Robin Counts Email & Phone Number

Seattle, Wa, Us

Seattle, Us

I research and synthesize DEI patterns among people interested in progressing on their personal and professional journeys with Anti-Oppression. I create educational frameworks, curricula, and assessment tools that support clients in improving collaboration across differences while dismantling systemic barriers and facilitate effective workshops. Most recently, my Deepening Your Anti-Oppression Journey workshop was taken by over 3000 community members.

• Built a culture of research in an ever-changing startup environment by developing 42 Foundational insights that became Customer Experience Outcomes measures (Jobs to be done + measurements) – the output of 60 hours of discovery interviews, conducted with 35 employee observers and group analysis.• Created the infrastructure to scale foundational insights across a team of 50 PMs. Created the customer research panel, growing it from 0 to 750 active customers ready to participate in mixed methods research. Managed the policies and practices to introduce rigorous, ethical remote research [UserZoom, UserInterviews, EnjoyHQ] to a new internal audience.

San Francisco, California, Us

• Created and managed research programs that improved customers’ ability to learn to use Salesforce by partnering with a team of 300 content strategists • Implemented Jobs to be done for 12 different teams of ten or more• Trained 50 writers and UXers to conduct their own research, with focus on quality• Integrated research-backed content effectiveness measures into the monthly cadence and standards for Salesforce-wide content creation • Conducted research across the Salesforce learning ecosystem to recommend the most impactful changes for the product / learning experienceIn addition, I created and facilitated Diversity, Equity and Inclusion activities to move Salesforce and its employees forward on its journey with Anti-Oppression. Activities included: - Creation of 7 customized Anti-Oppression Journey workshops for a total of 231 people - Facilitation of 10 topic-specific workshops to facilitate deeper belonging/inclusion on historically ethnically homogenous teams, such as "intent vs. impact"- Consultation on the Inclusive Product Language initiative with research techniques and insights- Creation of annual DEI-centric questions for annual surveys- Active participation on 3 different DEI Councils; Content Experience, Tech COO organization and User Experience.

Seattle, Wa, Us

Managed strategy and research on a 4-person project to re-position a new product in a new category for an international client. Broadened the thinking and insights through generative research practices and holistic communication. Responsibilities included scoping, recruiting and researching 30 hours of User Research and Subject Matter Interviews, assessing systems to ensure research and long-term impact, and strong collaboration to build insightful frameworks to help the client progress. The outcome was better than expected: the client changing their strategy for the next version, based on high-level insights and recommendations as well as specific ones.

Mount Vernon, Washington, Us

I combine leadership frameworks, research methods, humility and confidence to improve workplace collaborations and produce results, measured by sentiment analysis and agreed-upon metrics. I create client relationships that turn into value for companies. I did this by: • Engaging teams to ensure articulate desired outcomes, building strategies with clients where Design Thinking is a catalyst for desired organizational change. • Assessing team dynamics through research and observation to co-create just-right solutions that meet ever-changing needs. • Incorporating customized systems such as Business Value prioritization, team skill-building such as Leadership AcceleratorHighlight: I created and facilitated an anti-bias class to help engineers surface their biases and understand how they impact the product experiences they create. Received an unprecedented Net-Promoter Score from the students, with feedback weeks later such as "everyone in the company should take this class."Responsibilities include: coaching individuals and groups, relationship-management and business development with clients, creating and facilitating workshops as appropriate for groups, conducting and communicating research insights with clients and teammates, situational leadership. Curricula: - Anti-bias: https://www.navicet.com/training/surfacing-biases-to-build-better-products- Research Methods: https://www.navicet.com/training/interview-methods-for-product-discovery- Leadership: https://www.navicet.com/leadership-accelerator

Redmond, Washington, Us

In this role, my main projects were:- Conducting research to help the Office organization make sense of modern work-styles and workplaces to make tools that empower real people to do their most effective work. This including conducting primary and secondary quantitative and qualitative research to incorporate insights into to organization's mindset. The final "modern work" presentation was given over 50 times in workshops and talks, and later integrated into Microsoft's core pillars. These impacts required awareness of change management principles and Microsoft culture and sticking points.- Facilitating Inclusive Design sessions, particularly focused on Gender-inclusion, across Windows and Office organizations [~15,000 employees] to help strengthen the company's philosophies around designing without inadvertently excluding. Workshops sometimes extended to 250 people at once and resulted in immediate product changes in Help and XBox, a published paper written about gender inclusion as a Case Study at Microsoft [https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8103461], and frameworks to amplify the knowledge for the company-wide #hackforher the annual #hackathon.- Leading a team of 6 extension staff, who were vendors with backgrounds in research and consulting. I ensured the team was successfully meeting the ambiguous and ever-changing needs of the larger research team to free-up time for Full-time staff, while also scaling insights-gathering across the 5000-person engineering organization via hands-on training sessions.

Redmond, Washington, Us

- Created and maintained a rich, motivating and personally relevant environment for a team of 6 wicked-smart researchers, empowered to build kick-ass products by picking the right research to conduct at the right time (matching method to questions), and land the message via storytelling and other agile methods- Partnered with Directors and their teams to provide insights to build the best products to improve peoples' data-storytelling journey (my team researched several Office experiences including Excel and PowerPoint). - Helped the greater research and design teams of 130 people to understand and measure emotional response to products to make them more meaningful and useful (not just usable) via relevant training and frameworks.

Redmond, Washington, Us

- Through rigorous research, articulated emotional responses to the Metro design language in Windows 8. - Articulated insights about change management as a result of rigorous and generative research - from quant surveys to usability studies - to ensure the Windows organization was aware of the impact of a change from previous versions of Windows to this very different version. - Created an innovative framework of research methods used by designers and researchers across Windows and in order to articulate users’ emotional responses to the reimagined Windows 8 Personality and brand. This implementation of the Metro Design Language included animations, voice and tone, sound, layout, colors and personalization. Trained the 25-person research team in the methodology to enable greater emotional understanding across Windows 8 UX, platform and apps and, after analysis, communicated impactful results to better the product, marketing, and future Windows. Suggested changes were implemented in Windows version 8.1.- Mentored fellow researchers in building successful in-home participant field programs, measuring responses over time to Windows 7, 8 and Live Photos. Built tools such as a daily emotional response app that garnered 1099 responses by 22 participants; created protocols and best practices, moderated visits, debriefs and post mortems and analyzed for impact and understanding.- Led 4 Directors in a collaborative effort to communicate one cohesive, well-understood Windows Live vision to the Vice President to inspire the 1500-person division with a clear vision for next 18 months.

Redmond, Washington, Us

- Conducted surveys, heuristic evaluations and lab studies on the most impactful areas of Windows 7's Personalization, Help and Windows Online by partnering with engineering and design to build the most successful user experience.- Partnered with the engineering teams to conduct relevant and actionable user research for Movie Maker, Photo Gallery and Mail's photo experiences to build seamless storytelling and photo management solutions for Windows Live. Recieved two pattents.- Envisioned, planned, executed and analyzed field research across photos experiences in Windows Live to create the foundation for future products.

Redmond, Washington, Us

- Created processes that promoted a culture shift within the Windows Live organization to fully reap the benefits of listening and communicating with the Messenger and Mail consumer base of 260 million users. - Determined customer needs throughout Windows Live Communications products and bolstered build those needs into specific product areas. - Built team competencies in Security, Quality of Service, Sustained Engineering, Privacy, and customer satisfaction by leading a diverse team of 6 team members who were responsible from a wide range of projects from project management of Vista Mail shipping to building a from-scratch Sharepoint team site.- Carefully triaged issues, motivated the team, and project managed the release of Windows Mail in Vista in partnership with development and test leads, including presentations Vice-Presidents to represent the team and our decisions.

Redmond, Washington, Us

- Led the envisioning efforts to create a new Calendar for Family Organizers, in partnership with Design and Research.

Redmond, Washington, Us

- Envisioned and designed the version 1 Partner Portal product from conception and requirements-gathering through design and development, in partnership with development and testers.- Managed hundreds of hours of triage in cooperation with development and test leads, met with high profile executives, communicated and inspired the team to finish a product that was very late before my arrival, Windows Mail, shipped in Windows Vista.

Redmond, Washington, Us

Championed MSN’s Premier Partner relationships during initial launches of deep broadband partnerships with Verizon and Qwest, a partnership responsible for ~6000 new MSN subscriptions per day. Built sustainable and scalable partner management tools to ensure smooth joint product development, including design, specifications, usability, test plans, and scheduling with external partners. Personally resolved 450+ of Verizon’s technical issues in the short ~6 month product cycle.

Redmond, Washington, Us

- Rallied the team to complete the last minute details to get final releases of Internet Explorer (5.01, 5.5) onto the web or into Windows at the right time with the right quality (including "pushing the button" to release 5.5 so that it became available the second Bill Gates stepped onto a stage at a conference).- Conducted beta programs with enthusiastic users

Us

- Transformed the volunteer program serving children living with housing insecurity by creating and implementing on-boarding and retention processes that reshaped school culture to be one of inclusion. Shifted the program from 23 inconsistent volunteers to 154 consistent, diverse, connected volunteers including one mentor for every child. - Trained volunteers in healthy boundaries, mentoring, and managing recess activities, including conflict resolution.- Conducted art therapy sessions with children benefiting from extra classroom assistance by guiding them through creative and collaborate exercises such as building houses using laminate tiles while discussing their living situations or drawing pictures of difficult experiences with their families while talking about emotions.

- Created and taught individualized, creative curriculum for students ages 3 - 12 to aid in their confidence and skills in speaking, reading, and writing English.- Partnered with native Korean-Language speakers to create a scaffolding for the best possible success.- Leveraged creativity, passion, collaboration and patience to ensure that both adult and child learners were most successful.

- Brought together Seattle's Hip Hop community to collaborate to build hip hop showcases at the Folkslife Festival to connect the community to the culture and music that represented Seattle at the time.- Conducted interviews with Hip Hop artists to be published in the magazine, wrote album reviews.

Chicago, Il, Us

Facilitated life skill development, support, and assistance for girls in transition from juvenile detention facilities into life beyond a residential facility.

Shoreview,, Mn, Us

- Facilitated mediation between youth-at-risk and their parents to aid co-creation of safe and healthy next steps for each family.- Created and taught life skills to the youth including anger management, job searches, and working together. - Lead other crisis workers in the conflict resolution, skill building and management required to run a residential facility.