Heidi Cykana

I'm a product manager who owns digital products end to end: what gets built, why, and whether it's actually working once it ships. I write specs, partner directly with engineers and designers, and take responsibility for QA before anything goes live. I've spent the last several years focused heavily on accessibility and compliance work, but the underlying job has always been the same: figure out what matters, get it built well, and catch problems before users do. I've been doing product and program management for about 7 years, inside a 20+ year career in digital work overall, starting as a web designer and moving steadily toward full product ownership. Two things I'm proud of: At a Wisconsin state government tech team, I noticed no one owned the growing inconsistency across our sites, so I built a shared design pattern library from scratch. It went from a personal side project to the standard used across 100+ state agency websites and applications. Separately, at an earlier job, I noticed unusual drop-off numbers in Google Analytics on a business-licensing platform. Engineering said nothing was broken. I talked to customer service instead, found that users couldn't find their in-progress applications because of a single confusing menu label, fixed it, and watched the bounce rate and support calls drop almost immediately. Small fix, but it's stuck with me as proof that data tells you something's wrong and talking to people tells you why. What I want next: a remote, individual-contributor role where I own a real product surface directly, not a layer of management above other people's work. I'd rather be hands-on writing specs, making calls on what ships, and doing QA myself than sitting in meetings about strategy. I want a small, sharp team where I can move fast, be trusted with real judgment calls, and not spend energy on internal politics.