UX Research Manager
Helen Devine is currently a UX Research Manager for the Economist, but she’s been professional collecting insights since 2007. With experience in Insight, Ethnography, Design & User Research, her work has taken many guises through different departments, sectors and countries. Helen is passionate about cutting through the noise by synthesising data to tell a clear story that brings users to life, identifies opportunities and pushes action where it will have the biggest impact.
Co-Founder
Varun has worked in research for a decade, starting a career in research coordination he's honed his research skills at companies like United HealthGroup, Facebook, BestBuy and now SeatGeek. He's co-founded Apple & Banana as the author and editor of the UX research toolkit, an invaluable resource for UX Researchers at any stage of their career.
Principal Researcher
The only sustainable business growth comes from delivering value to people. I lead teams in helping companies understand what people are actually trying to do, and how we can help them do it, and then applying that to product decisions.
A very cool thing is that I've been able to translate my love of talking to humans and organizing information into a career helping businesses make better decisions faster. An even cooler thing is that I get to manage amazing teams of people who also love those things.
The coolest thing, though, is that I've been charged by grizzly bears while canoeing in the Arctic Circle.
CEO & Co-Founder
Ned Dwyer is the co-founder and CEO of Great Question. Ned has been a technology entrepreneur for over a decade and after three successful exits, he’s founded his biggest passion project to date, focused on customer research. With Great Question he helps product, design and research teams better understand their customers and build something people want.
Research Manager & Area Lead
Amanda is research manager at Asana and professor at NYU. She is committed to making an impact by building a community around shared values and is passionate about empowering communities through artful research and strategic planning while using data as a guide for decision-making. Amanda is a lifelong question-asker and tinkerer.
Head of Research
Brad holds a B.S. in Computer Science, a B.A. in Psychology, and minors in Spanish and Dance from the University of Rochester with a focus in Human-Computer Interaction and Social Psychology. Since 2009 he's been helping companies from early-stage startup to Fortune 500 develop engaging, fulfilling experiences for their users and build top-tier User Experience Research & Design practices.Brad has launched over 20 products and touched well over 5 million users, with budgets ranging from $0 to $10M+, as well as having designed dozens of usability research studies and over 250 unmoderated remote research sessions. This diverse background gives him the ability to thrive in any environment, and to work with anyone from contributing engineer to C-suite executive. Collaborative yet firm, Brad understands the value in human-centered product development.
UX Research Lead
Rachel is a user experience researcher and strategist. A self-proclaimed nerd of all trades, she loves to learn about everything that crosses her path. In addition to being an avid learner herself, Rachel also has a passion for helping others shine their voice through her research, writing, and editing skills. In her spare time, you might catch her reading, drawing, or traveling. She regularly writes about UX Research on her blog at Renaissance Rachel.
Nicolás Carey: Director, Product Design (Growth)
James Wallis: Senior Design Operations Manager
Nicolás Carey- Having led product design teams at companies like Potato and Corplex, Nicolás has been the Director of Product design on the growth team at Brex for the past 2 years.
James Wallis- James has been the Design Operations Manager at Brex for the past year. Prior to that he worked in operations across various teams at Potato, Webgains & Goviral.
Senior UX Researcher
Zoë is a UXR at Google working on building tools to keep the world safer. A love of consumer products UXR, she was previously at Lyft and YouTube. She made a big career switch from Wildlife Biology to tech, and loves building extra value in research by leveraging diverse backgrounds-- democratized or otherwise.
Associate Director, User Research
Somehow managed to make a career of caring about how people communicate, navigate, and learn in the digital world. 🤘 Past lives as a writer, educator, and edtech startup multi-tool. 🔮
Libby: Senior Manager, Product Design
Amy: Product Marketing Researcher
Libby Perold is the Senior Manager, Product Design at Alma. include She is responsible for leading the product design team as well as leading UX research across their two distinct customer groups. As the Product Marketing Researcher at Alma, Amy is responsible for leading Marketing research activities – from member satisfaction to brand health and loyalty. Together they are learning from each other while expanding the impact of research across Alma.
Research Operations Manager
Passionate about innovation in educational media and technology. I have a Masters of Arts in Media & Education from S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.
Over 15 years of experience working with children and families; I have seen first-hand the powerful and lasting effects that memorable characters and enveloping storylines have on others. I have a diverse creative and technical background which includes writing, directing and editing films and videos, developing educational content for children, and consulting on early childhood education.
My love of travel and adventure has taken me to over twenty-five countries and back-and-forth across the US many times. I use these experiences to create new stories to tell and thoughtful lessons for younger audiences. I believe that education should be fun and engaging because that is when it is most effective.
My strengths include humor, innovation, diligence, communication, teamwork and creative problem solving. When not spending hours of quality time with the Adobe Creative Suite you can find me writing short stories, building puppets or making an excellent sandwich.
Research Operations Manager
I manage a global Research Ops team for Atlassian. Taking a break from social media until the end of '22. Currently writing Research At Scale, which will be published with Rosenfeld Media in early '23. Founder of the Cha Cha Club: an invite-only club for full-time Research Ops professionals, specifically. Founder of the ResearchOps Community (I no longer run it) and instigator of the #WhatisResearchOps initiative.
Director of User Research
Peter Roessler is a design research expert, strategist, and leader of research teams with two decades of experience who places emphasis on connection and inclusivity with peers, drawing out the connections between research needs and the persistent dynamics of the business, and building best-in-class cultures, practices, and products. He currently is the Director of User Research a 0 to 1' Research leadership hire, exploring the value and impact of early-stage strategic research leadership, early formation of healthy organizational habits, and balancing rigor with velocity.
User Experience Researcher
Christa leads the rapid research function at Design powerhouse, Figma. Her leadership has made important research happen quickly. Opening the doors for additional strategic research work. Prior to Figma she was an experience researcher at Asana.
Sr. Manager, UX Research
I lead efforts in conducting UX research, scaling research operations, and partnering with colleagues on using research to design better products. My user research career has focused on education: how kids learn, how teachers teach, and how the humans behind educational institutions work. Most recently, I left education tech to work in the fascinatingly complex world of live event ticketing.I love the puzzle of finding a place for research in a busy, driven organization. While my approach to building a research function is flexible, I’ll never compromise on creating space for inclusion in my work. I speak conversational Korean, better than conversational Spanish, and am a purple belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
Research & Strategy Leader
Lena is an independent Researcher and Strategist. She spent the last 15 years applying research tools and mindsets in both consulting and in-house roles. In her recent roles, she built and scaled Research and Insights teams in Technology companies such as HashiCorp and Asurion. Before that she spent a decade in consulting, leading projects in design strategy, ethnographic research, service design, and innovation.
UX Research Manager
Laura has been in the research field for a decade. In that time Laura has worked at companies like Comcast, Allstate, and Acquia and is currently the UX Research Manager at Drift, an AI based sales and marketing platform. In her role she runs product design research related to the biggest unknowns around product strategy. In addition, she empowered a team of 10+ designers to run over 50 research studies in 2022.
Director of Insights
Claudia is the Director of Insights at Highspot, where she is constantly finding new ways to expand the impact of research beyond Product and to the ecosystem that is the business. Across multiple companies, her team's research has influenced successful fundraising and exit strategies, leading to directly a total valuation of $6.5bn. Prior to Highspot, she built and scaled the research team at a fintech company called Fivestars (acquired by SumUp) and has worked as a researcher for companies like Pinterest and Hulu. After being involved in investments from early in her career, she is passionate about improving the accessibility of financial literacy and is excited to start a discourse about quantifying the impact of UX investments toward a company’s valuation. Claudia has an MBA with a concentration in Finance from the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley.
Manager, User Experience Operations
Moving from design to research operations is a unique path, but for Gaby it made perfect sense. If you can't get in touch with the right users, your designs will never be exactly what the customer needs. In her nearly 5 years at AppFolio, a cloud-based business management solution built for the real estate industry, she's moved from UX Designer to the manager of User Experience Operations. Today, she develops, supports, and scales the UX Operations team in their efforts to provide timely participant recruitment, efficient processes, and sufficient infrastructure & tools for all aspects of Design & Research work.
Jaime: Director of Product Design & Eva: User Researcher
Jaime Robb is the Director of Product Design at TotallyMoney. Starting her career as a designer, she is a huge advocate for keeping the users at the heart of design, focusing on user research to develop products. With a career spanning 16 years across multiple industries, including publishing, fashion, print and now fintech, Jaime iis responsible for representing design team
Eva Jirjahlke is the Lead User Researcher at TotallyMoney. In the past 9 years, Eva has run research programs in higher education, charity and now fintech. In her current role, Eva’s building out the research function to drive the development of the TotallyMoney app.
Together, they have over 2 decades worth of design and research experience. Today, they are using skills such as relationship building, coaching, and training, to help stakeholders do better research within the company.
UX Research Manager
Helen Devine is currently a UX Research Manager for the Economist, but she’s been professional collecting insights since 2007. With experience in Insight, Ethnography, Design & User Research, her work has taken many guises through different departments, sectors and countries. Helen is passionate about cutting through the noise by synthesising data to tell a clear story that brings users to life, identifies opportunities and pushes action where it will have the biggest impact.
Co-Founder
Varun has worked in research for a decade, starting a career in research coordination he's honed his research skills at companies like United HealthGroup, Facebook, BestBuy and now SeatGeek. He's co-founded Apple & Banana as the author and editor of the UX research toolkit, an invaluable resource for UX Researchers at any stage of their career.
Principal Researcher
The only sustainable business growth comes from delivering value to people. I lead teams in helping companies understand what people are actually trying to do, and how we can help them do it, and then applying that to product decisions.
A very cool thing is that I've been able to translate my love of talking to humans and organizing information into a career helping businesses make better decisions faster. An even cooler thing is that I get to manage amazing teams of people who also love those things.
The coolest thing, though, is that I've been charged by grizzly bears while canoeing in the Arctic Circle.
CEO & Co-Founder
Ned Dwyer is the co-founder and CEO of Great Question. Ned has been a technology entrepreneur for over a decade and after three successful exits, he’s founded his biggest passion project to date, focused on customer research. With Great Question he helps product, design and research teams better understand their customers and build something people want.
Research Manager & Area Lead
Amanda is research manager at Asana and professor at NYU. She is committed to making an impact by building a community around shared values and is passionate about empowering communities through artful research and strategic planning while using data as a guide for decision-making. Amanda is a lifelong question-asker and tinkerer.
Head of Research
Brad holds a B.S. in Computer Science, a B.A. in Psychology, and minors in Spanish and Dance from the University of Rochester with a focus in Human-Computer Interaction and Social Psychology. Since 2009 he's been helping companies from early-stage startup to Fortune 500 develop engaging, fulfilling experiences for their users and build top-tier User Experience Research & Design practices.Brad has launched over 20 products and touched well over 5 million users, with budgets ranging from $0 to $10M+, as well as having designed dozens of usability research studies and over 250 unmoderated remote research sessions. This diverse background gives him the ability to thrive in any environment, and to work with anyone from contributing engineer to C-suite executive. Collaborative yet firm, Brad understands the value in human-centered product development.
UX Research Lead
Rachel is a user experience researcher and strategist. A self-proclaimed nerd of all trades, she loves to learn about everything that crosses her path. In addition to being an avid learner herself, Rachel also has a passion for helping others shine their voice through her research, writing, and editing skills. In her spare time, you might catch her reading, drawing, or traveling. She regularly writes about UX Research on her blog at Renaissance Rachel.
Nicolás Carey: Director, Product Design (Growth)
James Wallis: Senior Design Operations Manager
Nicolás Carey- Having led product design teams at companies like Potato and Corplex, Nicolás has been the Director of Product design on the growth team at Brex for the past 2 years.
James Wallis- James has been the Design Operations Manager at Brex for the past year. Prior to that he worked in operations across various teams at Potato, Webgains & Goviral.
Senior UX Researcher
Zoë is a UXR at Google working on building tools to keep the world safer. A love of consumer products UXR, she was previously at Lyft and YouTube. She made a big career switch from Wildlife Biology to tech, and loves building extra value in research by leveraging diverse backgrounds-- democratized or otherwise.
Associate Director, User Research
Somehow managed to make a career of caring about how people communicate, navigate, and learn in the digital world. 🤘 Past lives as a writer, educator, and edtech startup multi-tool. 🔮
Libby: Senior Manager, Product Design
Amy: Product Marketing Researcher
Libby Perold is the Senior Manager, Product Design at Alma. include She is responsible for leading the product design team as well as leading UX research across their two distinct customer groups. As the Product Marketing Researcher at Alma, Amy is responsible for leading Marketing research activities – from member satisfaction to brand health and loyalty. Together they are learning from each other while expanding the impact of research across Alma.
Research Operations Manager
Passionate about innovation in educational media and technology. I have a Masters of Arts in Media & Education from S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.
Over 15 years of experience working with children and families; I have seen first-hand the powerful and lasting effects that memorable characters and enveloping storylines have on others. I have a diverse creative and technical background which includes writing, directing and editing films and videos, developing educational content for children, and consulting on early childhood education.
My love of travel and adventure has taken me to over twenty-five countries and back-and-forth across the US many times. I use these experiences to create new stories to tell and thoughtful lessons for younger audiences. I believe that education should be fun and engaging because that is when it is most effective.
My strengths include humor, innovation, diligence, communication, teamwork and creative problem solving. When not spending hours of quality time with the Adobe Creative Suite you can find me writing short stories, building puppets or making an excellent sandwich.
Research Operations Manager
I manage a global Research Ops team for Atlassian. Taking a break from social media until the end of '22. Currently writing Research At Scale, which will be published with Rosenfeld Media in early '23. Founder of the Cha Cha Club: an invite-only club for full-time Research Ops professionals, specifically. Founder of the ResearchOps Community (I no longer run it) and instigator of the #WhatisResearchOps initiative.
Director of User Research
Peter Roessler is a design research expert, strategist, and leader of research teams with two decades of experience who places emphasis on connection and inclusivity with peers, drawing out the connections between research needs and the persistent dynamics of the business, and building best-in-class cultures, practices, and products. He currently is the Director of User Research a 0 to 1' Research leadership hire, exploring the value and impact of early-stage strategic research leadership, early formation of healthy organizational habits, and balancing rigor with velocity.
User Experience Researcher
Christa leads the rapid research function at Design powerhouse, Figma. Her leadership has made important research happen quickly. Opening the doors for additional strategic research work. Prior to Figma she was an experience researcher at Asana.
Sr. Manager, UX Research
I lead efforts in conducting UX research, scaling research operations, and partnering with colleagues on using research to design better products. My user research career has focused on education: how kids learn, how teachers teach, and how the humans behind educational institutions work. Most recently, I left education tech to work in the fascinatingly complex world of live event ticketing.I love the puzzle of finding a place for research in a busy, driven organization. While my approach to building a research function is flexible, I’ll never compromise on creating space for inclusion in my work. I speak conversational Korean, better than conversational Spanish, and am a purple belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
Research & Strategy Leader
Lena is an independent Researcher and Strategist. She spent the last 15 years applying research tools and mindsets in both consulting and in-house roles. In her recent roles, she built and scaled Research and Insights teams in Technology companies such as HashiCorp and Asurion. Before that she spent a decade in consulting, leading projects in design strategy, ethnographic research, service design, and innovation.
UX Research Manager
Laura has been in the research field for a decade. In that time Laura has worked at companies like Comcast, Allstate, and Acquia and is currently the UX Research Manager at Drift, an AI based sales and marketing platform. In her role she runs product design research related to the biggest unknowns around product strategy. In addition, she empowered a team of 10+ designers to run over 50 research studies in 2022.
Director of Insights
Claudia is the Director of Insights at Highspot, where she is constantly finding new ways to expand the impact of research beyond Product and to the ecosystem that is the business. Across multiple companies, her team's research has influenced successful fundraising and exit strategies, leading to directly a total valuation of $6.5bn. Prior to Highspot, she built and scaled the research team at a fintech company called Fivestars (acquired by SumUp) and has worked as a researcher for companies like Pinterest and Hulu. After being involved in investments from early in her career, she is passionate about improving the accessibility of financial literacy and is excited to start a discourse about quantifying the impact of UX investments toward a company’s valuation. Claudia has an MBA with a concentration in Finance from the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley.
Manager, User Experience Operations
Moving from design to research operations is a unique path, but for Gaby it made perfect sense. If you can't get in touch with the right users, your designs will never be exactly what the customer needs. In her nearly 5 years at AppFolio, a cloud-based business management solution built for the real estate industry, she's moved from UX Designer to the manager of User Experience Operations. Today, she develops, supports, and scales the UX Operations team in their efforts to provide timely participant recruitment, efficient processes, and sufficient infrastructure & tools for all aspects of Design & Research work.
Jaime: Director of Product Design & Eva: User Researcher
Jaime Robb is the Director of Product Design at TotallyMoney. Starting her career as a designer, she is a huge advocate for keeping the users at the heart of design, focusing on user research to develop products. With a career spanning 16 years across multiple industries, including publishing, fashion, print and now fintech, Jaime iis responsible for representing design team
Eva Jirjahlke is the Lead User Researcher at TotallyMoney. In the past 9 years, Eva has run research programs in higher education, charity and now fintech. In her current role, Eva’s building out the research function to drive the development of the TotallyMoney app.
Together, they have over 2 decades worth of design and research experience. Today, they are using skills such as relationship building, coaching, and training, to help stakeholders do better research within the company.
