ABOUT ME
2022 - Present
2022 - Present
Senior UX Researcher, Pantheon
I joined as Pantheon’s second researcher, and have loved growing the impact of research at Pantheon! This was an industry shift for me - I don’t have a background in web development, but I was excited to learn the “behind the scenes” of how the sites I visit and rely on every day are actually made available to me. It’s been a great fit for me to feed my boundless curiosity, not only about web development and hosting, but also about the challenges and motivations of my colleagues across the organization.
I love bringing together stakeholders who might otherwise not typically work together to help us all move in the same direction. It’s also been thrilling exploring a much larger, more established organization, with Pantheon having announced $100 million in Series E funding from SoftBank Vision Fund 2, at a valuation of over $1 billion last year.
Chair and Director, Sustainable Mentoring Program, American Musicological Society
There are very few teaching jobs available for students graduating with their Ph.D these days, and it’s rewarding to be directing a program that takes on this challenge head-on by helping students learn more about the world of work outside of the university.
In fall of 2022, I was approached by the President of the American Musicological Society and asked to serve as committee chair and program director for the Society’s mentoring program. In this program, we connect graduate students and early career professionals with more experienced colleagues to help them learn more about advancing in their careers, and to explore career options beyond the academy.
2021 - 2022
2019 - 2022
2019 - 2022
2016 - 2017
2016 - 2017
Quantitative Research Methods, Duke University
From my first day of class, it was love - I so enjoyed having another perspective and set of tools to bring to the work I was already doing. Wanting to go beyond what we were learning in class, I even bought a textbook to teach myself R, a programming language for doing statistical analysis. This has been so handy in my day-to-day work, I regret not learning it sooner! Check out my final project here!
Research Lead, Mentor Collective
I was even able to marry my academic past with this new role, co-authoring an academic paper on the effects of mentorship on college student wellbeing with two psychology researchers at Fordham University. This was a fantastic outlet to bring together my qualitative and quantitative skills, while bringing important credibility and brand recognition to the business.
Defended my dissertation and graduated with my Ph.D!
One chapter of my dissertation was published in French Historical Studies, a peer-reviewed academic journal, and I was asked to present on these research at several national conferences, including the annual American Musicological Society conference and the Society for French Historical Studies.
My doctoral studies culminated in writing a 200+ page document summarizing what we already knew about popular French songs, called vaudevilles, advancing several original findings about how they circulated and were used by people in the past, and outlining directions for future research by others interested in the topic. One chapter of my dissertation was published in French Historical Studies, a peer-reviewed academic journal, and I was asked to present on these research at several national conferences, including the annual American Musicological Society conference and the Society for French Historical Studies.
One of the greatest skills I developed during this time was flexibility! Each quarter for three years, I navigated a course schedule of three different classes on topics as diverse as Contemporary African Pop Music, Medieval musical practice, to music of the American south. I learned the power of project management, as each 10-week course culminated in a final research project. I learned how to quickly identify key gaps in collective knowledge, ask the right questions to arrive at a hypothesis, identify existing research to build my expertise, and execute on a tight timeline (ten weeks goes by fast as we all know!).
Fulbright Fellow, France
With this data, I was able to construct patterns of usage for different melodies, showing that when a certain melody was used, it had these kinds of connotations, compared to a different melody. It was quiet, somewhat isolated work, but I was always grateful for the suggestions and guidance of the librarians at the different archives where I passed the time.
Ph.D Student, Northwestern University
Often we were encouraged to submit final projects for presentation at conferences - I had a total of 9 papers accepted to local, regional, and national conferences. These experiences made me an expert in public speaking and communicating my findings in a way that audiences found engaging and thought provoking.
While my graduate training was in qualitative research methods, my work with Mentor Collective sparked an interest for quantitative methods. My employer was kind enough to support me enrolling in a year-long course at my local university to learn how to apply statistical methods to the kinds of social science I was performing as a UXR.
Mentor Collective was my first role outside the academy, and I learned a ton. In addition to building my business acumen and sense for end-to-end customer experiences, I discovered a love for quantitative methods, survey design, and evaluative studies that I’ve carried with me since (see above). It was an incredible experience to be an early part of the organization, seeing them through their seed stage to Series A funding!
In 2016, I learned that I was one of 18 people selected out of thousands of applications to receive a Fulbright Fellowship to France, a lifelong dream! My studies were sponsored by the Center for French Language Studies at the Sorbonne, where I worked with Pierre Frantz, one of the foremost scholars on popular entertainment in 18th century France. Most days I spent at the National Library of France looking through printed plays and songbooks from the 1780s and 90s, building a database in Google sheets of popular melodies, where I saw them, and how they were used.