Product Talk is Growing: Meet New Instructor Ellen Brandenberger

This Product Talk announcement introduces Ellen Brandenberger, a product coach and Director of Product at Stack Overflow, as a new instructor for the Product Talk Academy. It frames the expansion as part of the organization's North Star goal: getting more product trios to adopt a continuous discovery cadence. Ellen describes her path from education and research into product management, her wins at Pearson, Thinkful, and Chegg, and how Teresa Torres's book and her coach Hope Gurion shaped her continuous discovery practice. She also explains why she enjoys teaching the Defining Outcomes course and offers advice for students to get the most from a course. The piece is largely promotional, but it doubles as a short career and practice story.

01Key takeaways

• Tie your team's practice to a clear north-star goal, such as how many teams actually run continuous discovery.
• Assumption testing lets teams run small, frequent discovery work instead of large studies every week.
• Use an opportunity solution tree to show the breadth of options and make discovery choices visible.
• Translate business or revenue outcomes into concrete product goals with targets to align teams.
• Get the most from a course by coming prepared, asking peers questions, and completing the homework.

02Key sections

Why Product Talk keeps adding instructors

The company ties instructor growth directly to its mission of spreading continuous discovery, since more instructors mean more cohorts and more students. The introduction also sets up a playful note about the shared first name of two instructors.

Ellen's path into product

Ellen moved from teaching and education research into product through an educational technology master's program, then landed a full-time PM role after pushing past internships. She rose quickly from first PM to head of product at a small startup and later to director.

Career wins and early lessons

She highlights rebuilding infrastructure to scale a product that had found fit, integrating two products after an acquisition, and launching a cybersecurity content line that outperformed expectations. Each example shows discovery and cross-team coordination at work.

Discovery journey and the role of coaching

Ellen's belief in talking to users came from her research background and grew into a practice of assumption testing and opportunity solution trees. Her coach, Hope Gurion, introduced her to Teresa's work and the Defining Outcomes method, which she then applied with her own teams.

Teaching and advice for students

Ellen values Defining Outcomes for helping teams translate business goals into product goals and enjoys seeing students have breakthrough moments. Her advice to students is that the value of a course depends on how prepared and engaged they are.

03From the post

“Product Talk’s North Star metric is to increase the number of product trios who adopt a continuous discovery cadence to their work. This is what inspired Teresa to write the Continuous Discovery Habits book and shift Product Talk to a course-first business. And this outcome is also the”

04Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.