Melissa's README

Hi, I'm Meilssa Ushakov. Welcome to my README! I'm the Group Manager, Product for the Plan and Ecosystem stages.

Who I am

• I was born in Mexico and I grew up in a small border in Mexico in the Rio Grande Valley. I'm the only one from my extended family in the United States!
• I live in Austin, Texas with my husband, two kids, two small fluffy dogs, and over 30 houseplants.
• I received a degree in Computer Science from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. I was a very artsy kid (ballet, theatre, drawing, violin) so I never thought I'd end up in tech!
• I started my career in management consulting, then went to program management and finally found my way to product management.

Working with me

• I am not a morning person and like to start my day after 9 AM CST.
• I like having focus time and block my calendar off for it. If you need to schedule over it, please check with me first.
• If you need a quick response from me please ping me on Slack. It will likely take me a couple of days to respond to GitLab To Dos due to volume.
• I'm a firm believer in focusing on strengths to grow in your career and life.
• I love exploring ideas and will often ideate out loud through many permutations of how to best solve a problem. Don't take my ideas as directives without confirmation since they may just be explorations!
• If I ask a lot of questions about your idea it doesn't mean I don't agree, it means I am interested! I will often stress test other's ideas by asking a lot of questions and trying to find the gotchas.
• Context is huge for me and I'll always try understand how/why. I've gotten better at making decisions without full context but it's an area I'm always working on.
• I'm endlessly optimistic which is my superpower most of the time. If you ever feel like I am overcommitting or not being realistic, let me know.
• I love optimizing processes so that teams can focus on delivering value. It's what brought me to the tools product space. Checklists and color-coding are my jam.
• I'm an extrovert and I'm always up for a coffee chat or co-working. I think work should be fun and love getting to know my coworkers.