Research Director, Consumer Reports
Team & Leadership Responsibilities
I spent a year working with Consumer Reports as the research director on a consultancy basis with a focus on accelerating digital ventures in financial advice and home maintenance. During this time, Consumer Reports needed to expand its digital offerings while maintaining its gold standard for consumer-focused research. This meant transforming traditional research approaches into agile, data-driven processes without compromising the thorough, reliable consumer research that built the company’s reputation. I led research initiatives and supported six research and design teams, which operated through a matrix structure, embedding research units within product teams while maintaining centralized standards. By implementing standardized methodologies and automated frameworks, I helped the broader research and design teams transform product development. This work successfully accelerated the launches of Upkept and CRInvest.
Confidentiality: To protect proprietary information, certain metrics and product development details have been adapted while preserving key skills and impacts.
Leadership Initiatives
My goal in the year was to accelerate Consumer Reports’ research capabilities.
Design Programs & Actions
1. Research Excellence & Operations
After creating a robust data infrastructure to conduct and house research data, my focus was to help build automated analysis frameworks. I implemented standardized methodologies across product teams and a centralized research participant management platform that improved data accuracy and accessibility. These improvements streamlined our research-to-design pipeline, allowing product teams to generate insights faster.
2. Digital Venture Research & Innovation
The research initiatives accelerated the ongoing innovation-viable product research, leading to the development of two new products under the Consumer Report brand. The first product, Upkept, is a home maintenance platform. My leadership helped deliver an analysis of user needs and a series of market validation studies, equipping the research team with practical methods and frameworks. With the other product, CRInvest, I guided end-to-end user research for the financial advice tool, ensuring a strong product-market fit. My work in developing a systematic approach to competitive analysis and market positioning for this product became adopted as a standard that supported strategic decision-making across new ventures.
3. Team Development & Process Optimization
My processes helped to build unified research approaches across six research and design teams for consistent outputs. I used regular sharing sessions and methodology workshops to keep all units aligned, creating a culture of continuous learning and improvement across the organization.
Leadership Impact
Short term impact
In the year I was at Consumer Reports, I implemented an automated research analysis framework and data infrastructure repository that immediately reduced research overhead time. Teams saw significant improvements in data accuracy and accessibility, transforming how quickly we could move from research insights to design decisions. The standardization of methodologies across six research teams created consistency and efficiency in our work – while significantly reducing research-to-design cycles.
