Michael Synoground Email & Phone Number

• Transformed Discovery Education’s product teams, experience, and strategic direction, resulting in the company’s successful transaction in 2022. Continued to lead through significant growth phases, including the.
• Enterprise Value: Spearheaded a comprehensive redesign of DE's flagship SaaS product, surpassing growth, engagement, and revenue objectives, and substantially enhancing the company's valuation.
• Leadership: Actively participated in Discovery Education's Product and Executive Leadership Teams, advised on OKRs and provided strategic insights across multiple business units and sectors.
• Product Portfolio Strategy: Achieved significant ARR growth and built an award-winning portfolio through a combination of M&A, net-new and revitalization of existing products used by millions of students worldwide.

• Cross-Functional Team Building: Built and developed multiple product teams including design, product management, product marketing, user-research, and immersive learning. Promoted a culture of user-centered.
• Innovative and Engaging Experiences: Cutting edge interactive and game-based learning experiences consistently exceeded key KRs. Launched a mobile AR app that went from 0 to over 1 million users.
• Product Led Growth: Championed a user-centric approach leveraging research, data, experimentation, and leading to iterative enhancements that significantly improved acquisition, usage and engagement.
• Brand and Design: Contributed to brand evolution through strategic design initiatives, design systems, and the creation of a unique character set that enhanced our brand's recognition and appeal.
• GTM: Orchestrated diverse Go-To-Market strategies, including enterprise sales, advocacy models, and freemium, effectively broadening product reach, awareness and adoption across multiple channels.

Bellevue, WA

• DreamBox is an award-winning, adaptive learning platform loved by millions of K-8 students and educators. My role is primarily focused on servicing multiple user personas through our product portfolio, which includes a.
• Member of Senior Leadership Team advising on company initiatives, KPIs, operations, and business strategy while advocating for a customer-centric approach.
• Defined the UX Strategy and Vision for EdTech Products resulting in significant YoY company growth as measured by top-line KPIs (revenue, retention, and student impact).
• Recruited, built, and lead a multi-disciplinary team of artists, designers, and researchers that transform learning and education through innovative digital tools, visualizations, and experiences.
• Increased the efficiency of product delivery and development by defining design processes; implementation of visual systems, personas, and journeys; and effective use of prototyping.
• Added User Research as a central part of our design process leading to faster iterations and development cost savings. Managed NPS survey in collaboration with external vendor.

Built a design studio from the ground up to provide UX/UI Design, Development and Marketing services. Responsibilities included business management (forecasting, budgeting, reporting); team management; establishing a brand and executing a marketing strategy; client communications, estimating and negotiations; project specifications, guidance and.

• Developed and executed a strategy to improve the user experience of playing and discovering mobile games on T-Mobile phones and to establish T-Mobile as a leader in the gaming space. The fruits of this vision are.
• Negotiated a deal with Electronic Arts to provide a custom build of Need for Speed: Most Wanted that integrated with the MOGA Bluetooth controller for our hero device, the Samsung Galaxy Note II.
• Worked with the internal business development team to source and secure an industry-first deal with Zynga to provide an exclusive and innovative social gaming mobile application. Launching this app required ongoing.

Worked with T-Mobile’s Creation Center to deliver a variety of mobile applications on the Android platform. Responsibilities included designing and launching mobile applications by collaborating with business owners and managing design & development teams and workflows.

Worked on a broad spectrum of Microsoft websites and products. Experience included scheduling, writing business requirements, functional specifications, site planning, product design, program management, cross-team coordination, UI design, and team management. Projects include: MSCOM, Product Information Center, Events & Webcasts, MSN and more.

Big Fish was a professional services company that offered design, development and staffing solutions to a long list of businesses in the Seattle Area and beyond. Performed a wide range of functions as an owner and managing partner including Business Planning & Management, Team Leadership, Project Management, Marketing, Brand Management, Client Relations.

Program manager and developer for all new media projects. Responsibilities included research, vendor acquisition & quoting, planning & budgeting, client & internal consultations, quality-control, scheduling and production. Acted as advisor to clients and provided training in site administration, online marketing strategies and HTML coding.

Lead Web Developer for national Advertising and Branding Agency. Responsibilities included production of websites, user interface components including icons, splash screens and wallpaper. Created and taught a custom three-week “Introduction to HTML” course.

Bachelor Of Science (B.S.), Visual Communications

Education record