Case Study 01 · Strategic Advisory & Executive Recommendation
The most important strategic recommendation I ever made was the one that killed a project I personally believed in.
Overview — For Skimmers
When I inherited the Fannie Mae Mobile App, I did what any good product leader does: I ran the data, tested the assumptions, and pressure-tested every possible path forward. What I found was a product without a strategic foundation, a leadership team without a shared vision, and resources that were badly needed elsewhere. I made the call to sunset it. That decision freed $1.25M per year in team capacity and redirected the organization toward work that actually mattered. The harder part was recommending against something I had invested real creative energy into — and owning it publicly.
The Situation
Fannie Mae's mobile application had been accumulating features for years without a coherent strategy behind them. It attempted to serve four distinct audiences simultaneously, required users to manually switch between versions, and had no clear ownership from senior leadership. Resources were being committed inconsistently. There was no defined role for the app within the broader digital ecosystem. On paper, it was an active product. In practice, it was an expensive distraction.
I inherited it as Product Manager with a mandate to assess and evolve it. What I found when I got into the data — downloads, retention, engagement patterns — told a story that nobody had been willing to say out loud yet.
The Approach
Before arriving at any recommendation, I did the work. I ran optimization tests to see if there was a path forward I hadn't seen yet. I led a full redesign in parallel — rebuilding 70 unique app screens from scratch — to honestly pressure-test whether the product could become something worth the investment. I wanted to be certain I wasn't recommending against something simply because it was hard.
The data held. Downloads were meager. Retention was poor. Senior leadership had no shared vision for what the app was meant to accomplish. Without that foundation, there was nothing stable to build on.
I made the recommendation to sunset the application. I built the case clearly, presented it to leadership, and owned it — knowing I was recommending against work I had personally invested in. That's the part nobody tells you about strategic advisory: sometimes your best recommendation is the one that costs you something.
The Outcome
The recommendation was accepted. Sunsetting the app freed approximately $1.25 million per year in developer, design, and leadership capacity — with additional savings from agency fees, marketing, and proposed spend that would have supported the application going forward. More importantly, it redirected meaningful team capacity toward higher-priority work across the digital portfolio.
The lesson I carry from this: good strategic advisory isn't about having the right answer. It's about being willing to follow the evidence somewhere uncomfortable and say what you found when you get there.
Good strategic advisory isn't about having the right answer. It's about being willing to follow the evidence somewhere uncomfortable — and saying what you found when you get there.