I'm a mixed-methods principal researcher who has spent nearly three decades learning why people do what they do, and turning that understanding into better products, brands and businesses. My path runs from advertising and brand research for global campaigns in 40 countries, through growth and privacy research for Microsoft 365, to shaping how people experience AI in Copilot.
I've researched, led and built through every big shift along the way. Personal computing arrived at scale (my first computer was a Timex Sinclair 1500), then the internet (dial-up BBSes on a 300-baud modem). After that came the cloud, where I did concept and messaging research for Microsoft's first cloud campaign, and the move from boxed to subscription software across Office, Office 365 and Microsoft 365. Now AI is arriving: I led research teams on Cortana and Copilot, and I was the first user researcher on Microsoft's early work bringing large language models into productivity.
Across all that change, one lesson holds: value comes from deep understanding of people, combined with deep understanding of the technology and the business. When internal opinion and dashboards say one thing and users say another, the people are almost always right. Pairing what people say with what the data shows has guided my work everywhere:
- In advertising, pre-testing showed a $100M campaign wouldn't land, so it didn't launch.
- In Microsoft 365, following real customers through unboxing and sign-up, compared with the intended design, showed exactly where people dropped off.
- In privacy, regulators, lawyers and compliance experts agreed on how to explain data use. Users told us, loudly, that it didn't work for them.
- In Copilot, telemetry and engineering metrics said our responses were high quality. People told us they fell short.
Each time, going back to what people actually understood and needed reshaped what we built and how, and that's what turned a miss into a win.
What I do best is define what "good" looks like from the user's side, and turn that into decisions designers and engineers can act on. I bring rigor in qualitative and quantitative methods, a builder's curiosity, and years of leading global research teams.
I'm looking for principal research roles in product, design, brand or market research: in person, hybrid or remote, in Seattle, across the US, or internationally.