Katy is on a mission to help product teams develop and ship experiences that make people’s lives better, through building and leading research teams that deliver synthesized insights with a strategic point of view.

While working in marketing at Warner Bros. in London, Katy became fascinated with the idea of using survey and analytics data to understand and build for human needs. After graduating from the Wharton School she joined strategic consultancy Lieberman Research Worldwide as an account manager, where she led insights-based strategy engagements for clients including Nike, Weight Watchers and Viacom. Later she moved to Cheskin Research, a design and marketing consultancy that was a pioneer in applying ethnographic research to problems of design strategy. Exposure to a wide variety of data types, and experience bringing them together to tell a holistic story of user needs, became a theme that has run through her career in research and insights.

She went on to build and lead UX and Design research teams at Fitbit, Facebook and most recently at Google, where she currently leads research teams on Google Assistant. Katy’s current focus is on developing the research function as a strategic partner to UX, Product Management and Engineering, and as a force for culture change in product organizations.

Her side hustles include teaching product design and design research courses at Stanford Continuing Studies and California College of the Arts, and frequent speaking engagements at conferences such as UX Week, UX Lisbon, FlUXible and People Nerds. In her spare time Katy enjoys throwing weights around at the CrossFit gym in San Francisco’s Mission District, where she lives with her husband,son and two rescue dogs.