliated businesses of Title Insurance and Homeowners Insurance. I focused on operational efficiency through automation and expanding the business to more holistically help customers.

During my time at Better, I grew the product and engineering team through aligning the executive team on the product strategy and business opportunities, valuing outcomes vs. output throughout initiatives, and championing a test and learn environment with a focus on visibility and monitoring. I partnered closely with engineering leads, data scientists, and business stakeholders.

Rent the Runway (2019 - 2020)

As a Senior Product Manager at Rent the Runway (RtR), I led the first tech team that oversaw the merchandising operations. The systems we built powered every aspect of the inventory lifecycle, including providing the buyers with the needed information to determine what and how much inventory to buy, managing the purchase, publishing listings, and ensuring that RtR optimized their inventory spend. The efficiency and optimization gained throughout the inventory lifecycle provided our end customer with the most relevant and high quality rental assortment experience.

I worked closely with engineering, product design, and business stakeholders to create the product vision and strategy to align on a technical approach to unlock the business impact.

Wayfair (2013 - 2019)

At Wayfair, I focused on the transportation, logistics, and returns for large furniture so that we could provide customers with an easy, fast, and differentiated experience for shopping online for home goods and furniture.

Throughout my experience as a Product Manager and Senior Product Manager, I focused on creating efficient and empowering workflows for our internal customers and systems (warehouse employees, routing algorithm) to ultimately provide an easier and more delightful end customer experience. A few examples include: making furniture returns an easy and affordable experience through a new monetization strategy and enhanced routing technology; improving delivery estimates for furniture shipments to drive speed within our network and accurate communication to customers.

Additionally, I was invited to work as an expat at Wayfair’s European HQ in Berlin, Germany, where we grew the team and pioneered inter-country furniture deliveries, which was a new, unique logistics network for the market at the time. I also built and managed a new tech team to oversee supplier operations that focused on the order fulfillment process for dropship furniture suppliers.

Cornell University (2009 - 2013)

Bachelor of Science, College of Engineering with Business Minor for Engineers

Extra

Awards, Courses & Volunteer Positions

NYC Bird Alliance Member (2022 - Present): Helping to protect NYC’s species of resident and migratory birds and engage more New Yorkers in the wildlife and habitat around them through attending volunteer events, birding walks, and lectures.

New York City Tech Events (2019 - 2020): Meeting and learning from other members in the tech and design communities in NYC including Mailchimp tech chats, CreativeMornings NYC, and more.

General Assembly Courses - Boston, MA (2018 - 2019) Completed the following courses: Intro to Sketch App, Intro to UX Design, and Customer Journey Mapping.

Improv 101 at Improv Boston (2018): Eight week in-person course to learn the basic fundamentals and skills of improvisation. We discovered key concepts such as “Yes And…,” collaboration, relationship building and truth in comedy that applies to building trust, communication, and relationships in a work environment.

‘Wayfair - She is Never Done Award’ (2016) Awarded to the employee who demonstrates long-term pride, commitment to the quality of their work and works tirelessly to ensure that all work is done and done right.

Net Impact Boston - Leadership Team (2014 - 2016) Planned speaker events to educate and promote social corporate responsibility, for example companies/partnerships focused on reducing food waste.

Product / Tech Skills

Product Vision & Strategy, Cross-functional Collaboration, Critical Thinking, Coaching, Team Leadership, Agile Product Management, Prototyping (Figma, InVision, Sketch), SQL, User Research, Usability Testing

Just for Fun

I enjoy making homemade pizzas, learning German, watercolor painting, dance cardio classes, and creating time lapse videos from the raspberry pi.

KATE (AVIZA)

WEISSBACHER