I am a former academic turned user researcher, data analyst, and business strategist in tech. I’ve worked in industry for over a decade and use social psychological theory and data to explain and predict people’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior. My academic research was in social, personality, and political psychology, with side quests in attachment theory, intimacy, and spirituality (again, through an empirical, data-driven lens).
Working in product, I choose mission-driven projects that can improve individual and community well-being:
As a user and strategy consultant, I help companies identify user questions and needs, develop value props that lead to business opportunities, and leverage any data I can get my hands on. I have worked with a range of organizations: from the Innovation Teams at Airbnb and Casper to small startups (including my own), design agencies, public utilities, and data companies.
Until recently I was the Head of User Insights at Academia.edu, an open science edtech startup. For the last year there I was also on the Strategy team and before that a Product Manager, leading cross-functional teams to build things that needed building so we can serve our 300M+ users better. Jumping into different (simultaneous!) roles and responsibilities was fun, if at times sanity-testing.
As the Research Director at See Change Institute, I worked to understand the human component of climate change and sustainability. We worked with public utilities on behavioral interventions to get people to reduce their energy use.
As the co-founder and Chief Scientist at Character.io I leveraged cutting edge personality science to build a scalable, scientifically valid app for assessing soft skills for hiring and talent management. I had tons of fun starting a company and doing everything from pitching to VCs, prototyping and lean testing, and building partnerships with our test clients.
As one of the creators of YourMorals, I developed one of the first large website for psychology research. Without any marketing or funding, we built a community of millions of users who have given us data cross hundreds of psychological questionnaires and web experiements. These data have led to dozens of scientific papers, cited tens of thousands of times, and featured in my collaborator Jon Haidt's NYT Bestseller, The Righteous Mind.
With Target Smart, a political data company, I worked on adding psychographic predictors to a model of voter opinion
With the Lear Center for Media Research I evaluated a media campaign for public education in low income areas.
With Conscious Partnership, I created a tool to help couples improve their relationship and plan their future.
Sometimes I write and give talks about psychological science for a general audience, or work with public-good orgs like KPCC (public radio in Southern California) and The Story of Stuff (a project for sustainable living).
Lastly, in my academic life I taught psychological science to thousands of undergrads, opening their eyes to the magic within us, the universal and the unique, and the intricate ways we impact each other. It was an honor I cherish, and might well return to, one day. For now, I just love building things too much.
Connect with me at sena.koleva@gmail.com or www.linkedin.com/in/senakoleva/