"I spent my summer fellowship working in product management at Plentify, a South African smart home company with global ambitions. The company’s mission is to make “clean, reliable, and affordable energy a reality for everyone” and their initial focus is electric water heaters. The company’s flagship product, HotBot, allows users to control their hot water heaters from anywhere and intelligently adjusts water heating schedules to reduce strain on the grid. In doing so, it promotes renewable energy development as it allows demand to be shifted to times when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing.

I worked on a number of projects that directly supported the company’s mission as it prepared to dramatically scale up HotBot manufacturing and distribution. More specifically, I led the design and development of an end user starter kit that will be distributed to every new HotBot user and developed sales materials designed to win the support of prospective users. This work was particularly impactful since the company had spent a substantial amount of time developing an understanding of their core customers (property managers, insurance companies, municipalities, etc.) and comparatively little time exploring how to engage and support end users. In addition to developing end user resources, I led an internal journey mapping exercise outlining all data generated and stored on a HotBot from production through deployment. In doing so, I isolated key risk areas and defined opportunities for automation that will be critical as the company ramps up production.

The summer provided countless opportunities to apply lessons I learned at CBS. Most notably, it allowed me to gain hands on experience operationalizing the user-centric design and inclusive leadership principles covered in LEAD and reinforced during my participation in the Innovation and Design Club. I also worked on projects that allowed me to apply learnings from my more data focused coursework. Intro to Databases (SQL), for example, was particularly useful as I helped develop a monthly user report designed to give users insights into their energy consumption and savings.

I’ve long felt that the biggest and most exciting challenge in any product management role is distilling the needs of your users and translating them into concrete requirements. This was all the more intimidating in the context of my summer because I had no prior knowledge of the South African energy crisis and no firsthand experience in the country. I tackled this challenge through a combination of extensive user interviews and feedback-driven iteration. In the end, I concluded that my lack of pre-conceived notions about our end users was an asset rather than a liability, as I was able to interpret user comments unbiased by my own preconceived notions.

Taken as whole, the summer reaffirmed my desire to work at the intersection of business and sustainability and made me optimistic about the ways demand response technologies will shape our energy landscape. It also provided me with a greater understanding of how energy systems and regulatory regimes can seed or stifle innovation. Above all else, it left me excited about utilizing design thinking to tackle our most pressing energy challenges."