Emma Hong spent the first year and a half of the pandemic in Singapore.
A worldwide lockdown certainly wasn’t what she had in mind when she decided to move there in 2019 to gain international work experience as part of the Associate Product Marketing Manager (APMM) program at Google.
“It was like an island bubble. Things were pretty safe, but I just couldn’t go anywhere,” she says, laughing.
After two and a half years in Singapore, and four in total at Google, Emma was ready to make some changes. She wanted to move back to the U.S. to be closer to friends and family, and she wanted to join a company where she could make a greater social impact.
“I‘m interested in the intersection of technology and applying that to social problems or social issues,” she explains.
Enter Teachers Pay Teachers (TpT), the go-to platform created by teachers, for teachers to access the community, content, and tools they need to teach at their best, where Emma has worked since September 2021.
We sat down with Emma to learn more about her path to EdTech and how she’s able to make an impact as a product marketing manager (PMM), and to get her advice for others looking to join the TpT product marketing team.
Making an Impact in EdTech
At Google, Emma often worked on one very specific aspect of a product, such as consumer insights. When she would come up with an idea she’d like to test, she would often wonder, “Has someone already done this?”
“And at a large company,” she says with a laugh, “that answer is often yes.”
So after four years, Emma felt ready to find an organization where she could make a bigger impact, not only in a social sense, but in terms of her contributions as well.
She’s found both at TpT.
As a product marketing manager at TpT, Emma is responsible for a whole host of PMM responsibilities, from go-to-market strategies for new feature launches, to positioning, competitor research, and consumer insights.
“It’s been a wide range of things,” she says. "And people are pretty open to changing aspects of the product and adjusting roadmaps when these opportunities can have a positive impact on the business, which inspires me knowing I can have a stronger influence and my ideas matter for the team.”
Having this kind of end-to-end influence on a product aligns well with Emma’s can-do approach to work. “If I see a problem, I always ask, what am I personally going to do to help solve that? Even if nobody's specifically asking me to do that, or if it's not specifically in my scope of work.”
Currently, she’s focused on TpT’s School Access subscription product, which has enabled her to create the kind of social impact she was seeking.
“Previously,” Emma explains, “teachers had to pay out of pocket for products and resources they needed for their classrooms. So TpT built a B2B school product so that you sell directly to schools, and they can offer these resources to teachers.” So far, TpT School Access has reached thousands of schools and has provided resources for educators across the country. The TpT School Access product continues to grow each year, and the team is excited to continue meeting the needs of educators as it scales.
3 Tips for Potential PMMs
Emma’s team at TpT is growing, and she shared a few pieces of advice for those looking to join the supportive and dynamic team.
- Be open to change and ambiguity: Knowing how to navigate change quickly and “being able to apply some sort of structure to navigate that change” is essential as a PMM. Being able to highlight past experiences where you’ve successfully dealt with ambiguity can help set you apart as a candidate.
- Embrace collaboration: Working collaboratively and cross-functionally is a key part of the job, and candidates should be prepared to demonstrate that they can excel in a collaborative culture. (Luckily, TpT’s culture promotes regular collaboration opportunities, both within your team and cross-functionally.) “Everyone's easy to get along with and super helpful. There's good rapport and a sense of humor,” says Emma.
- Show how you connect to the mission: Emma didn’t have formal experience with EdTech prior to joining TpT, and she believes it isn’t necessarily essential for others looking to join. Ultimately, the team wants to know more about how the mission resonates with you. “I think people love personal anecdotes,” says Emma. “Everyone's had impactful teachers in their lives, and that can help explain why this work is important to you.”
Understanding the issues affecting schools currently can also be useful. “A lot of the discussions at the company are around staff shortages in schools, learning loss among students, how schools recover from the pandemic, social emotional learning, and student mental health. So showing an interest in those kinds of topics, and some fluency there would also help.”
Interested in making an impact in the lives of teachers—and students—at TpT? Learn more about their open roles here.
