Current focus
Independent Product Builder. Architecting serverless data applications, multimodal search tools, RAG pipelines, and recommendation systems (Find My Ryokan, Birding Planner).
About
Hello, this is Tiffena!
I have spent my career navigating complex systems—technical, cultural, and human.
Profile
Looking past the surface to uncover hidden needs.
As a product builder, my core instinct is to look past the surface to uncover hidden needs, reveal overlooked patterns, and design the structures that make clarity possible. When real user needs and systemic patterns come into focus, people understand each other differently—and true alignment becomes possible.
I build AI systems that people actually use and trust: systems that surface the right information at the right moment, respect real-world constraints, and help users make confident decisions without requiring them to become experts.
Background
Senior Product Manager at Microsoft (2002–2015). Led zero-to-one launches across US and APAC markets, drove global user acquisition and retention, and built early-adopter technical communities. Board Member of a local environmental non-profit.
Education
BSc. Computer Science, Oklahoma State University. Professional certificates in AI Product Management (Duke, 2024), NLP (DeepLearning.AI, 2024), and Recommender Systems (University of Minnesota, 2024).
Method
How I work
Discovery first — user interviews, data analysis, and quick field experiments to surface hidden needs.
Prioritize by impact and cost — hypothesis testing and tradeoff frameworks that balance product value and operational constraints.
Execute fast — serverless prototypes, reproducible playbooks, and measurable experiments that inform roadmap decisions.
This space is where I learn in public — by documenting discovery while reading, tinkering, and traveling. You’ll find notes on Japan, Asian business trends, NLP and AI engineering, DevOps experiments, book reviews, meta-learning, and the small practices that keep a mind steady and well.