Ali Maaxa, Ph.D. Email & Phone Number

United States

Consulting, strategy and insights to remove risk from product innovation, organizational change, AI/ML & Cloud Innovation, CX & UX. I have worked with every kind of organization from AT&T's global cloud transformation team to our local recycling company to understand teams and customers, test solutions, and strategize & deploy change.(Formerly CultureEncode Consulting, 2013-2020)

Lakewood, Wa, Us

Leverage customer discovery to productize a SAiAF (Strategic AI Adoption Framework).GTM strategy. Thought leadership, panels, keynotes.

Miami, Florida, Us

Principal Researcher: Combined Market, CX and UX research - and partnered with sales and enablement - to understand and solve for evolving challenges in customer adoption and retention. Major impact on 72 enterprise customers; introduced journey mapping to the organization as a whole; mentored design, incubator, and junior researchers. Product Manager: Customer Process Mapping: a productized offering to serve customers in their Anaplan adoption, integration, and governance journeys. The value prop was to reduce Time To Value and Total Cost of Operations for planning across business units.

Seattle, Wa, Us

Led and strategized user research and field discovery for Amazon SageMaker, an open-source platform for AI/ML innovation.Keynote: The Culture of Cloud: Leveraging the Social Sciences at AmazonBar raisers: Developed and introduced the Jobs to be Done. Journey Mapping frameworks to AWS product at large.

San Francisco, Ca, Us

Planned and execute major fieldwork, personas, journey maps, pain points, and opportunities for multi-million dollar 0-1 product Led cross-functional product team in discovery with a host of end users at top-20 Fortune 500 companies and scaling startups alike, including leading very successful customer workshops Presented synthesized work to C-Suite Execs and in TED-style talks to company at largeRecorded widely-downloaded podcast about research approaches and resultsMethods used for a single product incubation project: Site Visits, Incident Analysis, Internal User Interviews/Tests, Focus Groups, Surveys, Participant-Observation, Data mapping, Personas and Journey Maps

Portland, Or, Us

Amsterdam, Noord Holland, Nl

At FCV, I led teams in research strategy and execution on a series of high-stakes, high visibility projects with major impact. *Research Lead, Major Transformation: Seattle SoundTransit Signage*Research Lead, Major Site Replatforming: Recreation.Gov*Research Lead, Digital Tools, Apps and Replatforming: Oregon Metro (Oregonmetro.gov)

C’EST WHAT? is a future-facing innovation consultancy that stimulates curious thinking about what’s happening next. We provide provocative assessment about future trends, craft innovation strategies and design ways to transform your organization into a culture of creativity. ​

Blacksburg, Va, Us

Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology, Africana and Women’s and Gender Studies at Virginia Tech, where I teach courses on digital Blackness, postcolonial and feminist media studies, social movements, and media anthropology. I have published and presented on the complicated role of digital media in regime change in the Islamic world (including the 2012 elections in my long-term fieldsite of Dakar, Senegal), as well as the importance of digital media to community and ritual life as they intersect with national and global political economies. Direct Digital Africa, a research project that examines the emergence of new digital technologies (as well as the “off-label” use of existing technologies) across the Global South. I am seeking funding and partnerships with university-based digital designers based on collaboration with globally-underserved populations.

Portland, Or, Us

Director, Digital Africa: a research project (drawing from the fields of Human Computer Interaction and Anthropology of Innovation) that examines the emergence of new digital technologies (as well as the “off-label” use of existing technologies) across the Global South. I am seeking funding and partnerships with university-based digital designers based on collaboration with globally-underserved populations.

Williamsburg, Va, Us

Here, I researched and taught on topics including the digital humanities, digital cultures, media, anthropology and ethnographic research, writing and editing, and culture. I received an NAACP Outstanding Faculty Award for my teaching work and numerous grants and fellowships for my research. In addition to training and leading teams of undergraduate researchers in conducting original ethnographic work and digital design in my media anthropology and digital undergrounds courses, I chaired an international convention on popular media and culture (IASPM) and led a working group on the digital humanities. A list of some of the publications I produced during this time is linked below.

Columbus, Ohio, Us

Chaired the annual meeting of IASPM-US at the invitation of organization leadership; successfully gathered grant funding, managed 700 paper proposals and associated scheduling; planned and executed programming, keynotes, and schedule.

Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Us

Plan curriculum, design course plans, write original textbook content, implement assessments, evaluation. You can view one of my courses at the link below: http://ccocomm142.web.unc.edu/using the password: popular

Chapel Hill, Nc, Us

New York, Ny, Us

I ask how Senegalese women develop critical, “off-label” uses of popular technologies to amplify their work: the widespread audio recording of ritual events to cell-phone sim cards, for instance, or the heavy tagging of digital “selfies” to replicate traditional modes of portraiture and prestige.

2016 “Reverberation 2: Women Praise Singers of Urban Senegal” Director.2015 Director/Curator, “Generation Fly to Fly.”2011 "Reverberation 1"2008“Home of the Double-Headed Eagle: Visionary Vernacular Architecture” Co-Director with B. Graves.2008 Soul Business: Commerce and Community in a Durham, North Carolina HolinessStorefront Church. (Documentary Website, 2008-12)2007 Material Mississippi: Material Cultures of the Mississippi Delta (Documentary Website)2007“Let the World Listen Right.” Co-Director with B. Graves and J. Williams. 2006 • UNC Screen Arts Series, Featured Film.

Doctor Of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Communication And Media Studies, Anthropology

Certificate: Product Management For Engineers (Enrolled July 2020, Complete 2022), End-To-End Product Management For Highly Technical Teams And Products

Certificate: Market Strategy (Enrolled July 2020, Complete 2022), Research, Analytics, Modeling, Decision-Making, Distribution, Global Marketing

Certificate, African And African American Studies

Master’S Degree, Folklore

Bachelor’S Degree, Political Science, Art