TL;DR

Founder of research practices and operations for scale. Favourite successes:

  • Spearheaded discovery with a team of 4 that led to 75% adoption rate for Wattpad’s Coin Wallet feature in a single quarter.
  • Co-led a startup nonprofit team to secure a $100K grant in six months.
  • Co-authored a white paper to influenced $805M in federal socio-environmental business innovation funding.

Roles

Manager, Product Design Research | Loopio | 04/2025 - Now

As the most senior research practitioner, I coach and mentor Product Designers and Product Managers as research partners.

Education Break | 05/2024 - 03/2025

See “Education” below (fun fact: I played with baseball stats).

User Experience Research & Operations Manager | Wattpad | 2022 - 2024

Founded and directed UX research as operations-focused first-hire, coaching and supporting a research and design team of 11.

Tech Transition | Fall 2021

Hired into the field of UX after 4 months of full-time, self-bootcamped training: Human-Centred Design; roadmapping; insights generation & repository architecture; usability testing.

Research Consultant | 2017 - 2021

Self-employed, tiny to larger contracts.

Development Director | Green Iglu | 2020 - 2021

Startup nonprofit decreasing food insecurity in Canada’s North with greenhouse infrastructure.

Research & Development Writer | Centre for Social Innovation | 2019 - 2020

Coauthored “Unlocking Canadian Social Innovation” for Employment and Social Development Canada (allocation of $805M for socio-enviro innovation).

Workplace Strategist & Development Writer | Bennett Design Associates | 2018 - 2019

Discovery research and pitch decks (facilitated focus groups, surveys, interviews, accessibility testing, participatory design).

Course Designer & Instructor | TMU (formerly Ryerson University) Toronto | Fall 2017

Designed and taught CC8905 Graduate-Level MA Research Specialization and Practice (20 students x 1 course).

Writing & Language Support Advisor | TMU Toronto | 2015 - 2017

Advised, coached and mentored STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) and English as Additional Language students as my focus (totalling ~100 clients during tenure).

Professional Associations

12/2024 - PRESENT

Cha Cha Club a members-only association for full-time Research Operations professionals.

Languages

English: native

French: limited working proficiency

Tech / Skills / Insights

Airtable, Amplitude, Alchemer, Asana, Confluence, CSS, DocuSign, Dovetail, dscout, Excel, Fable (accessibility), Figma, Google Suite + Analytics, HTML, Ironclad, Jira, LLMs, Looker, Loom, Microsoft Suite, Miro, Notion, Otter.ai, Redash, Slack, SurveyMonkey, SPSS, Tableau, Trello, UserInterviews, UserTesting, UserZoom

Volunteer Leadership

Producer, Host & Workshop Leader | Stories We Don’t Tell Toronto | 2019 - 2025

A storytelling event series, including facilitating story writing and development workshops, and podcast: 25+ live shows produced, 30+ workshops led, 20+ podcasts recorded.

Workshop Leader & UX Founders Mentor | TMU’s Science Discovery Zone Startups Incubator Toronto | 2021 - 2023

Co-led annual entrepreneurship discovery workshops for science and engineering students working to launch companies and apps. Focus: user experience (UX) and user interaction (UI).

Education

SABR (Society for American Baseball Research) - Advanced Analytics in Baseball, Level 2 | 05/2024 - 03/2025

Reverse engineered statistical calculations using regression analysis and pivot tables to make projections on industry analytics and baseball economics.

PhD, Communication & Culture | 2010 - 2017

York University & Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson), Toronto

MA, Sociology | 2008 - 2010

University of Manitoba, Winnipeg

BA, Honours, Sociology

University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg

Core Skills

Change Management, Competitive Testing, Cross-Functional Leadership & Collaboration, Customer Journey Mapping, Data Analysis & Data-Driven Decision Making, Data Privacy & PII Protections, De-Risking & Strategic Foresight, Digital Product Development, Heuristic Evaluation & Task Analysis, Human-Centered Design, Interviews, KPIs & Budgets, Mentorship, Mixed-Methods Design Research, Qualitative & Quantitative Market Research, Repository Architecture, Roadmapping, Service Design, Storytelling & Presentations, Strategic Planning, Surveys, Usability Testing

Run The Numbers

100% Product Manager’s participation in monthly de-risk coaching sessions @ Wattpad | $150K+ awarded for my academic research | 3,000+ students taught | 30+ professional White Papers or Reports | 20+ international conference presentations or invited speaking engagements | Dozens of nonfiction short stories written & performed | 17 academic awards in 9 years | 6 Board of Director seats, including Chair of 2 | 6 academic publications, cited by 20 scholars | 3 community radio programs produced & hosted | 2 short films directed | 2 university courses designed & lectured | countless workshops for writing, social research & UX/CX research | countless baseball games watched