Check our amazing speakers

Amrit Dhillon (she/her)

Amrit is a UX Researcher in the tech industry and an Adjunct Professor of UX Researcher at York University. Her past experiences include leading research in the financial, health, pharma, CPG, an various industries.

She is a member at the University of Toronto’s Research Ethics Board for the Social Sciences and Humanities Council and is passionate about research ethics and DEI in the UX field. As a creative outlet, she hosts a podcast called Shadeism, on the topic of her graduate research: skin lightening and beauty practices.

LinkedIn | Podcast

Anna Lee Anda

Anna is working as a User Experience Research Manager based in Singapore. Currently, she manages a globally distributed research team at Zendesk, a global SaaS company that builds software for better customer relationships.

She has over 12 years of experience working as a user researcher in both the technology and financial industries. Anna is passionate about peoples’ professional development, as well as educating designers and product development teams about the benefits of research and taking a pragmatic approach to delivering successful results.

LinkedIn | website

Anna Efimenko (she/her) – host

Anna is a Senior UX Researcher and UX Research Ambassador at UXinsight. With 7+ years of UX research experience, she is passionate about designing experiences informed by data and driven by empathy.

Previously, Anna worked at Booking.com and supported multi-disciplinary teams by using qualitative and quantitative data to inform product design, strategy, metrics and data models. She is excited about mixed-methods research and collaborations with other insights disciplines (e.g. data science). Anna loves to learn and to contribute to the research community through mentorship & knowledge sharing.

Eleonora Ibragimova (she/her)

Eleonora leads a team of UX researchers, Product and Service designers at de Bijenkorf.

Her past experience ranges from multinational conglomerates as LG and Samsung Electronics to design agencies (MOBGEN) and consultancies (Accenture), experiencing various sizes and shapes of design teams and processes.

Transitioning from industrial design engineering to digital experiences, she has always kept the user in the center of her processes, which served as the base for making research- and data-based decisions in her work. Her current interests lie in finding the sweet spot in creating a 360° view on the customer based on user and business success factors.

LinkedIn | Medium

Eva Becking

Eva is a freelance Health Innovator with a master in Psychology and years of experience in creating digital solutions for the social domain and mental health care, for example solutions on suicide prevention, reducing the risks of the use of party drugs, knife violence and domestic violence.

In her work the user and its context are always central. Knowledge and evidence are key, but there is some much to learn from those that flourish at the margins of the bell curve. Also she thinks that sometimes you just have to get started even if you don’t know where you’re heading too.

LinkedIn | website

Gabriela Aguirrezabal (she)

Gabriela Aguirrezabal is a strategic designer with a ‘thing’ for social projects. She is an innovation and design expert with a master’s in Strategic Product Design from the TU Delft. For the last 15 years she has used her expertise as an innovation consultant, entrepreneur, teacher & coach for start-ups.

Before becoming a freelancer she co-founded an innovation lab for youth care in the Netherlands, where she had the opportunity to design for complex social challenges and with vulnerable groups of people. She believes that the role designers play is changing rapidly and she is passionate about creating new methods for the emerging field of social design.

LinkedIn | Twitter

Georgia Rakusen (she/her)

Georgia is a seasoned UX Researcher, with over 10 years experience running qualitative and quantitative user research studies for major clients across gaming, fintech, broadcasting, ecommerce and the UK Government.

Georgia has been working exclusively in the web3 and crypto space for the last 5 years. Her work involves supporting product teams in this nascent space with robust user-centric data to enable better decision-making. She focuses not only on user research delivery but also on equipping product teams to self-serve their own UX research needs through training and mentoring.

She has worked across a number of interesting web3 use cases such as decentralised finance, developer tooling, digital ownership, online identity and the metaverse. She has worked for many of the biggest names in web3 including: ConsenSys, MakerDAO, Gitcoin, Protocol Labs, MetaMask, Lens Protocol, Rarible, Yearn Finance, Solana Mobile and others.

She is the co-founder of OpenUX, a collective of experienced web3 UX researchers on a mission to increase the quality and quantity of UX research to support web3 adoption. She is also co-founder of Web3UX, a user testing panel for web3-native users.

LinkedIn | Twitter | website

Gerben Langendijk

After finishing his PhD in Social & Organizational Psychology, Gerben accidentally rolled into the commercial applications of psychology and quantitative research. He’s worked on diverse topics in Tech, Legal, Customer Service and HR – all with the goal to better understand users and their (psychological) needs.

During his 10+ years career (working at Booking.com, Rabobank and now Adyen), Gerben ran quantitative research with millions of people, made many mistakes of different scale, learned from them and created insights to further products’ usefulness. He’s very keen on sharing his passion and experience in psychology and quantitative research and hearing about yours too.

LinkedIn

Glenda Balekjian (she/her) – Mindfulness coach

Glenda is passionate about helping teams and individuals achieve their full potential through mindfulness. With a background in digital product innovation and over a decade of experience in leadership roles, she offers training focused on sparking creativity, empathy, and conscious regulation in the workplace. She merges agile teams methodology with mindfulness practices to foster innovation and collaboration.

She has completed a variety of training programs, including MBSR, functional nutrition coaching, yoga, and Buddhism, and is constantly seeking new ways to incorporate mindfulness into her practice, most recently with cyamatics and tibetan singing bowls immersions. Her goal is to create a sustainable and connected way of leading a high-demanding creative life and she is excited to share her knowledge and experiences with others.

LinkedIn | Website

Hazel Ho (she/her) – Poster presenter

Hazel is a Lead User Researcher for Accurx, a London-based healthtech company, who originally hails from Canada. She comes from a Psychology background and after years of career searching, found her place in the world of user research. In the last 9 years she has worked across many different sectors: from public sector to agency to in-house, working in domains such as e-commerce, dating apps, food, and insurance.

Having recently moved from an individual contributor to management, she’s now in a dream role that combines three main interests: technology, doing good for the world, and helping teams grow.

LinkedIn

Jack Holmes (he/him) – Poster presenter

Jack Holmes is an independent UX researcher and designer from Bristol, UK. He’s been helping organizations understand customers and build better products for over 10 years. Most recently he’s researching and designing tools that people use for work and in B2B enviroments. He loves discussing how UX research can shape product and organisational strategy.

LinkedIn

Jessica Pavia (she/her)

Jessica is a Mixed Methods Research Leader with over a decade of experience spanning various UX specialties, supporting large-scale organizations in researching and building meaningful human-centered experiences.

In her past years at Loblaw Digital, Jessica helped to establish the initial practices for the qualitative discipline and more recently, lead an embedded research team; managing the team’s roadmap and large-scale experience measurement program. She guided her team in mixing methods across the product development process and worked closely with cross-functional Sr. Leadership to apply research into all levels of business and experience strategy.

‍She actively mentors user researchers joining the field and has developed and taught courses across the research specialties at various post-secondary Canadian institutions.

LinkedIn | Twitter

Joana Cerejo

Joana is passionate about Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data, and especially the Human Experience. She has 10+ years of experience communicating the value of UX research and UX Strategy to grow clients’ design maturity and capabilities to fully embrace the value of design and to be championed by top-level leaders.

She uses research and data to bring a data-driven design approach to inform product strategy to keep seeking more opportunities to continually build our client’s intuition and knowledge of their users.

LinkedIn | Website | Medium

Josh Morales (he/him)

Josh defines himself as an active yet reflexive person. He spends most of his time satisfying his curiosity by traveling, writing, and above all, reading. That’s why he felt naturally drawn to the field of research, a field where learning by discovery is a crucial part. His experience spans well-known product companies, such as HP, N26, Hotjar, and now Miro.

LinkedIn | Instagram

Kate Romanovskaja

Kate started her journey in User Experience discipline in 2005, as a “team of one” in a small web agency. Over the course of her career, she has gone from individual contribution and consultancy to defining and improving design systems and processes at scale in a large product company.

Kate has over 11 years of experience in the B2B infrastructure field, where she researched, designed, or led product design teams in creating efficient experiences for those building and operating the world’s infrastructure. Lately, her focus has been on coaching design and user research talent, promoting best practices of cross-functional collaboration, and elevating design thinking in the largely technology-driven infrastructure software industry. Kate’s professional motto is “Empathize, the rest will follow,” and this is what drives her work.

LinkedIn

Kathryn Parkes (she/her)

Kathryn Parkes is a Lead UX Researcher at Cisco, where she leads both qualitative and quantitative research studies as part of the Collaboration group. She works remotely from her hometown of Dublin, Ireland.

She has over 24 years of experience in researching, designing, and developing user-centered products having worked as an independent consultant, agency-side, and in-house across a range of industries and sectors.

LinkedIn

Krutika Subramanian (she/her)

Krutika is a UX Research lead at Uber Carshare, Australia. She previously worked as a researcher in the field of mental health, starting with researching on why the General practitioners in Sweden are burnt out. Later, she led the design research at Neurotech Labs – a startup that builds smart brainwave mapping earphones.

Outside of work, Krutika loves to garden, read and work with polymer clay.

LinkedIn

Lydia Penkert

Lydia is a UX Research Lead at Trivago with a university background in the field of cognitive psychology.

Lydia is passionate about understanding the behaviour of humans and their interaction with technology. She has worked in academia and industry, such as at the Research Center for user-centred technologies in Austria and in the e-Commerce sector at real.digital, where she build up and scaled the UX Research department.

Previously to Trivago, she worked as scientific researcher at the University of Applied Science Cologne, where she led mixed method research investigating user’s experiences with voice interfaces, haptic robots and digital avatars.

LinkedIn

Maaike Mintjes (she/her) – host

Maaike is a Design Researcher and Facilitator. As an independent consultant she helps teams tackle complex problems through research and co-creation. She also provides training and coaching in UX Research, Design Thinking and Facilitation. 

Maaike started in UX in 2007 and has worked in the field of human-centred ever since, both in Australia and The Netherlands. She loves using design thinking to build bridges between research insights and design outcomes.

LinkedIn | Website

Maartje van Wijk

Working for 20 years as a communication manager (at e.g. ING, Rituals, Ahold and VodafoneZiggo), she experienced the strength of a sticky story and also the struggle with powerful delivery. Genuine curiosity and a strong belief in the art of public speaking were born! She helps professionals make an impact with their story through the attraction of personal strength and non-verbal and verbal communication. Maartje brings expertise, positive energy and insightful observations.

LinkedIn

Marijke van Moll

Marijke has experience in UX Research & Strategy for both consultancies and retailers. She thrives in dynamic and diverse environments and enjoys working with people from different backgrounds and cultures. She is comfortable adapting to changing circumstances.

Since 2019 she has put her focus on the Employee Experience (EX). She currently works at IKEA and runs several projects that make research and insights available and actionable.

She strongly believes that happy employees will make happy customers.

LinkedIn

Miguel Baeza Menz – Poster presenter

Miguel is a User Experience Researcher with more than 8 years of trajectory, UX certified with Nielsen Norman Group. He has led UX teams in software companies, consulting firms and digital advertising agencies in Chile, Perú and Colombia.

He did UX projects for airlines, banking, telecommunications, retail, beers, health, government, insurance companies. He applied Information Architecture and User Research techniques for websites, apps, e-commerce, intranets and ATMs. He is always looking for something to learn, observing people’s behavior, detecting improvements on the screens and on the street. He is an avid reader. He loves design and chocolate 😛

LinkedIn

Misha Kelso

Misha is a Senior UX Researcher at IKEA with a background in Social Anthropology focusing on identity and belonging. She has over 7 years experience in research and design having worked in agency, in-house to consulting across a range of industries.

Before joining IKEA, she worked in Deloitte Digital where she specialised in the financial industry, working closely with large UK banks on strategic initiatives within the consumer and business banking sector. Now, her focus is on improving the employee experience within IKEA whilst also collaborating heavily in the employee side of research operations, which often entails complexity around governance and regulation.

In her spare time, Misha explores the gaming world and does rock climbing (bouldering).

LinkedIn

Nidhi Jalwal (she/her) – host

Nidhi Jalwal is a Senior UX Researcher with 8+ years of diverse research and strategy experience in different industries such as healthcare, e-commerce, logistics, financial services, etc. She has studied and worked in different countries and loves learning about different cultures through her work.

In her current role as a Senior UX Researcher at IKEA, she is helping create a better financial every day for the modern lives of many people. Outside of her everyday work, she is helping build the research practice at IKEA and creating ways to make research more inclusive.

Nidhi values diversity, authenticity, and kindness. When she is not working, she can be found planning elaborate hiking trips or preparing for them.

LinkedIn

Penninah Jones (she/her)

Penninah is an American living in Germany and has 10 years of mixed methods UX Research experience that builds upon degrees in Psychology and Human Factors. She has been pursuing the goal of more inclusive UX Research from her start in the automotive industry, through the logistics, banking and now e-commerce sectors. 

Following her diagnoses of ADHD and Sensory Processing Disorder in adulthood, she has refocused her efforts on what she is most qualified to discuss: Neurodivergence and Mental Health in UX Research, both from the perspective of UX Professionals and inclusive research design. 

LinkedIn

Sarah Mpapuulu (she/her)

Sarah Mpapuluu is a Strategic Design Consultant with close to five years of experience conducting research and design projects across the African continent and engaging with extreme end users such as young girls, women, and men from hard-to-reach contexts.

Currently is the coordinator of Under Our Skin Kenya Film Festival – a human rights-based film festival in Kenya in its second edition. She is actively involved in user research and design projects as a freelance consultant.

She is passionate about using design to create effective and sustainable impact in the long term and advocates for user engagement processes across all the stages of the design process.

LinkedIn

Stephanie Marsh (she/they)

Stephanie is the UX Research Operations Lead at Springer Nature, a leading science publisher. Stephanie has been in the fields of User Research and User Experience for almost two decades across industries, government and academia. They are the author of book User Research published by Kogan Page, a practical guide to planning, doing, analysing and sharing user research.

Medium | Twitter

Vidhika Bansal

Vidhika is a Group Manager at Intuit, where she’s been leading teams of UX researchers and content designers to help build better experiences for QuickBooks customers.

She has a background in behavioral science and has consulted for a wide variety of clients over the years, from Fortune 500 companies to government agencies to stealth startups. Vidhika is convinced that words are magic and that stories — including the ones we tell ourselves! — can change the world. She’s fond of people-watching, globetrotting, awe-walking, and the little things in life. She also really likes pasta.

LinkedIn | Twitter

Zarla Ludin (she/her) – Poster presenter

Zarla is a design strategist with over a decade of experience in research and consulting. She has worked as a Research Director at Craft, a digital design studio, and at Motivate Design and Essential. Zarla weaves together research mechanics, alignment mindsets, and design engagement to help teams in various domains including civic services, financial, healthcare, consumer packaged goods, and engineered products.

Zarla holds a BA in Anthropology from the University of Colorado (Boulder) and a MS in Human Factors in Information Design from Bentley University. Outside of work, Zarla is a certified yoga instructor, sea glass hunter, and mom to two beautiful girls.

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