Dvrgnt Adventures, with B. Pagels-Minor

In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is B. Pagels-Minor. B. graduated college in 2008 and quickly landed a lucrative consulting job. But when the economy crashed, B. ended up working as a barista and then as a store manager at Target. They entered the role at Target with a lot of confidence. B. quickly learned that leadership isn’t about being the smartest; it’s about earning your team’s respect. If the team doesn’t follow you, it’s you who will go. After Target, B. faced multiple near-disasters while experimenting with different roles and companies, trying to find what best suited their skills. This mindset of trial and error proved vital in navigating their career journey.

B. is a distinguished award-winning product strategist, acclaimed podcast host within the Top 25% on Spotify, seasoned startup advisor, investor, and performance coach. As a highly regarded thought leader in product management and agile technologies, B. has steered international product teams at Fortune 100 and FAANG companies. With over a decade of service as a non-profit director, B. has driven large-scale technological and business strategy transformations across historically complex industries such as healthcare, software, and finance. Throughout an illustrious career, B. has supported revenue generation exceeding $20 billion and delivered exponential investor value. Recognized for a proven track record, B. is an experienced and growth-focused professional known for spearheading the development and execution of business, product, and culture strategies and operating as a qualified financial expert across board roles. Adept at identifying product-market fit and driving efficient scaling, key competencies include business development, product management, safety & regulatory compliance, revenue & margins growth, and cross-functional collaboration.

Currently, B. operates in the startup ecosystem as an investor and trusted advisor. B. has helped their startups successfully raise hundreds of millions of dollars and nurtured companies from pre-seed to seed and from seed and beyond. B. was recruited into and led the listening team at Sprout Social and then led the acquisition and integration of a chief competitor, Simply Measured, effectively positioning the company for its final round of funding that ultimately led to a multibillion-dollar exit.

B. was then recruited to the team at Apple to help lead the agile transformation for the App Store Developer Tools team and owned the experience and quality of App Store Connect, the front door to the App Store. Under B.’s leadership, App Store Connect was overhauled entirely to dramatically increase the speed and efficacy of various tooling to increase the number of apps submitted substantially and approved each day while increasing the overall satisfaction score of the product by three basis points in 2 quarters. B’s success with overhauling the systems led to an opportunity to lead quality of the App Store Connect product, ownership of the App Store Connect App, and ownership of regulatory and compliance programs. B. led the integration of GDPR into the App Store, the overhaul of the App review process to support the Korea and Brazil Age Verification requirements, and also owned the relationship between App Store legal and the App Store team, including being the translator between legal and tech teams due to their experience having attended law school. The overall changes to the App Store improved relationships across critical partners like Microsoft and EA and helped the App Store exceed $60BN in revenue. Later, B. was recruited to lead the product function for finance and membership data for Netflix. Chief responsibilities included SOX compliance and ownership; reporting to finance, audit, and various finance and tax regulators; and principally responsible for helping develop insights to help supercharge Netflix’s ability to right size content value and cost.

Earlier, B. worked at startups primarily in the Chicagoland area across industries such as marketing, sales, automotive, education, social media, B2B, B2B2C, DTC, and agencies building numerous analytics and insights tools to help either businesses or individuals make 2 not only better business decisions but more effective decisions. B. has made a career out of being the force multiplier in the room by asking engaging and thoughtful questions that allow boards to think differently about an issue and by supporting the development and growth of key leaders using their background in performance coaching. B. has consistently been recruited to committees such as the audit, executive, and governance committees for all of their boards and has spent most of their time as a leader on each board, thoughtfully nurturing each organization through complex financial, human capital, and regulatory issues. B. is the award-winning founder of DVRGNT Ventures, B.PM Consulting & The Wealth Salons. B.’s fierce drive to promote diversity in tech and impact authentic change continues to define their work and life outside of their work. B. is a proud graduate of Northwestern University with a focus on history and an MBA and Master of Information Systems from Robert Morris University. B. gives back to various organizations by being the Vice Chair on the Board of Directors at Howard Brown Health, one of the top 3 largest LGBTQ community health centers in the country and has grown from under $10MM to over $250MM during B.’s service, Vice President and secretary on the Board of Directors at the YWCA of Metropolitan Chicago, and Board of Directors of both the Northwestern Alumni Association and Outfest. B. has been honored as one of the Queer 50 from Fast Company in 2022 and 2023, 35 Hero Advocate Executives by Involve People and Yahoo Finance UK, 40 under 40 by Silicon Valley Journal, and a finalist for 2022 LGBTQNation Heroes of the Year.