GradSimple Industry Insiders: Hannah Koresky

Disclaimer: The views expressed by our interviewees are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of GradSimple. We only edit these responses for clarity. All opinions remain those of the interviewee.

• Role: Project Manager, Peak Design

What are you doing for work now, and how do you feel about where your career is headed?

I just signed a contract to do project management for Peak Design. It's a little bit of a career change, but it gets me back to where I want to be: building. I'll still work closely and cross-functionally with everyone, but I'll focus more on maintaining timelines and making sure we stay on track to hit our goals and launch products.

I've known Peak Design as a company for a while, and it's really hard to get your foot in the door there. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this contract turns into a product management opportunity or another long-term situation.

I'm coming from the cannabis industry, and I didn't really love it. It didn't feel right for me when I got thrown into it. I'm not a huge cannabis smoker, and I felt like I was putting on a fake face when advocating for the products I was pitching. Now I feel like I'm back on track.

Can you tell me about your career journey and how you got to where you are today?

When I was coming out of college in 2009, it was during the recession. I had big dreams of going to New York or California, and unfortunately, when it came to entry-level hiring, there wasn't much opportunity.

I had the chance to help open a Nordstrom in Cincinnati. I worked there, learned a lot, and then had the opportunity to transfer to Newport Beach, California. There were thousands of applicants, and I was one of the employees picked to transfer. At the time, they said, "We're not paying for you to transfer," but I knew that getting into California would put my career back on the track I wanted after graduating.

After I got to Newport Beach, I started going to career fairs. At one, I had the opportunity to meet someone from the recruiting team at Oakley, and I got in as an associate product line manager. In college, I had this idea that I wanted to do product development. It interested me, but one thing I've learned is that when you're in college, you really don't know what you want to do until you get hands-on experience and actually do the job.

Product line managers take an idea from concept to commercialization, then follow that product through go-to-market. You work cross-functionally with pretty much everyone in a company to bring a product to life. It's really interesting and a lot of fun. You get to work with a ton of different people. You have to learn everything about a product and really understand what everyone else does to be successful in your role.

At Oakley, I started on men's technical sportswear. We were a bit ahead of our time. Anything you put on your body was either moisture-wicking or water-resistant. It was meant to work with the elements while being casual enough to wear from day to night.

My career there was quite successful. I had the opportunity to touch every men's product in the Oakley apparel ecosystem. I worked on men's board shorts, technical sportswear, T-shirts, and accessories like backpacks. I went from associate product line manager to product line manager and then senior product line manager. I was at Oakley for around six years. It was a really fun place to work, definitely work hard, play harder, and exactly where I think I should have been for my first step into product line management.

I had the opportunity to work on a lot of special projects as well. One was MLB-licensed apparel, where we ended up building shops within stadiums. I got to learn about licensing, but I also got perks like going to Yankee Stadium, standing on the field, and being able to go to any game I wanted because we had a shop there.

I also specialized in building programs for different companies. One that stands out is Buckle. We built a one-of-a-kind T-shirt program that began as a test at maybe $200,000, and I think I brought it up to $1.5 million in nine months. It showed me that I had a niche in these special projects and could support a company's goal of making money as an individual contributor.

I was unfortunately laid off after about six years at Oakley. The company had been purchased by Luxottica, and Luxottica was starting to get more involved in how the company operated. That was my first experience of putting everything I could into a company and then thinking, "Oh, okay. I got laid off even though I was hitting revenue goals." Sometimes things happen for a reason. You pick yourself up and start job searching.

That search led me to CamelBak. I had always felt like I should be in Northern California, and CamelBak was the opportunity that brought me there. I found a niche in companies with maybe 100 to 200 people working across our departments, where the teams weren't very big for what we were doing. At CamelBak, I was hired to work on special projects for companies like Target, SCHEELS, and DICK'S Sporting Goods. I was an individual contributor helping build programs that drove revenue.

While I was there, I spent time figuring out where the new opportunities were and where the company wanted to go. We realized we weren't getting much traction on our direct-to-consumer website. After doing some research, I went to my CEO and said, "I think we need to start a custom bottle business."

We were already producing custom bottles on a larger scale for wholesale and working with promotional-product agencies. I thought we should bring it in-house and do it ourselves. Digital printing had finally reached a point where it was commercial enough and looked good enough for customers to upload their own photos or images onto a bottle. My CEO said, "If you think we should do this, put the business plan together and we'll talk it out." I did, and the next thing I heard was, "Great, it's approved. Figure it out."

I had the opportunity to dive in and run CamelBak's entire custom business, almost like the CEO of my own mini custom world. I ran a team from start to finish across product management and project management, making both the physical and digital products viable. I learned about building wireframes, connecting our system to external tools, and handling payment processing. It was beyond anything I had worked on before, but it allowed me to dip my toes into the digital side of physical product, which was really fun.

Eventually, I felt like my career at CamelBak wasn't going to keep moving forward. I had been an individual contributor for most of my career, which was great for me. I got a lot of visibility across the corporate office and from the C-suite, and I liked having that ownership. But being an individual contributor also held me back from continuing to move up within companies.

I moved on to PAX. I was hired into what I think was called a senior product manager role. PAX was a company that really started cannabis vaping and was known in the industry for vaporizing flower. The company had a great device, but it was hard to keep building innovation onto that one product year after year. It needed something to supplement revenue, build interest, and keep consumers happy.

I did consumer research and built an entire accessories line for the company. Within my first six months, I think I launched 10 new products. I worked with an external sourcing partner and a design team, and we were off to the races building the line plan.

When PAX went through a layoff, I had the opportunity to step in and become the product manager for cannabis. I ran the cannabis lines, including oil, vapes, and gummies, across California, Colorado, New York, and Massachusetts, with plans to expand into New Jersey.

The cannabis market is so freaking complicated. With a normal product line, you usually have one sourcing area. You might decide that all of your fleece products will come from Indonesia because the tariffs and everything else make sense, and you know exactly where everything comes from. In cannabis, every state is on its own. You have to find a manufacturer in each state where you operate and figure out how to build a consistent line plan across four different states when nothing is exactly the same.

If you're growing cannabis, it has to be grown in the state where you're operating. There are also a ton of rules and regulations, including legal requirements for packaging. I also ran hemp lines for the entire U.S. and expanded some of our cannabis lines into Canada. Then, I was laid off from PAX in February. That brings me to now, about to start my new role for Peak Design.

What does physical product management involve, and what does a typical day look like?

At Oakley, it was very different because we ran on multiple seasons. I might be finishing my Fall 2026 season while also working on Spring 2028. When you're working on physical products, you have multiple things happening at the same time. A normal day is whatever gets thrown at you that you have to finish.

Bringing a physical product to life normally starts with consumer research and proving that there's a hole in the business you can fill. You're continuing the current line while also building some interest around it with products that should delight your customers.

At Oakley, we didn't do a ton of upfront consumer research to decide whether to launch a product. I would work with a planner who might say, "We need 10 fleeces, 20 pants, and 35 T-shirts. Figure it out." From there, I would do trend research and build what we call a line plan.

The product manager is responsible for setting the MSRP, looking at it competitively across the market, and maintaining margin. You're usually given a certain margin goal. Within retail, it can range anywhere from 50% to 80%, depending on whether you're direct-to-consumer or wholesale. You need the product to hit a certain cost before you can launch it. If it doesn't, you sometimes have to make the hard decision to adopt it or drop it. At the end of the day, whatever you're building has to be profitable.

Once you've decided what the line plan should look like, you take it item by item and build a product brief to hand off to the development team. The development team works with overseas or local factories to bring the product to life. You also work with designers, who actually design the product.

At Oakley, a brief might say: I need a water-resistant jacket at an $80 retail price. Our target wholesale price is $40, and our target cost is $20. It needs water-resistant zippers, these specific technologies, and a lightweight fabric. We would also provide a short description, similar to what you would read on a website, such as "soft-hand-feel T-shirt with front graphic." That would kick off the team's portion of bringing the product to life.

That's just the creation piece. Throughout the process, you're getting samples and going into fittings with a fit model to see the garments on a person. Your developer sits there with you and records the feedback on what needs to change to make the product fit.

You're also preparing for photo shoots. You need to figure out which outfits go together and what you want to feature. You work with marketing and retail to make sure the garments being photographed for a catalog are the ones you want to lean on.

Then you prepare for sales meetings. We had spring/summer and fall/winter sales meetings twice a year. Product management was responsible for presenting the entire product line to the sales team, essentially selling it to the salespeople so they could go out and sell it. We built sample products and sample sizes, handed everything off to marketing, moved into go-to-market, and finally celebrated when the products hit stores. That entire process usually began about a year and a half before the product launched.

At CamelBak, it was different because I worked with specific retailers. The questions were: What do you want, and what do we need to build to meet your deadlines? I didn't need sales samples. I just needed to get the product to Target on time and approved for something like an endcap.

PAX was different again because I didn't have a wholesale team. I built products specifically for direct-to-consumer. When something was ready, we shipped it to our warehouse and put it online. I was much more connected with marketing and the go-to-market team. The work really varies based on the company and how its business is run.

What are you working on outside your new role?

When I got laid off, I decided I wanted to start my own children's wear company. Like I said, I tested things out at other companies before doing it myself, and I feel like I have the knowledge to get there. I'm a one-woman show, but it should be launching in the fall.

The company is called OddJoy. OddJoy is a unisex clothing line for toddlers and children. My daughter's name is Gia Joy, and when I was shopping for her, I felt like nothing was fun and cute. I was fed up with everything for girls having to be pink and princesses and everything for boys having to be blue and trucks. I thought, "I'm just going to do my own thing and create it."

It's an exciting side project that I'm hoping turns into something. My website will probably be active for presale in the next month, and the company should be up and running in the fall or fall and winter.

I've always wanted to be a designer and do all these other things, and when you build a company yourself, you get to do it all. I think it will help me in my career long term because I'll gain knowledge and full visibility into everything. If I have to make any pivots in the future, I'll have that experience. My samples are coming in just as I'm starting a new job, so I'll be a little slammed over the next few weeks!

If you were starting your career again today, would you still pursue product management?

I think I would. I really got lucky with my first role being where I needed to be. If I could restart, I would also probably think about taking a marketing route.

I've probably overstepped myself a few times by going into the marketing room and saying, "Guys, I have a great tagline for what this should be." I love ideation and creating new ideas all the time. Outside of product management, marketing would probably be the route I would take.

Connect with Hannah:

• LinkedIn: @HannahKoresky