RMIT University

University of Canterbury

Senior Product Manager at REA Group

Kiwi Rhymes for Modern Times | Ētahi Rotarota o Aotearoa (children's book)
A bilingual children's book that re-imagines traditional rhymes to celebrate Aotearoa

When my baby was born, I wanted to change the world for her. But I was stuck on the couch, trying to breastfeed.

So a few months into her life I started making up my own versions of rhymes and stories that shared a world I wanted her, and our future generations to grow up in. One of modern stories and nursery rhymes that celebrated diversity of gender, race, size, shape, sexuality and ability. 

Stories that celebrate Aotearoa's native bush, bird life and the Māori language. The more we learn about them, the greater desire we have to protect them.

I was lucky to have author Tamati Waaka professionally translate the rhymes into te reo Māori, the amazing Johannah Kātene-Burge as the cultural advisor for the book, and the talented Ana Craw on illustration. 

I self published this book in time for my daughter's first birthday.

Watch this space for the music album coming soon, in collaboration with some very cool kiwi kids artists...

www.kiwinurseryrhymes.com
@kiwirhymes

Children's bilingual book

Children's author: Kiwi Rhymes (maternity leave)

Trade Me

Product Operations

REA Group is a digital business with more than 3000 employees who are changing the way the world experience property.

REA Group

Senior Product Manager

Zalando is Europe’s leading online fashion e-commerce platform, serving 15 markets and delivering a shopping experience to +18 million customers. 

My intention and hope in joining Zalando was to get experience in a bigger company, have huge international data sets to work with and work in a more gender and culturally diverse environment

- Working on NLP solutions and search algorithm
- Designed a concept and prototype to transparently (and ethically) collect user's intent while shopping to improve relevancy of content and therefore the customer experience
- I led user research and product for the search department of ~70 people, until proposing a way to split teams and technical architecture to ensure teams (and I) could be more effective
- Led stakeholder conversations to effectively track data through the whole user journey in the search department (ie: improve metadata from product upload through to final search results)
- On the side, I initiated and led a team to research and validate the market opportunity for voice, getting buy-in from leadership and building partnerships with Amazon & Google to kick off voice at Zalando

Zalando SE

Senior Search Product Manager (Search Intent & Voice)

European innovation and research funded startup - crowd sourcing sensor data in Barcelona, Milan & Stockholm to show near real-time parking availability. 

- Led the product team, introducing agile ways of working and user research
- Reduced the time to find a car park by 40 minutes
- Supported the leadership team through a pivot

predict.io

Head of Product Management (machine learning, location data)

Mapping consultancy where I learnt about the importance and power of data.

Geoplex

Product Engineer (location data, maps & GIS analysis)

Was lucky enough to be surrounded by super smart guys who completely invested in me and taught me the 101 of tech, design and app development.

jTribe

Mobile Producer (iOS & Android app consulting)

Published in the following media;
The Hamburg Express (Germany), Endurance magazine and Homestyle magazine (New Zealand), Private Island News.

Janet Horwell