Gideon Emmanuel

About

Builder, operator, and 0→1 product leader with ~7+ years of experience across product strategy, agile delivery, and leadership. Ran enterprise platform selections, shipped 0-to-1 products, built teams from scratch, and managed complex client relationships. Recently focused on agentic engineering, mobile app design, and consumer GTM—building and launching Justus, an AI-native fitness app—and also advising organizations on go-to-market and operations infrastructure.

Experience

• Independent Consultant & Product Builder · Independent (Self-Directed)09-01-2025

  Two tracks: advising professional services firms on operations infrastructure and go-to-market strategy, and shipping my own product using AI development tools. ● Building Justus, the first truly AI-native fitness app, with Claude & Codex as my technical co-founders ● Architecting an operational OS for a digital services firm on Airtable + Make + PandaDocs: designed data model, mapped business processes through user research, and built automated workflows for contract management and engagement tracking.

• Senior Director of Product, Permitting - City of Boston · City of Boston11-01-2024 – 09-01-2025

  Led the Mayor’s flagship Permitting Transformation Initiative - a government-wide effort to focus Boston's permit and license systems around constituent outcomes and make applications simpler and faster. ● Developed the product vision and multi-year roadmap for a new citywide licensing and permitting platform, aligning policy, process, org strategy, and technology planning across 7 departments ● Ran discovery and current-state assessments across staff and constituents; mapped end-to-end journeys for dozens of use cases and surfaced the highest-impact opportunities ● Designed and led a rapid evaluation of COTS providers, Pega, ServiceNow, and Salesforce - defining requirements, scoring criteria, and tradeoffs to make a rigorous decision in two months. ● Built a first-of-its-kind in-house service transformation team: reorganized a team of 5 to embed modern product, design, and delivery practices and hired 3 new roles (Service Designer, Digital Transformation Coach, Technical Solutions Architect)

• Strategic Initiatives Manager, Mayor's Office · Mayor's Office - City of Boston06-01-2023 – 11-01-2024

  Force-multiplier to the Chief of Staff and Deputy Chief of Staff; drove cross-cabinet execution on mayoral priorities, including 0→1 product work and strategic planning for key departments. ● Led strategy, discovery, build and launch for futureBOS, a platform that increased accessibility and efficiency for the city's summer youth employment program serving 10,000+ youth ● Built and shipped Boston’s first citywide Youth Sports Directory and Recreation Facilities Map, coordinating 100+ organizations and 4 city departments into a single online experience ● Designed the operating rhythm for the Mayor’s Office (OKRs & decision memos), enabling clearer prioritization and faster decisions on cross-cabinet initiatives ● Led strategic planning efforts for cabinet and department heads (Office of Youth Employment, Worker Empowerment Cabinet), helping teams translate policy objectives into actionable roadmaps

• Product Manager · Bonterra09-01-2019 – 08-01-2021

  Product manager for EveryAction, the market-leading fundraising and engagement platform serving 10,000+ progressive nonprofits and political campaigns. ● Managed a $750K/year cross-functional agile team (3 engineers, QA, design), translating business objectives and user needs into a prioritized backlog across quarterly planning cycles ● Combined quantitative data (usage patterns, funnel analysis) with qualitative insights (50+ user interviews, market research) to identify high-impact opportunities and shape product strategy ● Led go-to-market execution for releases: developed positioning, trained sales and support teams, and created customer-facing education materials to drive adoption ● Shipped a Zoom integration during the first months of COVID, enabling seamless data management for virtual fundraising events leading up to the 2020 election ● Built a fundraiser dashboard and reporting tool providing real-time program performance insights, and an ML-driven optimization guide helping fundraisers improve donor retention

• Senior Implementation Manager · Veracross (K-12 SIS)01-01-2017 – 08-01-2019

  Consultant for independent schools adopting the Veracross student information system. ● Led 7 complex, multi-stakeholder implementations (~$2.5M portfolio), pairing technical configuration with process redesign to ensure successful adoption and account renewals ● Designed and launched a grade & comment review product that modernized report-card workflows for 1000s of teachers and administrators ● Identified patterns across implementations and built an in-app project management tool that standardized delivery, reduced errors and overhead, and increased client accountability

Education

• Tufts UniversityMA, Urban & Environmental Policy & Planning
• Yale UniversityBA, Anthropology

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