Get Closer to your Customers

And see more impact from the insights you collect

  I provide training and capability building for orgs that need to be talking to their customers but may not have dedicated research leadership. 

I help maximize the impact of research, with or without a dedicated research team.

 

Who I Am

I am passionate about making great experiences that meet business objectives.

I'm a leader - I'm naturally curious - I find creative and effective solutions  

With 20+ years of experience, I've led projects and teams focused on vision and strategy setting, brand retention and building, and straight up user research. I led the User Experience Research team at NerdWallet from a focus on tactical one-off studies to strategic impact. I established research best practices and teams at Kelley Blue Book and Edmunds. I’ve trained countless Designers and PMs to collect their own action-oriented customer insights.

How I Work

I help you identify how research can have the maximum impact.

Through workshops and advising, I can help you address these questions:

How can you close the gap between the impact you’re seeing right now from customer insights and what you want to see?

When do you need career researchers and when can you have the conversations yourselves?

How do you make sure your team is trained to get the most out of customer conversations?

What operations do you need to support conversations with customers, and how do you put that support into place?

For larger research projects, how can you be confident you’re prioritizing the studies that’ll have the most impact?

What people are saying

  • Carol is an extraordinary research leader! At NerdWallet, she built out a fantastic research org that consistently delivered impactful insights from both qual and quant studies. Her team's research supporting NerdWallet's lending team, shaped the focus of both our tactical and strategic product development work, and helped us improve both our monetization and user satisfaction over time. I felt lucky to work with such a strong partner.

    Todd Callow, VP & GM of Money at US News

  • Carol is one of the most impactful leaders I have worked with in my career. I highly recommend Carol’s coaching, and am so grateful I had the opportunity to work with her. Not only was she excellent at helping me amplify my research skill set and my adeptness at tackling complex projects, she helped me become a more strategic partner to my colleagues.

    Alex Larger, Lead UX Researcher at NerdWallet

  • With Carol's guidance, I realized that I tend to settle on solutions early in the process and sometimes miss opportunities to explore other options. Over and over she challenged me to come up with more potential solutions to the problems I tried to solve, which helped me to actually find the best one. I appreciated Carol's wisdom and learned a great deal from her!

    Natasha Militsa, CX and VOC strategist

  • Under Carol's leadership, my career flourished: I grew from a mid-level researcher to a research manager. Carol's coaching helped deepen my impact as a strategic partner while remaining authentic and true to myself.

    Kimra McPherson, UX Researcher at Airtable

  • Carol is my first phone call when I need advice on research, she is the most experienced and knowledgeable research professional I've met in my career. The insights delivered by her team drove incremental growth in both monetization and engagement. As a leader she was beloved by her team and consistently received glowing praise from contributors that I watched grow and blossom under her tutelage. I can unequivocally recommend her for research leadership and consulting roles.

    Jeff Mahacek, VP of Product Design and User Research at Redfin

  • At Edmunds, Carol built our research competency from the ground up. She transformed our organization from one that told customers what they need to one that listened to customer needs and delivered solutions that went beyond what they could imagine for themselves, while informing product innovations that increased quality lead conversions by 40%.

    Michelle Shotts, VP Customer Success at Altruist

 I’ve started or led teams at

My consulting clients have included