The research team at a fintech was being pulled into a lot of ad-hoc projects, which limited our ability to dive deep into larger strategic questions. I developed a Rolling Research program -- a way to do quick, agile, ongoing research -- in order to meet the needs of partners in design and marketing while also creating space for researchers to make bigger contributions where it really counted. Not only did this exponentially increase the efficiency, quantity, and velocity of testing the larger team was able to conduct, it also got stakeholders from product, design, and marketing excited about research.

I was the first researcher to join a product team (auto finance) that had just launched a MVP of a brand new product (secured personal loans). The team realized that they had a desperate need for research, both on the current experience as well as future expansions of the offering, and no idea where to start. I helped the team to step back, consider the decisions to be made, and develop a prioritized research agenda that I then executed. Subsequent research was more effective because it was focused, thoughtful, and supported critical product and design choices.

When COVID-19 hit, the business needed to pivot fast from acquiring new customers for its financial products to making sure that current customers were going to be able to handle the crisis. There was an urgent need to understand how, when faced with conflicting obligations and scarce financial resources, customers would prioritize their bills and make payment decisions. I rapidly fielded a quantitative survey of current customers and followed up with in-depth interviews to build rich understanding. The results were used in credit risk forecasting, investor narratives, and strategy.

As a health tech start-up searched for product-market fit for a complex ecosystem of products for people with chronic disease, I surfaced key insights into what customers valued about the current offering in order to optimize for that identified value and guide marketing. In conjunction with data science, we conducted the company's first large-scale customer survey, including the Net Promoter Score (NPS). I also did deep-dive interviews with super-fan respondents, specifically around value and engagement, and developed a visual scale for mapping users' relationship with the products.

A medical center wanted to better understand early childhood obesity in the local Latino population. As a part of a larger randomized control trial, I analyzed focus group data to produce a conceptual framework, or mental map, of how pregnant Latina women think about healthy weight gain during pregnancy. This generative work will be used to develop a patient-centered intervention for providers, which will lead to better care for this vulnerable population. I published the research in the peer-reviewed journal Health Psychology and lectured publicly about it at the medical center.