Pledge 1%'s #WomenWhoLead series celebrates female leaders who are paving the way for the next generation. While our featured leaders come from a variety of backgrounds and industries, they are united in their efforts to promote equality for all women in the workplace. We’ve asked them to share a bit about their journey to success, as well as lessons they’ve learned along the way.
Katelyn Montigney
Application Product Owner, Passage Technology
Lake Forest, Illinois, US
What is your current role? Briefly describe in 1-2 sentences.
I lead the product management team for our Salesforce AppExchange applications. My role involves mentoring other product owners, providing input on product strategy, and market research around topics like pricing.
What’s the best part of your job? What do you enjoy the most?
The best part of my job is the dev team I get to work with — everyone on the team, product owners and developers alike, is friendly and collaborative. We’ve overcome a lot of tough challenges working together, and I’m really proud of how we’ve grown as a team.
We’ve all faced personal and professional challenges these past two years - what motivates you to keep going?
My wonderful husband and our found/friend family! I’m not sure where I’d be without their support — they can always make me smile.
What’s the best piece of advice you ever received?
Once I was feeling pretty low about something that had gone wrong, and my manager told me, experience = mess-ups. If you don’t make mistakes you can’t learn and grow. As someone who’s always been really, really hard on herself whenever anything goes wrong, I’ve found that idea useful to keep in mind — it helps keep me focused on learning from mistakes rather than beating myself up over them.
What does generosity mean to you?
Giving and doing good not because it is expected of you or because it improves your personal reputation, but rather because you know in your heart that it is the right thing to do.
How do you feel businesses can play a larger role in solving today’s biggest challenges? Do you have any specific stories or examples from your work or colleagues you can share?
I think one of the biggest things businesses can do to help solve the challenges of today is listen, and take action based on what you hear, not based on what you want to hear. I don’t have any one specific story I can share, but always being open to feedback and doing what you can with that feedback to make the world a better place is critically important in my opinion.
If you could describe yourself in one word what would that be and why?
Stubborn. If there’s one quality that has gotten me through hard times (and caused a fair few issues as well), it’s stubbornness — I refuse to stop or quit, I’m simply too stubborn.
If you could pick a song to guide you through 2022, which song would it be?
Flow — from the Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker soundtrack.
What are you looking forward to this year? Are there any goals (personal or professional), activities, or experiences you are excited about?
I’m excited to continue with a couple new hobbies I’ve picked up — I learned how to crochet semi-recently and have a few projects I’m working on there, and I’ve also started learning to draw, which is something I’ve always wanted to do.
