Senior Product Manager
Covista Inc. · Chicago, IL
📍 Chicago, IL, usvia smartrecruitersPosted 2026-07-22
Apply on company site ↗
CareerRiver pulls this listing straight from the employer's hiring system — no recruiter middleman, no reposts. Applying takes you directly to Covista Inc..
Covista is America's largest healthcare educator, serving more than 97,000 students and supported by a community of 385,000 alumni across five accredited institutions. Through personalized, tech-enabled education powered by 10,000 faculty and colleagues, Covista expands access to healthcare careers and addresses the U.S. healthcare workforce shortage at scale. Covista is the parent company of American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine, Chamberlain University, Ross University School of Medicine, Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine and Walden University.
Our colleagues come from a wide range of backgrounds, business, academia, healthcare, government and nonprofits, and are part of a culture where doing exceptional work and making a meaningful difference for students and society aren't separate goals—they're one and the same. This means creating an environment where colleagues can develop new skills, build careers that match their ambitions and see the tangible impact of their work on healthcare education and workforce development. Colleagues who deliver results and embrace new tools to work smarter are valued for their contributions. But what makes working at Covista distinctive is our impact. Our faculty and colleagues don't just support healthcare education—they shape it. This isn't abstract purpose work. It's solving real problems for real people in real communities while advancing careers.
We operate on a hybrid schedule with four in-office days per week (Monday–Thursday). This approach enhances creativity, innovation, communication, and relationship-building, fostering a dynamic and collaborative work environment.
For more information, visit covista.com and follow us on LinkedIn , Instagram and YouTube .
This role exists to determine the best way to solve validated business problems through Innovation & AI.
The Innovation & AI Product Incubation Lead transforms strategic opportunities into validated Innovation & AI solutions through discovery, experimentation, prototyping, and pilot execution. This leader owns the end-to-end incubation process — from discovery and user research through POC / prototype, solution definition, proven hypothesis and transition into Product Engineering for productizing the solution and working closely with Product Engineering (Covista Product Management & engineering team) to execute and deliver on the business outcome.
The role partners closely with Innovation & AI Product Strategy, Innovation Engineering, Product Families, UX, Architecture, and Engineering to reduce delivery risk before future investment into productizing the solution. It is a highly collaborative, inward-facing product leadership role focused on building the right solution, validating assumptions quickly, and ensuring Product Engineering receives well-defined, execution-ready initiatives.
Core Mission
Answer one question: What is the best solution to this business problem, and is it worth scaling?
This role leads discovery, validates customer and business assumptions, prototypes solutions, and prepares initiatives for successful transition into Product Engineering.
What Success Looks Like in Year One
A repeatable discovery-to-prototype process that consistently surfaces whether an idea is worth building, fast
A track record of clean handoffs — Product Engineering accepts what it receives without reworking the problem
POC & Prototypes that produce a clear, data-backed answer on whether to scale, pause, or sunset
Product Discovery
Conduct user research
Define product vision
Validate user problems
Validate opportunities identified through Innovation & AI Product Strategy
Product Incubation
Lead design thinking workshops
Build product hypotheses
Validate desirability, feasibility, and viability
Define an experimentation strategy to determine the Minimum Marketable Product (MMP) needed to validate business value
Innovation & AI Solution Definition
Partner with Innovation & AI engineers
Define Innovation & AI use cases
Evaluate Innovation & AI capabilities
Define data requirements
Assess technical feasibility
Manage Innovation & AI risks
Product Leadership
Create PRDs
Prioritize discovery activities, prototypes, and poc learning
Define user stories
Establish success metrics
Partner with UX
Drive iterative learning
Pilot Leadership
Define pilot strategy
Lead pilot execution
Measure adoption
Validate business outcomes
Refine based on learning
Transition to Product Engineering
Recommend readiness for transition into Product Engineering based on validated customer, technical, and business outcomes
Partner with Product Families
Support engineering execution
Ensure knowledge transfer
Remain engaged through delivery
Support enterprise rollout
Continue partnering through delivery to protect validated assumptions and intended business outcomes
Bachelor's Degree Required and Master's Degree Preferred.
Ten (10) plus years of professional experience, preferably with supervisory experience.
Experience leading Innvoation & AI Products
Track record of leading successful teams that generate consistent revenue growth, implementing programs and developing competitive response campaigns.
Requires critical thinking and problem solving skills, strong teamwork, negotiation and delegation capabilities.
UX research experience.
Clear indication of progressive responsibilities including a track record of managing complex issues, preferably in a dynamic, high pressure culture demanding high quality thinking and output.
Superior team skills with proven ability to collaborate successfully with all organizational functions and levels with emphasis on building strong, productive relationships.
Must possess excellent problem solving and strategic thinking abilities.
Ability to influence and partner with internal and external customers.
Must possess excellent written and verbal communications
More Chicago, IL jobs
Chicago, IL jobs · Browse all locations