Introducing Anna - a FemTech wearable powered by TENS, paired with an AI‑powered SaaS mobile app.

Role & Challenge

As Product Marketing Manager for Anna—a FemTech wearable paired with an AI-powered app, I led the effort to define our target users ahead of the CES launch.

The challenge was that some teams lacked a shared understanding of who the product was intended for, which risked misaligned messaging and prioritization of secondary features. With clear personas, we could anchor our strategies, and that allowed us to spearhead uncovering real pain points, customer segmentation, and insights that led to a consistent narrative for the product.

Why I Started with Consumer Personas

CES was a high-stakes launch moment. We weren't positioning Anna as just another Silicon Valley gadget; we were addressing the real pain and stigma women had faced for years. To win investors, partners, and early adopters, our product story had to reflect that dedication.

Without consumer personas, our positioning risked sounding feature-driven instead of consumer-driven. I broke consumer research into three stages to ensure we knew exactly which problems we were solving and who we were solving them for.

What I Did — Step by Step

Stage 1 – Brainstorming

I facilitated a cross-functional workshop with founders, Product, UX/UI, Engineering, Sales, Marketing, and Content to generate the right questions for our 1:1 consumer interviews. This collaborative effort ensured that everyone's expertise was leveraged in understanding our users.

Stage 2 – Interviews

I conducted in-depth 1:1 interviews with consumers after they tested the product, surfacing their core pain points, unmet needs, motivations, and behaviors.

Stage 3 – Persona Development

I synthesized these insights into three distinct consumer personas: a Primary, a Secondary, and a North Star persona. Each reflected patterns and defining characteristics of our target segments, giving the team a clear picture of who we were building for and why.

What This Did

Building personas enabled us to:

Validate product–market fit with real user insights.
Align Product, Sales, UX, and Content around shared user priorities, avoiding misaligned features or messaging.
Craft positioning and messaging that resonated with investors, partners, and end users alike.

TL;DR - Consumer personas at a glance

I mapped each persona to a key point along the adoption curve and informed product, messaging, and experience decisions:

Elena Romano — Primary Persona

36-year-old Creative Director in NYC. Ambitious and design-driven, she seeks seamless, intuitive solutions that reduce burnout. Represents high-achieving professionals who value discretion and efficiency.

Nomin Tsedev — Secondary Persona

39-year-old stay-at-home mom in Boise. Balancing raising three kids with running a floral business. Needs budget-friendly, trustworthy products. Represents family-centered buyers driving household purchasing decisions.

Imani Reid — North Star Persona

26-year-old UCLA grad student and competitive runner. Balances research and athletics, seeking science-backed, high-performance solutions. They represent early adopters who set the bar for innovation.

Together, these personas aligned cross-functional teams, shaped CES positioning and messaging, and secured a clear, shared understanding of our product, market, and target audience.

Please scroll down to view the full persona cards.

Outcomes & Impact

Our persona-driven strategy was the key to transforming our CES launch. It was a moment of pride for all of us as we saw the impact of our collective efforts.

Sharper Product–Market Fit: Insights shaped product design (e.g., adding a discreet, fast-acting mode), prompting early beta users to say, "It's like you read my mind."
Cross-Functional Alignment: Personas became our "source of truth," streamlining decisions across Product, UX, Sales, and Marketing. Teams cut debate and executed faster with the customer clearly in view.
Compelling GTM Messaging: Our CES storytelling centered on Elena's boardroom success and Nomin's busy mornings, making our pitch relatable and driving booth traffic, media interest, and strong engagement.

By leading persona development and activation, I turned Anna's launch from a feature drop into a solution unveiling.The approach won internal praise (including from our CEO) and resulted in customer sign-ups, partnership inquiries, and clear validation that we were solving a real problem. This success reassured us of Anna's potential in the market.

Persona Cards Adapted into Video

To bring personas to life, I scripted and co-produced a teaser video introducing our three target personas. While we adjusted specific details like profession and ethnicity for a slightly different approach, the core personalities remained true to our research. We also introduced a fourth character — Captain Well (Anna herself) as a narrative hook to anchor the product vision and help teams visualize where we were heading.

Internally, the video was utilized in Sales, Product, and Content training, sparking "What would Elena do?" discussions and ensuring alignment ahead of CES.
Externally: It was repurposed in email campaigns a month before CES as part of our broader GTM strategy.

The video ensured our personas weren't just static research artifacts, but living tools that influenced training, messaging, and investor/partner engagement.

Next up:

Read how I uncovered what truly mattered to these personas in my article, “Behind the Scenes: VoC Research for Anna,” where I share how asking the right questions led to deeper consumer insights.

Developing Consumer Personas