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

Christelle Ngnoumen (she/her)

Dr. Christelle Ngnoumen is an applied behavioral scientist and UX researcher who aims to align people’s attention with their intentions, to deliver empowering experiences. She leads product research dedicated to the design of Headspace’s evidence-based digital interventions.

She is a mindfulness and meditation expert, has published extensively on the topic, and is an editor of the Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Mindfulness. Prior to Headspace, she built B2C and B2B solutions within L&D, HealthTech and FitTech. She earned her Ph.D. in Social and Experimental Psychology from Harvard University.

LinkedIn | website

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 | website | 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 Founder of the User Research DAO, 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

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

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

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

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