Katy combines a love of science and measurability with her need to understand people (some would call this “nosy”). She is a leader in user experience research and strategy with experience at leading tech companies including Google, Facebook and Fitbit. In her most recent role at Google, Katy led a team informing strategy for Google’s voice assistant, as well as working on Google’s AI-empowered products. She got her start in the field in the good old days of market research (before UXR was really a thing), when she worked at LRW (now Material), leading projects and managing accounts for clients like Nestle, Weight Watchers and Nike. Through these roles she’s experienced pretty much every methodology in the research toolkit, from hanging out in people’s apartments in Milan and Paris while they prepared their holiday parties (a really fun kitchen innovation project) to building discrete choice models to optimize shelf assortments for frozen vegetables. Through it all she has continued to be amazed that people will pay her to explore human behavior, check out people’s closets and kitchen cabinets, and ask them probing questions about their needs and desires. Katy has a few different academic degrees, has taught some design courses, and has lived in several different countries. Today she works, studies and lives in Rome where she’s an average crossfitter, enthusiastic cook, patient studier of Italian language, and dedicated dog- and teen-mom.

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