Strategic UXR Leadership
** Currently Seeking a New Opportunity **
Remote / Local to Twin Cities, MN, USA
Professional Biography
Hello! I’m currently seeking an opportunity in management or individual contributor role in Research with a focus on customer insights, design and product innovation.
I’ve built my career in leading Design Strategy and User Experience Research. I’ve had impact on customer facing products such as digital mobile apps, websites, software, AI interactions, smart devices, customer metric programs and healthcare products. Along the way I have been on many leadership teams to deliver companies’ top priority projects, worked with Fortune 50 companies, managed high functioning teams, and provided UXR mentorship to all disciplines.
With my 12+ years in the tech industry, I have a keen ability to handle ambiguity, adjust strategic plans to new technology or business objectives, and partner with a diverse range of cross-functional teams.
Areas of Expertise
Strategic: Product strategy, roadmap planning, stakeholder management, scaling UXR.
Methodological: Mixed-methods research, longitudinal studies, usability testing at scale.
Leadership: Team building, mentorship, cross-functional collaboration, influencing without authority.
Overview of my most recent experience with Amazon.
During my five-year tenure at Amazon Corporate, I spearheaded User Research for Amazon Photos, a cloud storage service across mobile, web, desktop, and device personalization (Echo Show/Fire TV). I established the research function as a solo practitioner before hiring and managing a team of two additional researchers. My core focus was embedding customer insights into strategic decisions by partnering closely with Product and Design leadership (VPs/Directors) and championing Amazon's 'working backward from the customer' principle. This approach yielded significant results, helping scale the user base from 9M to 33M and maintaining strong engagement with 84% annual retention.
My impact extended across several key areas:
Strategic Leadership & Foundational Design: As a member of the Design Leadership Team, I directed the research underpinning a major app redesign and the development of a new unified Design System.
Driving High-Impact Features: My research prompted the creation of a new Echo Show personalization feature, now a key customer retention driver on 2 million devices and featured in the newest Amazon Devices Alexa+ launch.
Optimizing Core Experiences: Collaborating directly with Principal Engineers and Applied Sciences, we boosted the accuracy of Search queries—our most requested feature—from 50% to 85% for both text entry and LLM.
Continuous Improvement & Collaboration: Through my direction, my team’s work also included refining usability details (e.g., upload status) and translating complex BI data into actionable user understanding. Additionally, I built a strong community of practice with researcher leaders across Amazon, specifically focused on sharing insights to promote more cohesive customer experiences across different products and touchpoints.