Allie Castor always dreamed of working in professional sports.
Her early career was spent in the sports industry. A Colorado native, her first jobs as a Mass Media and Communications major included working for the Denver Broncos, Denver Nuggets, and the Colorado Avalanche.
Then she took, what she calls, a non-standard path.
Transitioning from professional sports, to healthcare, to finally telecommunications- Allie has been gradually uncovering her life’s calling. And while it didn’t end up being directly connected to professional sports, as a Zayo Product Director, she very much embodies the role of an athlete who is driven towards a goal. Her objective: to provide the connectivity that supports the world’s most impactful companies by delivering highly-available, reliable transport services.
Allie and her team oversee Zayo’s Transport product line — a $500 million business. She sees the role of product management as the quarterback in the organization: responsible for working cross organizationally in order to drive how each product is positioned, sold, performing, delivered and is consumed. Product managers see the whole life cycle of the products they own truly managing the customer’s experience.. They also encounter and touch every aspect of the product across all customer vertical sectors, being sensitive to the needs of each of their individual nuances and requirements. And, importantly, they have command and control of the product roadmap — the overall direction, goals, and features the product will develop now and into the future.
Writing the Playbook for an Evolving Industry
Like any deft quarterback, Allie knows her playbook and is looking toward the future. And like any product manager in the telecom space today, she is navigating the constantly changing market trends and opportunities, including Artificial Intelligence (AI). After all, AI applications put a large demand on networks. Telecom providers must respond to these demands by building the infrastructure that is required to support the applications needs for highly available, low latency, secure connections.
Allie’s attitude is that AI can be a major tailwind if the proper provisions are in place; but if you or your network architecture is not ready for it, you will miss out as the surge of companies contributing to AI’s application infrastructure continues to grow. She believes that building out the infrastructure needed for AI services requires proactive network investments and engineering in order to support the complex and bandwidth intensive needs of the applications.
In addition to preparing for the next generation of technology, Allie’s advice to new product managers is to remain inquisitive and to always first put yourself in your customers’ shoes. You can always build the technology and automation to support product enhancements, but if it doesn’t solve your customers’ actual needs, it won’t be successful. For her fellow female product managers, Allie offers the encouragement that while, yes, telecommunications is a male-dominated industry, and females make up only one-third of all product managers in the US, there is definitely a space and need for women in the space. You just need to embrace your role as quarterback.