# Laura Desmond-Black > Product Lead @ Sprig Location: San Francisco, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/lauradesmondblack I’m an experienced and results-driven Product Manager with a track record of leading cross-functional teams to deliver impactful software experiences. With expertise spanning ML-powered search, content recommendations, collaborative editing, and developer tools, I thrive on solving complex challenges that improve user workflows and drive business outcomes. I enjoy working closely with customers and stakeholders to uncover opportunities for improvement and innovation. My approach combines user research, competitive analysis, and technical feasibility to create solutions that meet real-world needs. I’ve built product roadmaps, scaled platforms, and launched features that streamline processes and attract users. I’m passionate about empowering teams, optimizing workflows, and building products that make work easier and more efficient. ## Work Experience ### Product Lead, Core @ Sprig Jan 2025 – Present | San Francisco Bay Area ### Staff Product Manager @ Guru (getguru.com) Jan 2022 – Jan 2023 Developed the vision for personalized recommendations in six weeks through internal brainstorms, competitive analysis, reviewing customer feedback captured by customer-facing teams, and conducting customer interviews alongside Product Designer. Work resulted in the release of four new solutions and recommendation data used in several other features. First release had >60% adoption rate within three months, >90% in six months. After releasing recommendations solutions, took over as PM for the Authoring (document creation/editing) experience. Began by leading the release of a new rich text editor which required the conversion of millions of customer documents. Completed the release in three months closing out a multi-year project and setting a foundation for new collaborative editing functionality and a new generative AI roadmap. Conceptualized a set of collaborative editing features based on customer feedback and competitor offerings. Partnered with Product Designer to conduct multiple sets of user interviews which were used to determine the severity of various issues. Built roadmap based on interview data and technical input that resulted in incremental releases over five months that provided immediate customer value while building towards more complex functionality. Improvements including inline comments and shared drafts allowed Guru to compete more favorably against alternative products and addressed gaps highlighted by top ARR customers. ### Senior Product Manager, Search & Discovery @ Guru (getguru.com) Jan 2020 – Jan 2022 | San Francisco Bay Area PM for Search and Discovery team which was responsible for the document search experience in all of Guru's products. Worked with Principal Engineer, MLE, and Data Scientist to develop roadmap that included infrastructure upgrades, expansion of testing and experimentation environments, UX improvements, internal KPI dashboards, and major algorithm enhancements. Over the course of 20 months, releases resulted in a 33% drop in the number of NPS complaints about search functionality. Releases included the first major ML enhancement to Guru's search - using transformers to relate content based on meaning - which improved MAP for some customers by >10%! Team was also responsible for maintaining 5 existing ML-powered features including tag, content, and expert suggestions and flagging potential duplicate content. Scoped infrastructure updates and minor improvements for existing alongside Principal MLE and Data Scientist in order to maintain quality of recommendations. Led process of updating internal and external documentation for ML features to increase the confidence of customer-facing teams and reduce incoming questions and bug reports. Co-led creation of a customer-facing, public community (community.getguru.com) alongside partners from Marketing and Support teams as part of a company-wide move to scalable, self-serve processes for customer communications. Established new processes for customer feedback using the Community in order to streamline collection of feedback, provide transparency about releases to customers, and increase timeliness of communication. Publicly launched in Aug 2021; membership grew 300% in two years. Managed NPS feedback analysis from 2021 - 2022. Defined a set of categories for customer comments that allowed for the distribution of comment categorization work across PM team. Consistent categorization gave leadership a better understanding of the impact of product changes over time and revealed previously unknown UX issues. ### Product Manager, Workday Extend @ Workday Jan 2018 – Jan 2020 | Pleasanton, California January 2020 - Lead Product Manager for Developer Experience. Managed the Developer Site, IntelliJ Plugin, and CLI for Workday Extend (Workday's aPaaS solution). March 2018 - Product Manager for Extend Developer Site, developer.workday.com, and marketplace.workday.com. Built roadmap and worked with dev team to deliver solutions ranging from tools for Workday employees administering the Extend Developer Program, to API Explorers and self-service tools for external developers. Guided other product teams through process of releasing features on Extend and served as an internal ambassador for the platform. Worked with UX Research and Design team to explore new features and build a vision for the developer journey on the site. Regularly engaged with Documentation, Privacy, Field Readiness, and Security teams to prepare for the launch of new features and coordinate communication. Worked with Legal to make sure Extend functionality was accurately represented in Extend terms and conditions. ### Sr. Associate Product Manager @ Workday Jan 2016 – Jan 2018 Completed 3 rotations in 14 months: Business Intelligence, Web Service Frameworks, and Workday Extend. Member of the first cohort of MGEN, a company-wide leadership development program for employees with previous work experience who are hired after completing graduate degrees. Workday Extend rotation: Built and ran nine-month long Design Partner Program for first customers. Program included four months of weekly meetings with customer stakeholders, a one-week onsite bootcamp for customer developers to work on their apps with help from Workday engineers, and assistance setting up development environments. Collected feedback and evangelized customer use cases internally to build awareness of needed enhancements. Gave demos and answered questions about Extend at Rising, Workday's customer conference, on the conference expo floor. Became a permanent member of the team after 4 months. ### Product Management Intern @ Zendesk Jan 2015 – Jan 2016 | San Francisco Bay Area ### Community Support Manager @ Zendesk Jan 2013 – Jan 2015 | San Francisco Bay Area First Community Support Manager at Zendesk. ### Community Lead @ Zendesk Jan 2013 – Jan 2013 | San Francisco Bay Area ### Customer Advocate, Level 1 @ Zendesk Jan 2012 – Jan 2013 | San Francisco Bay Area ### Freelance Designer @ Step 2 Design Jan 2008 – Jan 2012 | San Francisco Bay Area Web and print work. Managed projects from initial client discussions through design iterations to working with vendors and subcontractors to deliver final product. ### Family Room Specialist @ Apple Jan 2011 – Jan 2012 ### Specialist @ Apple Jan 2010 – Jan 2011 ## Education ### Master of Information Management and Systems (MIMS) UC Berkeley School of Information ### B.A. Fine Arts in Architecture minor University of Southern California ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/lauradesmondblack01 --- Source: https://flows.cv/lauradesmondblack JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/lauradesmondblack/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-05