The Master of His Own Success

As the student class speaker at New York Institute of Technology’s 2012 commencement, Jimmy Marsanico finished with this shout-out to fellow students: “You are a product of your own hard work.” Now an enterprise product manager at Bloomberg LP, Marsanico is drawing on his own advice as well as his background to help him negotiate his career.

The Queens (N.Y.) native heard about NYIT through a brochure in the mail. “I was torn between studying psychology, architecture, and computer science—NYIT had majors in all three. I was accepted as an architecture student … but I loved math and science, so I switched.” He earned his undergraduate degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering at NYIT and then his master’s from Carnegie Mellon University.

Marsanico credits his mentors at NYIT for not only imparting their knowledge, but also for helping him become a better leader. He also made sure to get experience early. “I always held jobs and internships while I went to school,” he says.

That experience helped him as he took on roles in companies including a software consulting firm, large corporations, and several startups. “Spending time at a startup, you have to wear a different hat every day. My background in data science provides a strong foundation and is applicable to a lot of different industries.”

From data science, he moved into business intelligence, and then to the product side. “As a product manager, it’s really important to understand the needs of your customers. At Bloomberg, my customers are typically data scientists and developers; I can put myself in their shoes because I have the technical background, and that helps me connect that gap.”

When Marsanico started at Bloomberg in 2017, his team was looking to modernize the technology they use to sell data to clients such as banks and hedge funds. “Everyone is becoming much more technical at those firms. Our goal was to make our whole offering more advanced in terms of data delivery.”

Marsanico plans to build on his experience and hopes one day to start his own company. “Product managers have such a unique career path. There’s no one road to it, and there are so many doors being a product manager can open for you. The key to being successful is an open mind, a touch of humility, and a ton of empathy.”