I am a senior user researcher and product strategist with 20+ years of experience leveraging psychological science and measurement to understanding messy, complex humans. For the past decade I’ve helped companies ideate and design products that serve important human needs.
I collaborate with product and leadership teams on turning user insights into confident strategy and product ideas into testable prototypes. I have worked almost exclusively with mission-driven orgs and I’m happiest when I operate at the intersection of people, data, and product.
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Principal Consultant, Crisp Insights Inc. (2017 – present)
I advise startups and innovation teams on product strategy, user research, and opportunity discovery. My clients have ranged from early-stage teams to unicorn startups — including Airbnb, Thumbtack, and Casper — to award-winning design agencies to mission-driven nonprofits.
Work typically spans product discovery and validation, user research systems and execution, and fractional leadership for Product and Data teams.
Industries include EdTech, HealthTech, InsurTech, and climate and education nonprofits.
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Head of User Research & Product Manager, Product Strategist at Academia.edu (2018 – 2025)
Built and led the user research function from the ground up at one of the world’s largest open science platforms, serving 350M+ users worldwide. Reported to the CPO and partnered with executives on product strategy, planning, and monetization and growth initiatives.
Raised organizational UX maturity and embedded assumption testing into product development.
Expanded impact by stepping into Product Manager and Product Strategist roles shipping new experiences and leading evaluation of new business opportunities and product direction through competitive analysis and lean testing.
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Research Director, See Change Institute (2016 – 2017)
As the Research Director, I worked with clients on understanding the human component of climate change and sustainability. We worked with climate-focused organizations and public utilities on behavioral interventions for energy conservation. Led quantitative and ethnographic studies on smart home technology, energy messaging, and commercial energy programs.
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Co-founder & Chief Scientist, Character.io (2015 – 2016)
Built an innovative, scalable talent assessment platform that used cutting-edge personality science and psychometrics — LinkedIn for soft skills.
Led product and business strategy, raised venture funding, designed prototypes, and built early client partnerships.
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Creator, YourMorals.org
Co-created one of the first large-scale platforms for web-based psychological research, building a community of several million registered users. Data from the platform has been used in hundreds of academic papers that have been cited tens of thousands of times, and featured in Jonathan Haidt’s NYT bestseller The Righteous Mind.
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Client engagements for public good — I’ve worked with smaller clients across climate change, public media and public opinion, and online dating. For example I developed psychographic predictors of voter opinion for Target Smart, evaluated a public education campaign for the Lear Center for Media Research, and designed a relationship assessment app for Conscious Partnership.
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Sometimes I also write and give talks about psychological science for the general public, or work with public good orgs like KPCC (SoCal’s public radio) and The Story of Stuff (a project for sustainable living).
Connect with me at sena.koleva@gmail.com or www.linkedin.com/in/senakoleva/