selected programs · work beyond the case study

New capabilities become real through the programs around them.

A few examples of the systems, rituals, and AI experiments I have used to help teams move from a good idea to a reliable shared practice.

images are intentionally limited to protect people and confidential work. I am happy to talk through the detail.

The ⚙ programs. The ★ rituals. The ⌁ agents. And the ♥ underneath it all.

four folders, scroll to open the files
01

program · product org

AI Native Workforce

About a year ago, working closely with our head of AI, I led the AI Native Workforce project: building conviction around how teams were actually using AI, and how leadership could better support adoption across the org. From the outset I wanted the work to reflect the full diversity of voices across product and tech, so I brought together engineers, designers, PMs, researchers, data scientists, and managers, and ran facilitated feedback sessions to pressure test every insight against real workflows and lived experience. The result: a genuinely cross functional view of our entire product development lifecycle, and a clear picture of where to invest next.

  • enablement
  • xfn leadership
  • ai adoption
02

portfolio · insights fluency

Socializing Research

Socializing research is one of my favorite parts of the job. It lets me be creative with what I build and strategic with how insights land: the right moment, the right format, so they actually shape product outcomes and decisions. A few favorites:

  • Hinge trivia. Started as a fun idea and became one of the most talked about moments at Hinge: custom videos, interactive Slack challenges, and nearly every team's work featured in the content.
  • The research museum. A winter summit takeover: a rapid prototyping station fed same day AI moderated interviews, with insights back to the company before the summit ended.
  • The Hinge Times. A newspaper built with our head of research, waiting wherever morning coffee met the all hands.
  • The monthly digest. Always evolving: a Humans of Research interview series, an editorial magazine redesign, and now a Claude skill that drafts each issue from our Slack, Notion, and repository, styled on our design system so it ships looking like an official campaign.
  • Chocolate bars. Custom wrapped with golden tickets inside, to hype a VIP section. The little details are where the joy lives.
  • Flyers. Photo flyers with tear off strips from an office photoshoot; a machine learning engineer said they took him straight back to college lab study boards and genuinely made him smile.
Cesar in a tan suit and hat hosting trivia on stage
your host for hinge trivia
A purple Hinge Times newsstand stacked with newspapers
fresh off the press
A custom SOTUB chocolate bar with a golden You're Invited seal
the golden ticket bar
A framed museum poster of the fuzzy Hinge mascot with a magnifying glass reading Prototyping Station
museum signage, oil on mascot
An ornate gold frame holding a printed trivia riddle titled The Constant in Coincidence
clue no. 1, framed accordingly
A clear ballot box full of Smarties rolls beside the framed clue and a small brass cryptex
count the smarties, not the rolls
A projected trivia question slide with joke multiple choice answers and a countdown timer
question 7, six seconds left
Projected museum title reading SOTUB Museum, an immersive journey that brings our most valuable user insights to life
the museum, projected
A tall black board game wall titled Journey to the Second Date with playful stops like Likes Lagoon and Vibe Check Valley
journey to the second date, the board
The fuzzy Hinge mascot pillow beside colorful beakers and flasks styled like a science lab
set dressing from the flyer shoot
03

automation · research quality

Survey QA Bot

To kick off this year, our head of research and I assessed the team's workflows and rituals for places AI could genuinely strengthen them, and then I ran weekly sprints to see how far I could push each idea into a working tool. The survey QA agent came out of one of those sprints: a researcher posts their survey in a Slack channel, and the agent cross references our best practices and QA documentation, walks the actual survey flow through an MCP connection, and hands back a comprehensive first pass of QA. Quality stopped depending on whoever happened to have a spare hour.

  • ai workflow
  • quality bar
  • self-service
Animated demo of the Research Bestie Slack agent answering a team question
a sprint sibling: research bestie, the team's q&a agent (details blurred)
04

ritual · the underneath

Building Team Culture

Connection is at the core of who I am, and it shapes how I navigate my professional life too. Camaraderie is core to how I work. We spend more time with our coworkers than with most of the other humans in our lives, so I do what I can to make that time feel good: organizing moments of celebration, hyping up the people around me, and making sure my team knows I am rooting for them.

  • quarterly ai hackathons
  • psychological safety
  • camaraderie
Animated Slack message from the celebration bot announcing a birthday with a custom song and a SpongeBob gif
the celebration agent i built: never miss a birthday (or a hingeversary)
A retro MS Paint styled board titled Research MY Retro AI Hack with hackathon project cards, names blurred
hackathon retro, names off the record
[ no team photos on purpose: my team's moments aren't mine to publish. countless stories, happy to share them live ]
before you ask ↓

Anticipated Questions

How do you get people on board with ideas this playful?+

When you build strong relationships, and pair them with a team that is consistently innovating and trying new things, you build a company culture that gets genuinely excited about what your team is working on. By the time trivia or a museum lands, people aren't being convinced: they're waiting to see what we do next.

How do you get stakeholders bought into infrastructure work?+

When you have clarity on the pain point and conviction in the solution, coupled with a strong game plan, bringing your XFN with you gets a lot easier. And if there is a real pain point, it is impacting people beyond your team already: so building with your stakeholders, not just for them, makes the whole process easier and more impactful.

Are you always having this much fun?+

Mostly, and on purpose. Joy is retention strategy, for insights and for teams. People remember what made them smile, and that memory carries the insight with it.

Which teams have you collaborated with?+

I have worked with nearly every discipline at Hinge: Product, Design, Engineering, Data Science, CX, Marketing, Brand, Legal, and Finance/Procurement, plus vendor product teams as a design partner.