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Over the past decade, I've collaborated with product and engineering teams across various industries, including travel, health, pharma, fintech, and public sector organizations, to transform assumptions into evidence and questions into strategic opportunities.
My sweet spot? Building design and research functions that don't just deliver insights, but fundamentally change how teams make data-informed decisions.
What I Care About:
Growing people, not just projects. Whether it's mentoring researchers, teaching, or running workshops for PMs, I'm energized by helping others discover their own research superpowers.
Making research a team sport. The best insights come from collaboration. I've learned that when you give teams the tools, confidence, and space to ask good questions, magic happens.
Building infrastructure, OKRs, and process. ResearchOps and iterative research aren't glamorous, but they're essential. I believe in creating systems that make it easier to do good research than to skip it.
Case 1: Leading through change
Case 1: Leading through change
When I joined Travelport in 2022, design research was fragile: just two people were left after a reorganization, and teams were making decisions by gut feel and office politics. Nearly four years later, we're a team of 7 influencing product strategy across 5 platforms, with research insights shaping executive decisions. The shift from "what should we build?" to "what do our users actually need?" didn't happen overnight, but it happened. We are creating systems that make it easier to do good research than to skip it.
Case 2: Scaling Research Operations
Case 2: Scaling Research Operations
Research can't scale without solid infrastructure. We built our ResearchOps function from the ground up—participant panels, GDPR-compliant workflows, a centralized insights repository, career paths for research operations, and training for 50+ designers and PMs. But the real work was cultural: fostering a "culture of doubt" through workshops where teams openly shared their uncertainties and questions, turning research into a shared capability that now shapes our Discovery Roadmap together.
Case 3: Framework for prioritizing the Discovery Roadmap
Case 3: Framework for prioritizing the Discovery Roadmap
In fast-moving product teams, not every idea deserves the same investment of research and design effort. We developed a prioritization framework—rooted in Lean UX and Pendo’s “Problem Clarity vs. Risk” model—that helps teams decide when to go deep with research, when to prototype and test, and when to ship and measure. This approach improved efficiency, reduced rework, and created a shared language for decision-making.
Case 4: Measuring Experience and Key Results - OKRs
Case 4: Measuring Experience and Key Results - OKRs
The challenge wasn't just implementing tools. It was a changing culture: convincing a delivery-focused organization that measuring outcomes matters as much as shipping features. The result? CSAT improved from 36% to 65% in one product and 15% to 51% in another. More importantly, our CEO now references CSAT improvements in company communications, and experience metrics are tracked as OKRs across product teams.
Recommendations and testimonials
Recommendations and testimonials
"Sofi is an outstanding researcher and a talented people manager - but I think her most valuable trait is her ability to lead with impact. Sofi finds a way to make things happen through a combination of vision and thorough execution.
Sofi and her team repeatedly exceeded expectations in terms of scaling customer centricity at Travelport. She took a lead in training designers and product teams to do more customer research, training them in the tools and techniques needed to be more customer centric and outcome focused. She also pioneered the development of the team's quantitative research capabilities and Research Ops function and for many years grew and maintained our customer panel.
She excelled at knitting together the various insight functions scatted throughout Travelport such as CX, product insights, data analytics and marketing. I could always rely on Sofi to have the most up-to-date perspective on what our customer and users were telling us.
Sofi's combination of product experience, leadership qualities and research skills would be an asset to any modern product organisation seeking to put customer and user wants and needs at the heart of their product strategy. "
"I’ve had the pleasure of working with Sofi for the last few years in her capacity as a lead UX researcher, followed by her promotion to UX research manager. Sofi has been very instrumental in driving a customer-centric mindset to the UX and product organization to continuously include the customer in our decisions.
Sofi is able to get people onside and drive buy-in to continuous discovery with her enthusiasm and passion to find and solve for the problems and frustrations our customers face. She has created a structured approach to train interviewing skills and tools to the product teams, which has led to better decision-making about what to build and when by focusing on customer value.
Sofi has also helped mature the tools, processes, and education for quantitative measurement so the product and UX teams can better understand customer behaviour and expectations.
I highly recommend Sofi as a top-tier UX research professional."
"I had the absolute pleasure of working with Sofia for over three years at Travelport, where she was my manager. I honestly couldn’t recommend her enough. Sofia is one of those rare leaders who’s not only deeply committed to her role but also genuinely cares about the people on her team and their growth.
With Sofia’s support and guidance, I grew from a mid-level UX researcher mainly focused on usability testing into a senior researcher leading strategic initiatives. She gave me the trust, encouragement, and direction I needed to take that step forward. Sofia offered the same level of support to the rest of the research team as well, ensuring that our work consistently met the highest standards.
Sofia knows how to create true synergy within her team. She elevated research to a strategic level, built strong connections across the organization, and introduced processes that helped us navigate complexity and tackle challenges with confidence.
She’s an inspiring leader — proactive, solution-oriented, and a true advocate for research. Beyond her skills, what stands out most is her approachability and the energy she brings to every project and conversation. Working with Sofia was a privilege and a highlight of my career."
"Sofía es mi manager desde hace tres años en Travelport. Como manager, es cercana, muy humana y tiene una gran habilidad para identificar tu talento y tus fortalezas rápidamente. Esto es una ventaja, tanto para su equipo como como para la empresa, ya que como mentora te guía y potencia desde el primer momento, logrando que crezcas de forma exponencial lo que se ve reflejado en el valor a la empresa.
En cuanto a la gestión de proyectos y liderazgo de equipo, Sofía se involucra activamente, pero sabe dar el espacio necesario para que su equipo trabaje con autonomía. Interviene en los momentos clave, aportando claridad y dirección, lo que genera una dinámica de confianza, motivación y sentido de propósito.
Tiene una capacidad natural para crear lazos con otras áreas y establecer puentes de comunicación efectivos, incluso en contextos complejos. Conecta ideas con rapidez y fomenta la colaboración constante. En cuanto a la experiencia de usuario, Sofía posee un conocimiento teórico excepcional, siempre actualizada. Lo que más admiro de ella es su capacidad para trasladar ese conocimiento al terreno operativo y práctico, obteniendo resultados visibles en un tiempo óptimo
Después de trabajar con ella, he podido comprobar cómo su enfoque ha contribuido directamente a fortalecer y ampliar la visión estratégica de las diferentes areas, alineando las decisiones con las necesidades reales de los usuarios y los objetivos del negocio"
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