Senior UX Research Consultant at REI Systems

Sept 2022 – Present

Sept 2024 – Present - GSA – ServiceNow IAE Operations and Automation                                              

  • Designed and executed foundational research study to integrate NLP search on SAM.gov contract search, previously FPDS, generating sample queries to train NLP model and insights to align development with real user pain points.

  • Led a 3-week discovery period to map out initial customer stakeholders, key product features, service blueprints, and customer personas to kickstart the development of a ServiceNow-based FSD.gov and bridge a knowledge vacuum during a vendor transition.

  • Interviewed project stakeholders and Service Desk managers to develop and conduct foundational training for 170 help desk agents in preparation for the successful re-launch of FSD.gov.

  • Create weekly, monthly, and quarterly reports that effectively communicate technology development achievements, highlighting added value and team resource allocation.

  • Participated in discovery workshops and designed user journeys and service blueprints to plan AI adoption opportunities and solutions, as well as facilitate collaboration and communication across AEI teams.

  • Leveraged UX Research skills and frameworks to take on Project Management duties, including planning and leading daily scrum and bi-weekly sprint planning ceremonies to accommodate team vacancies, bolster team collaboration, and integrate UX design processes.

Sept 2022 – Sept 2024 - HHS – Telehealth Operations and Management                                                  

  • Designed and executed 13 usability studies to develop user personas, journey maps, and design prototypes that resolved critical pain points for the federal telehealth website, resulting in a 30% increase in clickthrough rate.

  • Proactively identified opportunities, planned, and gained stakeholder approval for 13 research studies across multiple product offerings, including research databases, instructional guides, and informational webpages for healthcare professionals and patients.

  • Led a team of content SMEs and designers in re-structuring patient-focused content using qualitative data, addressing high user bounce rate and increasing site adoption by 20%.

  • Developed design workshops based on research findings for team and government stakeholders to gain buy-in for new product initiatives and re-design projects.

Aug 2024 – Present - CDC – Customer Experience Office Consultant                                                      

  • Partnered with CDC product leads to define KPIs, measurement strategies and methods, and report formats and cadences for their customer experience office expansion.

  • Interviewed and hired additional UX resources to bolster the team’s quantitative research practice.

  • Mapped CDC ServiceNow database structure to set the foundation for quantitative Voice of the Customer program.

Sept 2022 – Present - REI – Business Growth and Mentorship                                                                 

  • Led remote cross-functional solutioning sessions with business partners to align strategic vision and produce proposal outlines for federal contract opportunities.

  • Wrote and won a 3-million-dollar project proposal focused on the optimization of centralized UX processes and directives for the CDC.

  • Designed and taught an 8-week professional communication course for SaaS developers covering public speaking, proposals writing, and other professional genres, securing funding for additional iterations of the course.

Doctoral Researcher at Northwestern University

Sept 2016 – June 2024

  • Designed, wrote, and analyzed a contextual inquiry study on forum discussions and Facebook-group administrative tools, in English and Spanish, using already existing online user data.

  • Programmed scripts using statistics and database libraries in Python to translate pre-recorded user data into usable datasets to produce user personas and identify user pain points.

  • Conducted desk research, synthesized, and reviewed over 170 articles and books to provide theoretical and field-specific foundations for my dissertation project.

  • Visualized user data using graphing libraries in Python to communicate findings in simple formats to diverse stakeholders and public panels.

  • Published findings in a Peer-Reviewed journal and presented work in over 10 academic conferences.

Graduate Assistant for the Northwestern Center for Civic Engagement

Jan 2018 - Sept 2022

  • Developed and updated research briefs, wrote interview questions, and interviewed over 150 participants as lead recruiter for the NU Public Interest Program to develop candidate personas and match them with prospective public organizations in Chicago.

  • Analyzed 5 years of participant data to develop an outreach strategy for the center’s graduate professionalization programs, better addressing our audience’s time availability and pain points, successfully increasing applications by 115%.

  • Partnered with Chicago-based NGOs to identify and secure internship positions for participants of CHI, a professionalization summer program offering practical training to Ph.D. students in the humanities.

  • Conducted IDI’s with participants of CHI to understand their experience in the practicum, their approach to the professionalization workshops, and the relevance of the curriculum to their professional goals, in order to design the next iteration of the program.

Public Speaking Instructor at Northwestern University 

Sept 2017 – April 2020

  • Designed curriculum for and taught public speaking courses, both in-person and online, for over 120 undergraduate students in engineering, communications, and business majors over 6 quarters.

  • Mentored 6 incoming graduate instructors to help them acclimate to the program, address course design standards, and improve teaching performance.

Lead Administrator of the International Rhetoric Workshop

July 2018 – October 2021

  • Led a 6-person risk-management committee to design a hybrid online/in-person workshop for 50 international participants in response to Covid-19 pandemic.

  • Wrote and distributed questionaries to support our online workshop experience with user data, addressing pain points regarding international access, user language, and supporting edge cases.

  • Orchestrated an international and bilingual agreement between Northwestern University, Ghent University, and El Colegio de San Luis to host the 2020/2021 workshop in San Luis Potosí, Mexico.

  • Co-Authored grant applications that were awarded $17,000 through private and government grants to support low-income international students and cover workshop costs.

Co-Founder and Co-Host of the Global Rhetorics Podcast

Sept 2019 – Sept 2020

  • Recruited a team of 9 international rhetoric scholars to launch this media project for popular audiences aimed at amplifying the work of underrepresented scholars in the field.

Selected Publications

2021              A Crisis of Publicity: Many-to-many Communication in Forum Threads, Communication+1, Volume 8, Special Issue: “Crises and Communication.” October 2021.

2020             Review of ANTI/VAX: Reframing the Vaccination Controversy by Bernice L. Hausman. Literature and Medicine. Vol. 38, Summer 2020.

Related Training - Funded by NU Digital Humanities Grant

  • Selections from University of Michigan/Coursera Applied Data Science With Python

  • Selections from Google/Coursera UX Design Professional Certification

For my complete work history, download my resume in PDF format.