Technology Solutions
March 15, 2025
To Whom It May Concern:
RE: Professional Reference for Emma Chen
I am writing to provide my strongest recommendation for Emma Chen, who worked under my supervision at Horizon Innovations from January 2020 to February 2025. As the Director of Product Development, I had the pleasure of directly managing Emma in her role as Senior Product Manager, where she consistently demonstrated exceptional leadership, technical acumen, and strategic vision.
During her tenure at Horizon, Emma was responsible for leading the development and launch of our flagship enterprise software platform, NavigateAI. This project represented a significant pivot for our company, requiring coordination across multiple departments, management of competing stakeholders, and navigation of considerable technical complexities. Through Emma's leadership, we not only delivered the platform on time and under budget but exceeded our initial adoption targets by 45% in the first quarter post-launch.
Emma's professional strengths are numerous, but several particularly stand out:
Strategic Product Vision: Emma possesses a rare combination of technical understanding and market awareness. She consistently identified opportunities that competitors overlooked and positioned our products to address emerging customer needs before they became widely recognized in the industry.
Cross-functional Leadership: Emma excelled at building relationships across engineering, design, marketing, and sales teams. Her collaborative approach and excellent communication skills allowed her to align diverse perspectives around a unified product strategy and execution plan.
Data-Driven Decision Making: Emma implemented robust analytics frameworks that transformed how we evaluated product performance. Her approach to using data not only improved our product decisions but has become standard practice across all departments.
Team Development: Perhaps most impressively, Emma has a talent for recognizing and nurturing potential in others. Three individuals she mentored have been promoted to senior positions, and the product team she built has the highest retention rate in our organization.
Beyond these professional capabilities, Emma contributed significantly to our company culture. She spearheaded our Women in Tech mentorship program, which has doubled female representation in our technical roles over three years. She also initiated a cross-departmental innovation workshop that has generated multiple patentable ideas, two of which are currently in development as new product offerings.
To provide specific examples of Emma's impact, I would highlight the following achievements:
Emma led the entire product lifecycle from concept to market. The platform now generates 40% of our annual revenue and has been recognized with two industry innovation awards.
Through her deep understanding of enterprise client needs, Emma developed a tiered feature strategy that increased our average contract value by 65% while improving client satisfaction scores.
Emma restructured our product development process, implementing agile methodologies that reduced our time-to-market by 35% while maintaining our quality standards.
While we are certainly disappointed to lose Emma as she pursues new opportunities, I understand her desire to expand her experience in larger enterprise environments. Any organization would be fortunate to have her contributions, and I am confident she will continue to excel in increasingly senior leadership positions.
In conclusion, I give Emma my highest recommendation without reservation. Her combination of strategic thinking, technical knowledge, leadership ability, and interpersonal skills make her an exceptional candidate for senior product or technology roles. I would be happy to provide any additional information regarding Emma's qualifications and contributions.
Sincerely,
Digitally signed by Michael Harrington
Date: 2025.03.15 14:32:45 -08'00'
Horizon Innovations Inc. | EIN: 12-3456789 | www.horizoninnovations.com