April Dawn, PhD — Product & Portfolio Leader

02 / Career arc

Over a decade of compounding scope — scientist to portfolio GM.

Each step has added scope: from a single product, to a flagship, to a multi-model portfolio with full P&L. The pattern is consistent — find the commercial lever others have missed, build the operating muscle around it, then hand off something that compounds.

2011 – 2014

Senior Academic Officer, certification program

PSI / Software Secure

Built the company’s first academic integrity certification program for fully online courses — a 0→1 program in an emerging online proctoring market.
Established the institutional advisory pipeline behind it — the trust signal that accelerated higher-ed buyer adoption during a formative growth period.

Scope: 0→1 program build · market entry

2014 – 2017

Product Manager, P&L owner

Cengage

P&L owner of a $20M digital learning portfolio — 50% revenue growth, 29% digital adoption lift across the line.
Launched the portfolio’s first Open Educational Resource (OER) product through the industry transition — sourced content, designed the commercial model, hit market.

Scope: $20M P&L · OER market entry

2017 – 2018

Senior PM, post-acquisition migration

Everbridge

Inherited a post-acquisition platform migration — on-premise to multi-tenant SaaS — with Fortune 100 customers on the old stack.
Held a $12.8M base at 98% renewal through the migration; landed $4.5M new revenue in the first two quarters of the SaaS platform launch.

Scope: SaaS migration · F100 customers

2018 – 2019

Senior PM, PLG & commercial design

Deque Systems

Introduced the company’s first freemium B2C SaaS motion — new recurring revenue channel.
Designed the upgrade path from free tier to enterprise; defined feature gates and commercial triggers.

Scope: PLG motion · new channel

2019 – 2021

Lead PM, flagship discovery

ProQuest (pre-acquisition)

11% portfolio growth, 96% renewal, +5% over revenue plan through pandemic disruption.
0–1 launch of a CODiE-nominated institutional analytics product; built the PM function that became a model across the BU.

Scope: flagship · function build

2021 – 2026

Director → Sr. Director, Product

Clarivate

Scaled from flagship discovery (4.1% ARR, 3× pipeline) to $45M+ portfolio P&L with full GM accountability.
2× BU growth rate, 70%+ EBITDA, $143M+ TAM unlocked, $7M GenAI pipeline — through market contraction.

Scope: $45M portfolio · GM-level

Before product

Research scientist.

Molecular genetics, NSF and National Geographic-funded. Dolphin field research across four continents. 14 peer-reviewed publications →

The throughline

A scientist’s lens, applied to product.

Curiosity drives the question. Data drives the answer. Hypotheses get revised when they’re wrong. The same posture I used in the lab is the one I bring to a P&L.

“Curiosity-first leadership” — how I was trained to think.

03 / How the portfolio earns

One asset, five commercial models, one P&L.

The most durable portfolios are organized around a core content or data asset with multiple commercial layers stacked on top — each reaching a different buyer at a different price point. The Clarivate portfolio I led for six years was structured this way: workflow tools and partnerships fed the asset; subscription, e-commerce, and bulk services took it to market. Strengthening any inflow strengthened every outflow.

Workflow &
analytics

Tools that acquire the content moat.

Premium workflow software for the upstream supply chain — submission, review, archiving, and impact analytics for contributing partners. Both a product and a content-acquisition channel.

Inflow channel

B2B SaaS
subscription

Recurring ARR on the flagship.

The central commercial hub: subscription database licensed to enterprise customers, with a citation/index uplift distributed via partner platforms and a GenAI research layer that opens new buyer segments.

$33.0M ARR · 72% of total

B2C
e-commerce

Self-serve storefront, PLG motion.

Direct-to-consumer purchase of derived content products. Print-on-demand and commemorative purchases reach a buyer the enterprise channel can’t economically serve. Built one storefront 0→1 to $1M run-rate.

$7.5M · +12% portfolio

B2B 1×
services

Bulk delivery, custom data, API.

Transactional and licensable use of the same content asset: bulk PDF delivery to large institutions, custom data extracts, API access for downstream analytics. Higher contract value, longer sales cycle.

$5.3M · ARR transition

Strategic
partnerships

Sovereign markets, content inflows.

Country- and segment-level partnerships that both expand the content moat and unlock markets the standard commercial model can’t reach — including a $143M+ TAM in a sovereign market.

Moat & TAM expansion

Content flow → Workflow tools and strategic partnerships acquire content into the central asset. Subscription, e-commerce, and bulk services monetize it across five distinct buyer types and pricing models. Each layer is a different commercial mechanic with its own metrics — ARR retention and price uplift on the hub, conversion and AOV on B2C, contract value and cycle length on B2B 1×.

04 / Transformation

Three years of full P&L ownership. $39M → $45.8M.

Three years owning the P&L of a portfolio I’d worked inside since 2019. Inherited a $39M portfolio with a $5M unprofitable services line dragging margin and forecast quality. Delivered $45.8M with 70%+ EBITDA — after sunsetting the unprofitable services line, during an enterprise SaaS market contraction, on a continuing portfolio that grew at 2× the BU’s blended rate.

Director → Senior Director, Product · Clarivate · 2021–2026

Inherited · 2023

~$39M

Delivered · 2026

$45.8M

+$6.8M · +17% / 3-year arc

Pricing power

Undifferentiated commercial posture on the installed base — renewal pricing held flat in prior cycles

$29M ARR base at 100%+ effective renewal with +3.6% price uplift — held through a contracting market because GenAI investment repositioned the product as must-have, not nice-to-have

B2C channel

Single storefront, no PLG motion — declining

+12% B2C revenue — new storefront ($720K in 8 mo., $1M run-rate) and PLG activated on the existing channel

APAC commercial model

$4.8M transactional 1× POD line in APAC — declining ~8% YoY, no recurring component, no growth path

$4.8M ACV protected and repositioned — restructured the POD business from 1× transactional to recurring ARR, arresting the −8% decline and putting the line on a growth path. Same dollars, durable revenue.

GenAI

Not in market — no AI-driven retention motion, no AI-driven expansion motion

One GenAI investment, two commercial levers: retention & price uplift on the $29M base (above), plus $7M pipeline in market-expansion segments the portfolio couldn’t previously reach

Market expansion · sovereign

~$600K in business — effectively no presence in a sovereign market with massive structural demand

$143M+ of TAM unlocked via a sovereign-market reseller deal — partnership delivered a local sales force, distribution, and access to 150+ institutions, 14,000+ potential customers our commercial team couldn’t reach directly. Not a translation play; a market-access play.

Partnerships

US-saturated content acquisition — year-over-year growth stalling in a market with no remaining adjacencies to mine

International content moat — 450K+ records across 12+ countries, 126+ partners. Unlocked $25M EMEA pipeline and a defensible coverage claim no competitor can match without rebuilding it.

+$2.1M

YoY portfolio growth on continuing portfolio — +4.9% (2× BU average)

+4.2%

ARR delivered over plan — through enterprise market contraction

70%+

EBITDA maintained — against a BU baseline of 37%

100%

Effective renewal on $29M ARR — with +3.6% price uplift

A note on the numbers. Final portfolio composition ($45.8M) reflects end-of-tenure scale to the best of my recollection. The inherited 2023 portfolio size (~$39M) is an estimate based on personal recall and the disclosed YoY growth rates — I no longer have access to the underlying data. Percentage figures, renewal rates, partnership counts, content acquisition metrics, and YoY growth rates are pulled from my own records and performance reviews.

05 / Selected work

Six moves that compounded into a durable portfolio.

All six moves are from the same portfolio (ProQuest → Clarivate, 2019–2026). The portfolio followed me through an acquisition and a scope progression. The repetition is the point: compounding only shows up when one operator stays at one P&L long enough for the decisions to connect. Each move is told as judgment, not a feature list: the read on the market, the call I made, what compounded.

01 · Pricing power/Renewals · must-have positioning

Held a $29M ARR base at 100%+ effective renewal — with +3.6% price uplift through market contraction.

Most BUs were defending share. We took a price uplift — +40 bps above BU average — on the installed base while contraction-era budgets were being cut around us. The lever was positioning: the flagship was renewed as mission-critical research infrastructure, not a discretionary line item.

The judgment In a contraction, what survives the budget review is what customers can’t do their job without. Get the positioning right and the renewal — and the price uplift — follow.

$29M ARR protected · 100%+ effective renewal · +3.6% price uplift (+40 bps vs. BU) · +$2.5M citation-index price realization

02 · Channel creation/B2C +12% · PLG · APAC restructuring

Expanded B2C revenue +12% — new storefront plus PLG on the existing channel — and converted APAC to recurring ARR.

Two channels stood up in parallel. B2C: the brand was capturing institutional wallet but not individual wallet. Acquired a domain, built a new storefront, activated PLG on the existing one. APAC: a transactional market restructured into recurring ARR — $4.8M ACV growth.

The judgment The asset existed; the channel didn’t. New channels are usually a packaging problem dressed up as a product problem.

+12% B2C growth · $720K new storefront in 8 months ($1M run-rate) · $4.8M APAC ACV (1× → ARR) · PLG activated

Lead move · AI playbook

03 · GenAI as market expansion/$7M pipeline · new segments

Used GenAI to open new market segments — $7M pipeline created in buyers the portfolio couldn’t previously reach.

The GenAI capability wasn’t framed as a price-uplift lever — it was framed as a market-expansion lever. The technology delivered workflow compression that opened buyer profiles previously priced or positioned out of the portfolio. Validated PMF on the flagship; mapped segment-specific willingness-to-pay to buyer JTBD.

The judgment The right question on AI isn’t “can we charge more for it.” It’s “who couldn’t buy us before that can now.” That’s where the compounding sits.

$7M pipeline opened in new segments · PMF validated on flagship · segment-specific JTBD · net-new buyers, not bigger contracts

04 · Partnerships as moat/200% supply-chain scale

Doubled the supply chain — 126+ new partners, 12+ countries — turning content acquisition into the moat.

Content acquisition was a KPI before I built it — not a function. Stood it up: 200% supply-chain scale, 450K+ records (54% international), 12 top-ranked universities through novel acquisition strategies. The proprietary content base is the moat — and it set up the cross-platform integration that delivered $25M of EMEA pipeline on a different product.

The judgment The moat in data products is the rights, not the software. Partnerships are how you widen it faster than competitors can copy — and how you compound it across acquired customer bases.

200% supply-chain scale · 450K+ records (54% international) · 126+ new partners · +$25M EMEA pipeline via cross-platform cross-sell

05 · Sovereign-market access/$143M+ TAM · reseller deal

Unlocked $143M+ of new TAM in a sovereign market — through a reseller partnership, not a product launch.

The market wasn’t a translation problem and the commercial team couldn’t reach it directly. The reseller partnership delivered local sales force, distribution, and institutional relationships we didn’t have — reaching 150+ institutions and 14,000+ potential customers, plus 300K acquired content assets. From there, mapped $25M of non-US ARR whitespace beyond.

The judgment In regulated markets, you don’t out-build access — you partner for it. Get the structure right and the product follows.

$143M+ sovereign-market TAM unlocked · 150+ institutions in pipeline · 300K content assets acquired · $25M non-US ARR whitespace mapped

06 · The kill decision/Portfolio rationalization · EBITDA discipline

Sunset $5M of unprofitable services — replaced by recurring revenue, with portfolio growth on top.

A legacy services line peaked at ~$5M. Project-based, unprofitable, unforecastable. Cut it, end of 2024. Replaced with higher-margin recurring streams: B2B ARR growth, citation-index price realization, B2C expansion, APAC ARR conversion. EBITDA roughly doubled. The continuing portfolio grew on top.

The judgment The portfolio was carrying revenue that wasn’t worth the volatility. Cutting it was unpopular and correct.

~$5M unprofitable services sunset · 70%+ EBITDA (vs. 37% BU baseline) · +$2.1M YoY portfolio growth (+4.9%, 2× BU) · +4.2% ARR over plan

06 / How I lead

Six operating principles that show up in everything I run.

Lead with P&L, not roadmap.

The product strategy is downstream of the financial strategy. I start with where the dollars need to come from in 18 months, work backward to the commercial model, and only then decide what to build. Roadmaps that don’t map to a revenue line are theater.

ii.

Sunset before you scale.

The hardest call in product is what to stop doing. I’ve killed lines that still generated revenue because the math was wrong, then redeployed the team into something that compounded. Healthy portfolios shrink as well as grow.

iii.

Renewal is a growth motion.

Most companies treat renewal as defense and net-new as offense. I treat them as the same motion at different time horizons: the customer who renews at +3.6% this year is the customer who buys the second product next year. Retention is where compounding starts.

iv.

The vision is the org chart.

The fastest way to coordinate thirty people is not more meetings. It’s making sure each of them can finish the sentence “we’re building this because…” the same way I would. When everyone holds the same north star, decisions get made at the right altitude: I don’t need to be in the room for the team to make the right call. Strategy that doesn’t translate into autonomous front-line judgment is just a deck.

Collaborative by default, decisive when it counts.

The work runs on communication: early reads, working drafts, the willingness to be talked out of something before it ships. People do their best work when they’re contributors to the vision, not recipients of it. When the call has to be made I make it. The rest of the time, the room is smarter than I am, and I’d rather use that than perform authority.

vi.

AI as a lever, both ways.

Outward: I use AI to drive pricing power, expand markets, and unlock new revenue. Embedding ML and GenAI into established products to lift adoption, strengthen renewals, and generate pipeline. Inward: same instinct, turned on the operating model. Compress decision cycles, automate reporting, kill the meetings that should have been a dashboard. Leaders reasoning about AI from the outside age fast.

I want everyone on the team to be able to point to the work we shipped and say “I helped build that.” Not because I delegated tasks, but because they helped shape the destination. The buy-in isn’t a deliverable. It’s the whole game. — Operating note, 2025

Building durable growth in B2B SaaS — from flagship products to global portfolios.