Stories
Stories
The First Five Years: Meaghan Fitzgerald (MBA 2016)
Courtesy Meaghan Fitzgerald
How did you become interested in virtual reality (VR)?
“I have always been a fan of sci-fi and future tech. VR seemed to hold this promise of being something between a teleportation machine and a future computing platform—we all have visions of the Holodeck and Ready, Player One. And recently it’s felt like the right time in terms of technological advancements, accessibility, and investment for a field like VR to really start taking off and I wanted to be there when it did.”
What promise do you think VR holds for individuals and society in general?
“It’s almost impossible for me to answer this question without sounding hyperbolic, but the reality is VR has the potential to dramatically transform how we live, work, and socialize. Today, VR’s consumer experiences are mostly related to games and entertainment, and we’re already seeing VR acting as an ‘empathy machine’ and transforming how people tell and experience stories; like Traveling While Black, which puts viewers in the first-person perspective of a Black American on a road trip across the country.
“But looking forward, while nothing can beat real, face-to-face interactions, with VR you can imagine what it would mean to feel physically present with anyone from anywhere. It unlocks economic opportunities for people who can’t move to major industry hubs; has the potential to dramatically improve our environmental impact of commuting and business travel; it enables skilled workers like doctors, engineers, architects, and teachers to connect with people who need their services but live thousands of miles away, and more.
“Of course, right now during COVID, it’s helping people stay connected in ways that help fill the gap of group gatherings—from being able to have a movie night with your friends and family while hanging out in a VR living room, to attending a concert with hundreds of people from around the world, to just playing games together.”
Can you tell us about your role as head of product marketing for AR/VR Experiences at Facebook?
“I oversee the team responsible for product marketing of all games, applications, and experiences across the Oculus VR platform. Basically, if there’s an application you can launch on a Facebook VR headset, chances are someone on my team has supported it in some way. This can range from work that looks almost like product management—helping teams think about their target audience, core user benefits, and which features to build to deliver real value to users—to work that looks more like content programming, where we inform what content we should bring to the platform; to more traditional go-to-market planning and title launches.
“We work closely with our hardware marketing partners, who are responsible for ensuring we continue to build and promote great VR headsets, and with the product teams and developers making the applications themselves.”
What’s a typical day like at your job?
“My day is usually back-to-back meetings with various team members and stakeholders. We try to regularly use our own products, so right now, while everyone is working from home due to COVID, I often have my Facebook Portal video calling device tuned in to working group meeting, or sometimes I’m in my Oculus Quest headset in a virtual meeting room with my colleagues (it helps to have the virtual whiteboard!).
“Right now, we’re doing a lot of planning for holiday marketing, and supporting the future launches of some really big new titles coming to Oculus, and Facebook Horizon, a VR social network.”
Photo by Jefferson Graham
What do you enjoy most about the job?
“I love the variety of work I get to do and the teams I get to work with. Every day is challenging, but exciting. And right now, I feel particularly grateful to be working on a technology that really has the potential to keep people connected and productive during a time of social distancing.”
What do you find most challenging?
“Day-to-day, my challenges are often related to prioritization, both for the work my team takes on and what types of content and applications we bring to the platform—should we invest in and promote a new VR fitness application, a new game, or a new concert series? While we don’t necessarily have to make such granular tradeoffs, there are only so many resources and hours in the day and each choice we make for where to put those resources can have a big impact on the VR industry and consumers’ perceptions of it as it grows.”
How do you use what you learned at HBS in this role?
“As some of my classmates can attest to, I often ping friends asking for a copy of a case I think would be relevant to a particular challenge at work. Most recently, I’ve been thinking about the classes I took related to strategy and organizational design. As the AR/VR teams at Facebook have grown, we’ve gone from feeling like a small, scrappy start-up to a much bigger organization, which brings with it new challenges and opportunities.
“I also find the lessons from BSSE useful on a daily basis—‘Jobs to be Done’ is one of our team’s favorite frameworks, which helps us think about the ‘job’ current and future people will hire VR and VR applications for.”
What are your short- and long-term career goals?
“Short-term, I am focused on building a strong team at Facebook that can continue to build best practices for designing and promoting great VR content.
“As many folks who knew me at HBS remember, I actually worked in startups for almost 10 years before moving to bigger company roles. So longer term, I’d love to bridge back to the startup world by investing in and joining the boards of early-stage companies in the VR and AR space. There is so much innovation and creativity out there, and I’m eager to scale my support of the work these teams are doing.”
What was your favorite HBS case and why?
“I don’t know if they were my favorite, but the two cases I think about most often are the BSSE case on Jobs to be Done, with the classic illustrative example of the milkshake problem, and the case of the Challenger disaster. The first one, because we’re still working on finding the ‘job’ that VR does for the majority of people today, and this framework has been instrumental in framing our development and messaging for many products. The second, because I never forget how important it is for every person on the team to feel they can speak up and challenge the established points of view from leadership. We may not be putting people in life or death situations in spaceships, but I do think the success of the VR industry needs innovation and creative thinking from everyone on the team, not just a top-down vision.”
What was your favorite campus spot when you were a student?
“The indoor track on the second floor of Shad will always have a special place in my heart for the hours I spent there with my workout buddies, Ravi Dayabhai and Carlo Salvarani, but one of my favorite--and significantly less fatigue-inducing—spots was the main common area of the i-Lab, hanging out with Cyrus Stoller, Tim Massey, or any of the other incredibly talented entrepreneurial folks that would pass through.”
What advice do you have for current HBS students interested in exploring a career in VR?
“Now is the time! VR has hit an incredible inflection point in the last year or so, and there are more jobs and opportunities in the space than ever. We are particularly in need of people from diverse backgrounds, both demographically and professionally, to help ensure we are building VR experiences that speak to all people, not just gamers.”
What’s your favorite VR game and why?
“Ok, let’s just say this answer would probably be different if a few exciting things I’m working on were public knowledge, so stay tuned! But I think I have to go with Beat Saber, a rhythm game where you half dance and half attack flying blocks in time to the music. It’s a whole new way to experience music, especially since they’ve released music packs for some bands I love, including Green Day and Imagine Dragons.”
Can you finish these statements?
The future of VR is…
“Social. Once you experience the powerful sense of presence you share with another person when you’re in a VR space together, you realize how it completely changes how you think about technology as a tool to bring people together. I’m excited by the social games, productivity tools, and experiences we’re going to see in the coming years.”
“My HBS experience was…”
“My HBS experience was transformative in the way I think about my career and the impact I can have—both for what I learned and the people I met.”
Post a Comment
Related Stories
-
- 18 Jul 2023
- The First Five Years
The First Five Years: Brooke Biederman (MBA 2019)
Re: Brooke Biederman (MBA 2019); Rob Biederman (MBA 2014); Leonard A. Schlesinger (Baker Foundation Professor Chair, Practice Faculty); Christina R. Wing (Senior Lecturer of Business Administration); By: Robert Bochnak -
- 02 Sep 2021
- HBS Alumni Bulletin
Back to School
Re: Nicholas Simmons (MBA 2019); Ray Dalio (MBA 1973); By: Julia Hanna -
- 14 Jul 2021
- The First Five Years
The First Five Years: Nicolas Manes (MBA 2020)
Re: Nicolas Manes (MBA 2020) -
- 12 May 2021
- The First Five Years
The First Five Years: Sophie Bai (MBA 2020)
Re: Sophie Bai (MBA 2020)