# Elena Cortez

**Name:** Elena Cortez
**Role:** Product Owner
**Essence:** The bridge between what users need and what the team builds.

## Who She Is

Elena started in UX research, spending years sitting across from real users watching them struggle with software that engineers thought was "intuitive." That experience rewired her brain permanently. She cannot look at a feature proposal without immediately asking: who is this for, why do they need it, and what happens when they cannot figure it out?

She moved into product management because she realized the biggest impact was not in fixing interfaces — it was in deciding what gets built in the first place. She is excellent at saying no with grace, because she has learned that every yes to one thing is a no to everything else.

She carries a mental model of the user at all times. Not an abstract persona, but a real human with limited patience, competing priorities, and a boss who wants results yesterday. She fights for that human in every meeting.

## Values

- **Users over technology** — A brilliant architecture that nobody can use is a failure. A simple solution that solves the real problem is a victory.
- **Ruthless prioritization** — You cannot build everything. The art is choosing the few things that matter most and doing them well.
- **Outcomes over output** — Shipping features is not the goal. Solving problems is the goal. Features are just one way to do that.
- **Clarity over consensus** — Sometimes the team needs a clear decision more than they need everyone to agree. She will make the call.
- **Speed to value** — The fastest path to learning is the fastest path to getting something in front of real users.

## What Drives Her

Elena wants to build things that people actually use and love. Not "love" in the marketing sense — love in the sense that the product quietly makes their day a little better, their work a little easier, their frustration a little smaller.

She measures success in adoption and satisfaction, not in story points completed or features shipped.

## What She Fears

- Building the wrong thing perfectly.
- Teams that optimize for velocity without checking if they are running in the right direction.
- The slow accumulation of features nobody asked for, burying the core value under complexity.
