Teresa Cain is an entrepreneur, educator, speaker, and author. She is the Director of Product Management, User Experience and Design for TreviPay, a global payments and invoicing FinTech with over 6 billion in transaction volume per year. She also coaches startups, businesses and entrepreneurs on accelerating growth, product strategy, and long-term vision.
With over 15 years’ experience in the field of product management, innovation and design thinking methods, she has accelerated roadmap growth and user adoption for dozens of Fortune 100 and 500 organizations, and start-ups into multi-million dollar growth. Teresa serves on the board for DevStride, a recently funded startup in agile project and portfolio management and strategy and on the corporate advisory board for Central Exchange, a nonprofit focused on providing opportunities for women around the globe.
She has led workshops and training for hundreds of high-profile companies across the globe, and spoken at multiple conferences on product strategy, design thinking methods, payments, women in tech, and as a featured guest on the award-winning podcast, Be Customer Led. She has the highest rated design sprint course on Udemy “2 Hour Design Sprint: Learn how to solve problems and design products in just 2 hours vs. 5 days using Figma FigJam” and is the author of “Solving Problems in 2 Hours: How to Brainstorm and Create Solutions with Two Hour Design Sprints,” a how-to guide to help organizations and startups get ahead of competitors by releasing value driven features to clients faster.
Teresa was a 2022 Women in IT Summit & Award Series Finalist for Advocate of the Year and received a prestigious Emerging Scholar Award in 2023 from the International Conference on Design Principles and Practices including presenting on her research "Putting Into Practice Evolving Design Thinking Methods at Technology Firms: The Evolution To 2 Hour Design Sprints.”
Teresa has completed many certifications during her career in product, customer experience, agile, project management and process management including Pragmatic Marketing Certified III ©, Net Promoter Certified Associate, Certified Scrum Product Owner, Certified Scrum Master, Project Management Professional and Lean Six Sigma Green Belt.
Teresa is finishing a Master of Integrated Innovation for Products & Services at Carnegie Mellon University and has an additional Master’s in business administration from Rockhurst University as part of the Executive MBA program focused on leadership and innovation. She completed two undergraduate degrees, a Bachelor of Science in Journalism and a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Kansas and an Executive Education program on Product Strategy at Northwestern University.
Upcoming Talks
16 May 2023
People love to chase what's shiny and new - but everything is a tradeoff. A new framework might solve some of your existing problems, but it might have unintended consequences. How do you know when it's worth the time and investment to switch, or whether it's safer to stick with what you know.
18 May 2023
Many organizations have based their own design thinking process from Stanford's Design Thinking Method or using Google and Jake Knapp’s five day process from the book “Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days”. However, five day design sprints have had its challenges during the Covid-19 pandemic including the ability to conduct a remote design sprint using the same process effectively, loss of productive time and the ability to collaborate with multiple stakeholders in one room.
The adaptation of technology firms to two hour design sprints teaches organizations, product managers, researchers and designers how to adapt to a two hour process derived from design thinking and design sprint methods to increase the frequency and speed of solving small and medium problems whether virtual or in-person, while still using the five day design sprint method to solve large or complex problems.
Teresa Cain and John Kille have spent the past 36 months teaching, testing and implementing this concept at organizations and conferences around the world, including the launch of Teresa’s highest rated course on design sprints on Udemy “2 Hour Design Sprint: Learn how to solve problems and design products in just 2 hours vs. 5 days using Figma FigJam” and in launching her new book “Solving Problems in 2 Hours: How to Brainstorm and Create Solutions with Two Hour Design Sprints,” a how-to guide to help organizations and startups get ahead of competitors by releasing value driven features to clients faster.
Join this session to be part of a mock two hour design sprint to learn how two hour design sprints can help you solve more problems for your customers and accelerate your product roadmap today.
Past Talks
17 February 2022
Is there a formula to ensure an efficient team? Is there a way where you can ensure teams are motivated, efficient and continue to ship great products?
In this interactive session, our speakers will talk through best practices that have worked for their businesses when building great products and happy teams including.
- How to make the best of T-Shaped skills
- Building teams in the right way, from performance to upskilling
- Is there an ideal team makeup? Does one size fit all or how to know what's right for you?
17 February 2022
Join the conversation! Share your insights and probe Teresa on the elements of her on-demand talk on designing a 2-hour design sprint that left you wanting more.
16 February 2022
Most organisations have based their have based their design thinking process from Stanford's school or using Google and Jake Knapp’s 5-Day process from the book “Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days”.
However, 5-day sprints have its challenges ranging from stakeholder approval, high costs, loss of productive time and remote work team collaboration. The Product & UX team from TreviPay created a hybrid methodology and condensed this process to 2 hours which has allowed for more positive outcomes including better stakeholder support, focused problem statements, and ability to conduct multiple design sprints in a week. In this session, Teresa will talk through:
- How the team at TreviPay determined that 2 hours is the optimal length for a remote Design Sprint;
- How to train your full product team to run design sprints;
- The tools and step-by-step guide on building your own 2 hour design sprint; and
- Future process improvements Teresa can foresee