About Anna
I am a Brooklyn-based UX and product researcher with 7+ years of research experience across product teams and academic labs.
I came to UX through a lifelong curiosity about behavior: why people make the choices they do, what they need but can't articulate, and how small design decisions can meaningfully shape people's actions.
After studying psychology and digital media communication at Stanford University, I realized UX was the field where I could use insight to understand people more deeply and help build products that make their lives easier.
I spent the last four years working at Braze, a B2B marketing technology SaaS company, where I learned and adapted quickly, advancing from intern to associate to mid-level researcher while supporting 5+ product teams and multiple major company bets.
I'm especially drawn to messy spaces where the problem hasn't been defined yet. I like turning vague questions into a focused research plan, digging through survey metrics to find the first clue of a human story, and helping teams make user-centered product decisions with confidence.
In my work, I believe in falling in love with the problem, not the solution.
This makes me persistent, creative, and grounded when helping teams decide what should come next.
Learning to listen to behavioral cues
Before I became a UX researcher, I spent years learning how to understand and advocate for others' needs without relying on words. Riding and training horses for over 15 years taught me to notice subtle cues, recognize patterns, adapt in real time, and experiment when the first approach didn’t work. Fostering rescue dogs strengthened that same instinct: every new dog came with a different history, personality, and set of needs, and my job was to quickly learn how to help them feel safe, understood, and supported.
That mindset still shapes the way I approach research today. I pay close attention to what people do, not just what they say, and I often advocate for observational methods, behavioral measures, and interview questions that uncover the real pain points behind surface-level feedback.
I even discovered my love of psychology by starting my academic career in animal behavior studies, where I researched and designed a habitat enrichment device for a hippo at the San Francisco Zoo. (In my career, I hope I no longer come across user pain points like "destroys everything presented to him".)
Wellness at the forefront of my design philosophy
My interest in research has always been rooted in making people’s lives a little easier. I’m motivated by work that helps teams build products with the user’s best interests in mind.
That perspective shaped my academic and early career work, too. My Master’s thesis in Stanford's Media Studies / Communications program explored Zoom fatigue and its implications for adolescents, looking at how digital tools can affect well-being and how we might design or use them more intentionally. I also worked with a digital wellness organization focused on helping people build healthier, more deliberate relationships with technology.
Together, those experiences shaped the kind of researcher I try to be: curious, user-protective, and focused on helping teams make decisions that are not only strategically sound, but genuinely useful.
And when I'm not working...
...you can find me planning my next music festival trip, catching waves at the Jersey Shore, and searching for a coffee in Williamsburg that can compete with a Melbourne flat white.(Send recs!)