Mara Fowler

About Mara Fowler

I am a product leader with a strong foundation in marketing, communications, and user experience, passionate about creating digital experiences that are intuitive, impactful, and measurable. Early in my career, I led initiatives spanning digital marketing, UX, content strategy, and virtual events, delivering high-impact results such as a 98% increase in return visits on Cisco.com pages, a 600%+ YoY increase in blog unique visits, and hundreds of engaged attendees at virtual summits.Leveraging this marketing and UX expertise, I transitioned into product leadership, leading high-visibility initiatives across Cisco’s web, mobile, and enterprise platforms. I spearheaded Directory Reimagined, the first major internal directory redesign since 2007, achieving top traffic and user satisfaction scores, and led the iOS mobile app rebuild, delivering over downloads and establishing the foundation for Cisco’s IT design system.As Product Owner for Approvals, I co-own a global platform used to streamline approvals across Workday, Concur, ESP (ServiceNow), and more. I built the onboarding strategy from the ground up, coordinating a global team across four time zones, and delivered key features including attachment viewing, proxy management, and AI-driven workflow integrations—contributing to a 9% year-over-year increase in user satisfaction, the largest of any Intranet product.I bring a unique blend of marketing, UX, and product expertise, combining user empathy, data-driven insights, and executive-level communication to align stakeholders, prioritize features, and execute complex roadmaps. I thrive on solving complex, cross-functional problems, driving adoption, and creating tangible impact for users and the business.

Experience

1. Approvals Onboarding Product Owner

   Cisco

   Jan 2025 — Present

   Leads platform onboarding and co-owns the Approvals product, a critical platform that consolidates approval workflows from Workday, Concur, ESP (ServiceNow), and other systems into a single unified inbox, addressing a major user pain point and improving efficiency and satisfaction for decision makers- Delivered a 9% year-over-year increase in user satisfaction, the largest single jump of any Intranet product, reflecting tangible impact on employee experience and engagement- Built the platform onboarding strategy from the ground up, establishing and nurturing relationships with stakeholders for initial onboarding, ongoing coordination, feature enhancements, and alignment with executive priorities- Strategically prioritize roadmap and releases, onboarding key systems such as Workday, Concur, and financial management systems in alignment with executive priorities, AI initiatives, and compliance- Enhanced user experience with features like attachment viewing, enabling users to see supporting documents needed for decision making and reducing the need to switch between systems- Launched Set and View Proxy capabilities, allowing users to manage proxies within Approvals and increasing transparency, fulfilling an executive ask and generating strong adoption among the executive admin community- Pioneered MCP Servers integration, enabling AI-driven workflows and setting the foundation for future integration with AI tools and corresponding initiatives- Coordinate cross-functionally with business and technical stakeholders to manage dependencies, integrations, and feature delivery across multiple teams- Maintain operational balance, overseeing design, support, tech operations, user research, security, and feature enablement to sustain and evolve the product while ensuring long-term stability

Education

• North Carolina State University

  Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Business Administration, Marketing Concentration, Psychology Minor