Andrew Wong's Website

My humble beginnings

I went into engineering because I was fascinated that it was possible to use abstract principles of math and science to create ingenious products that solved day-to-day challenges. Chemical Engineering taught me to think critically, understand processes from a big picture, and manipulate numbers to maximize efficiencies.

Pictured: Overview of a $2.1 billion cryogenic carbon capture plant I designed

Gaining industry experience

My first professional internship in Project Management exposed me to the cross-functional teams that worked together towards a billion dollar project; from design, to engineering, to operations, to senior management. It allowed me to appreciate the art of taking charge, understanding multiple perspectives to align stakeholders, and driving the project vision to success.

Pictured: Inside of a CANDU nuclear reactor

Building my business acumen

This inspired me to learn more about the business side of things, where I took project-based courses in entrepreneurship and business strategy (incl. marketing, UX/CX, funding, growth), did some pro bono consulting projects for Canada's largest oil & gas company and 2nd largest airline, and took home 1st place in my school's premier Management Consulting case competition, a team of engineering students against business and MBA students.

Pictured: The winning team (me, far right)

Road to Product Management

My interest for a people-facing role in tech led me to Product Management, which I found to be the perfect intersect between engineering, business, and UX. I quickly realized as a PM I needed to better speak the language of software engineers, on top of my existing background in C/C++, VBA, and Matlab. To-date, I have taught myself Python, HTML/CSS, JavaScript, SQL, among others languages and libraries. I've also experimented with Marketing + Design tools; including Google Analytics for data analytics and Axure RP for wireframing.

Pictured: Gofer - An iOS low-latency C2C classifieds app I'm currently prototyping

A dip into Product

I initially had a Production Engineering internship role lined up with an oil & gas company in Calgary scheduled to start May 2020. Things took a drastic turn mid-April when I was informed the summer program was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With some dedication and luck, I was met with a Product Analyst role around the same time with RBC in their Financial Resource Optimization department. I jumped on it and worked in an Agile environment building prioritization metrics and Agile processes for RBC's suite of capital software products.

Pictured: My office, the RBC Centre in Toronto

My first full-time Product gig

My first Product gig! I accepted an offer with the GrowATB team at ATB Financial as an Associate Product Manager. GrowATB started off as a FinTech startup based out of Vancouver, digitizing the FinTech space. These days, they've made a name for themselves at ATB as a strong team delivering digital banking products at a record pace across ATB. I indirectly manage a team of 5 software engineers to develop a customer-facing appointments platform for the bank.

Pictured: A cool shot of Vancouver