Miranda Simmiss
Senior Product Manager at Everledger
Fast Five is our quickfire interview series where we hit up some legendary movers, shakers and innovators with, you’ve guessed it, five big questions.
For classroom teachers, Fast Five is a great way to introduce your students to some awesome real-life changemakers and have them think about life as an entrepreneur or innovator.
In this week’s edition we talk to Activator Miranda Simmis, who is a Senior Product Manager at Everledger.
Activators are thought-leaders, innovators, and all-round epic humans with diverse real-life experience who volunteer as “Entrepreneurs in Residence” with Future Anything’s Activate schools.
Q1: Give us three words that describe your life
Busy, Adaptable, Innovative
Q2: Tell us a little about your current role. What does a day in the life of you look like?
As a Senior Product Manager at Everledger, no two days are the same. Some days I’m chatting with customers or digging into industry trends, other days I’m brainstorming new features or figuring out how to make the platform smoother and more useful. I’m kind of the bridge between the customer, the dev team, and the actual product—making sure everything clicks and keeps moving forward.
Most mornings kick off with coffee (non-negotiable), then I’m usually diving into emails and messages to figure out what needs my attention first. From there, it really depends—are we building something new? Launching a feature? Kicking off work with a new client? Whatever stage we’re in, I’m in the thick of it. I usually wrap up the day with a quick sync with our overseas dev team to make sure we’re all aligned.
Q3: Tell us about being an Activator. What has this looked like, and what’s been a highlight?
Being an activator to me is about bringing a different perspective to the students. I have been very fortunate in working with a few different industries in my career and can help provide a real world perspective to some ideas. I tend to encourage the students to make sure they really understand the target market and problem they are trying to solve and to test their idea with potential customers to see if it will work.
I love seeing the ideas students come up with to tackle real-world problems—it’s super inspiring knowing these are the future innovators who’ll be shaping what’s next.
Q4: What do you wish you’d learned in school that has been essential in your career?
One of the main things I wished I had learned in school was that it is ok to fail, as long as you learn from it. Learning to reflect on failures in a constructive way is the key to personal growth and innovation. It is a common principle of science; observe, form a hypothesis, make a prediction, conduct an experiment, and analyse the results. This same iterative process applies to innovation, turning setbacks into valuable insights for improvement.
Q5: What’s one book, website or podcast you’d recommend to aspiring young entrepreneurs, and why?
I’d recommend Atomic Habits by James Clear. This is a book that not only teaches but uses great examples of how some small changes can have huge results if you put the work in.
More about this week’s Fast Fiver, Miranda Simmiss
Miranda Simmiss is an experienced digital product manager with a passion for UX design. She is experienced in leading and motivating large teams to ensure fulfilment of key business objectives.
Discover our other 2025 Activators here.
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