Projects

Customer Experience (CX) Consultant, Transamerica (March 2022 – November 2024)
At Transamerica, I led the enterprise-wide administration and product strategy for Medallia, ensuring the Voice of Customer (VoC) platform aligned with CX program goals. I drove cross-functional impact by analyzing qualitative and quantitative feedback, using statistical techniques such as repeated measures t-tests and Pearson’s correlations to surface trends that informed product and service enhancements. I streamlined feedback operations by integrating platforms like Salesforce, Tableau, and Alteryx, automating workflows and scaling analysis across the organization.

I proactively audited customer interactions and call center operations, identifying gaps and coaching teams to improve quality performance. My efforts to investigate and resolve telephony issues improved call routing accuracy and reduced wait times. I designed and led mixed methods studies—ranging from usability tests to in-depth interviews—that supported product decisions across B2B, B2C, and B2B2C platforms. The resulting insights were synthesized into dashboards and reports that guided roadmaps for product, operations, and design stakeholders.

I oversaw the migration of more than ten programs from Qualtrics to Medallia, including survey configurations, dashboard builds, and Closed Loop Feedback programs. I also created tailored dashboards and surveys to meet varying stakeholder needs, from transactional to ad hoc. My work managing call center listening posts ensured visibility into program health, response volume, and resolution rates. Additionally, I led the Salesforce–Medallia integration, which reduced manual workload and saved $30K annually in operations time.

UX Design and Researcher Apprentice, UXReactor (Dec 2021 – Jan 2022)
At UXReactor, I applied a human-centered design approach to develop internal tools supporting organizational change. I scoped and executed a research-driven project focused on assessing change-readiness within teams. I conducted user interviews and focus groups to uncover unmet needs and translated those findings into wireframes and prototypes. Throughout the project, I collaborated closely with product and design leads to refine the tool, ensuring usability and strategic alignment.

Master’s Thesis: Still Happy With It: Explaining Why we Hedonically Adapt

Effectively, this project was a mix of a couple of research goals. Primarily for the sake of my thesis, I was looking at the decay of post-purchase happiness in a new paradigm, within-subjects. Another goal was to ascribe some biological or behavioral measures of hedonic response and see if known mediators of post-purchase happiness apply over time.

We found that the majority of participants initially derived more happiness from more experiential purchases; this advantage fell off quicker than their more material purchases. This finding is contrary to the established literature prescription that one should, with their discretionary money, purchase life experiences if their goal is long-term heroic satisfaction.

Abstract

Positive Psychologists’ goal is to help people.  One such way to help people is via recommendations on using discretionary funds --specifically, to spend one's extra money on experiences rather than material items.  In the purchasing literature wherein, we find that those who purchase experiences tend to yield more Happiness than those who purchase material items (Van Boven & Gilovich, 2003).  This is called the experiential advantage (Van Boven & Gilovich, 2003).  Furthermore, the field has found that people tend to be happier when speaking and conversing with their peers (Bastos & Brucks, 2017) and when the purchase reinforces their own (Zhang & Howell, 2014).  The type of purchase we make has lasting effects on our Happiness; this is known as Hedonic Adaptation (Nicolao et al. 2009).  There is little known about some of the mediators of Happiness over Time.  To fill this gap, we conducted: (a) conceptually replicate the Nicolao et al. study and (b) test identity satisfaction and conversation value as mediators of adaptation rates in two studies.  Specifically, participants (n = 100) purchased both a life experience and a material item in a lab setting (similar to Nicolao et al.), then reported their Happiness and psychological needs from the two purchases two weeks.  Due to these data's complexity, we elected to use the less precise analysis method, a two by five Repeated Measures ANOVA.  We predicted that our results would replicate and extend Nicolao et al.’s study by showing that experiential purchases lead to more identity satisfaction and conversation value, which is why experiential purchases had slower hedonic adaptation rates.

• integrated a multi-faceted design that accommodated a few research goals for multiple PIs

• updated and made previous research designs more efficient via Qualtrics

• designed a with-in subjects study to observe participants over the course of two weeks

Year One Project: Purchasing Happiness

Abstract

Prior literature has established that the purchase of a life experience in leu of a material item, results in slower hedonic adaptation (Nicolao et al. 2009). Although, little is known about the mediators of hedonic adaptation rates. In order to understand this literature gap better, we (a) have conceptually replicated the Nicolao et al. study and (b) tested identity satisfaction and conversation value as mediators of hedonic adaptation. Participants (N = 300) from SFSU and UM, purchased a life experience and a material item in a lab setting, then reported their happiness and the psychological needs over a two-week period. Consequently, due to the within-subjects design, we used a Bayesian within-subjects mediation analysis to compare adaptation rate and test the mediation hypotheses (see Vuorre & Bolger, 2017). We predict that our results will replicate and extend Nicolao et al. by demonstrating that experiential purchases lead to more identity satisfaction as well as conversation value, which will be in line with a lower hedonic adaptation rate.