My formal title is UX Researcher, but most days I feel more like a product strategist: the person telling teams what to build, not just how. That instinct started long before UX, back when I spent six years as a classroom teacher. Reading a room full of eight-year-olds and figuring out what's actually going on underneath the behavior you can see turned out to be the best research training I never knew I was getting. A marketing and communications degree gave me the other half of the job: how to tell that story so people act on it instead of filing it away. Nine years and one career change later, that combination still shapes how I work: mixed-methods research that influences roadmaps at the senior level, with a habit of pioneering AI-powered research ops so the insight actually scales. Off the clock, I'm mom to two little kids, a pretty serious home baker, and never happier than on a New England beach.