Samantha Zucker Email & Phone Number

I'll be embedding with the Better Future Forward team for a few months to support their work on Partnerships and Servicing.

Grounding research to help you reroute and reroot. Reroot Research provides foundational mixed-methods research focused on providing clarity and direction.We believe that organizations move forward by inviting people in.Reroot Research helps organizations get unstuck using equitable and scrappy research methods to connect to relevant audiences and understand their needs. Our process involves working with people historically excluded from design research and strategy, trusting their voices and expertise. We also bring synthesis and product management skills to the work, ensuring insights are actionable for you. We work exclusively with values-driven organizations dedicated to leaving the world better than they found it.

Leading a small team of designers and researchers to help EmbraceRace understand the current needs of the parents and educators they serve, and how to make resources more accessible, aligned, and engaging in their goal to raise color brave kids.

In 2023, I worked with Bloomworks and their clients on two fast-paced projects focused on public good. First was an 8-week project working hand in hand with the Colorado Behavioral Health Agency to develop a plan for their mental health treatment bed tracker. The work included in-depth expert interviews, recruiting and interviewing a wide range of mental health providers across the state, comparison state interviews, and tech usability assessment. This work was completed with a 6 person team from Bloomworks and many team members from CO BHA. The second project was done in collaboration with Georgetown's Beeck Center, Childcare Aware of America, and partners on the ground in Oregon and Arizona. Our goal was to understand the gap between childcare subsidy need and enrollment, and offer solutions to lessen the gap. The work included research with families and home-childcare providers in English and Spanish, via a translator, as well as interviews with agency staff, research analysis, and system summaries. The project report can be seen here. https://beeckcenter.georgetown.edu/beyond-technology-how-a-federal-state-partnership-and-a-test-and-learn-approach-can-deliver-an-equitable-child-care-assistance-system/

Level believes using your benefits should be as easy as buying a cup of coffee. In order to get those benefits to employees, they need to clearly understand who makes benefits decisions in 2022 and how that process is changing in a radically shifting landscape. In partnership with Brand, I joined the Level team for a 3-month collaborative research project focused on building Level’s foundational understanding of their customers and how to best position themselves.This work was conducted internally in partnership with Level and included extensive mixed-methods research to align and rally the team around a shared vision.

I joined the team at Collective. for a fast-paced project focused on creating self-reflection tools for and with team leaders. Our process included building rapid prototyping, conducting on-site testing and feedback sessions, and synthesizing findings in collaboration with a hybrid team.

Lextech helps employees thrive at work. I worked with the team to provide qualitative research, in-person workshop design and facilitation, user journeys, and strategy for one of their clients.

Vital Village Networks invited me to co-design and facilitate a three-part design lab series for a recent fellowship. The series created space and process for fellows from distinctly different backgrounds and perspectives to come together and develop a shared vision and values across their work. I worked closely and quickly with the VVN team in a highly collaborative process to ensure each session reflected the session before and stayed true to the cooperative and non-hierarchical values of VVN and the fellows. Each workshop pulled from Human-Centered Design and equity-based approaches and allowed fellows to lead and direct while providing a framework and possibilities.

Collective Health has grown rapidly in the past few years. With this success comes the opportunity to better understand the current state of affairs and the extending impacts. Embedded with the UX Research and Product Strategy team, I planned, executed, and synthesized an exploratory research project focused on a core business experience. In a limited time frame, I worked collaboratively with teammates across various functions in order to shed insights onto what is happening during open enrollment, and how well it is serving each stakeholders needs. Research methods included: internal interviews and workshops, document review, user interviews, quantitative user survey, “lookalike” interviews, and desk research.

ISTE’s Course of Mind team is raising the bar of what educators expect out of EdTech products. But how do you hear from educators in new ways when the dynamic has already been set? Based on their skills and needs, we developed a customized and collaborative approach to bring in my expertise. Meeting weekly and at key inflection points, we worked together to take their existing structure and assets for the project, and refine them— ensuring that they had the right questions, language, and frameworks to make their work successful. With this adaptive approach, ISTE’s team was able to handle the vast majority of the design work with limited support, rather than hiring a full-time contractor or designer.

I support Lisa Baird and the team at Calbright College to re-design and operationalize a college-ready to respond to California’s massive workforce development needs in a post-covid world.

After setting up a sustainable Research Ops system at BFF, we used it first to answer some of their toughest questions - what is happening for students in repayment who aren’t paying? BFF wants their product and repayment to be fair and unburdensome for students, but struggled to reach these students to understand where challenges laid. Our new research ops system made finding and building trust feasible, and we ultimately found 6 students willing to participate in an in-depth three-month process. Across multiple qualitative sessions and individual activities, we came to deeply understand their finances, their philosophies on money, and their experiences. Using qualitative interviews, asynchronous activities, and co-designing methods, I was able to provide BFF with not only clarity on the core challenges leading to student delinquency, but also solutions co-designed by the students and a more nuanced understanding of the people BFF aims to serve. In the last phase of this work, I conducted rapid usability tests and redesigns on the language BFF uses to describe its product. By using both a qualitative interview and a quick post-interview survey, we were able to determine not only what elements students were excited about, but also where their understanding was accurate, and adjust language accordingly. BFF is using these findings to update language use across their offerings - from the website and coaching all the way to their updated legal contracts - in order to provide students with a better and clearer experience.

I worked with the Better Future Forward team to overhaul and redesign their research recruitment process to prioritize and engage students that they previously had trouble finding inroads with - particularly students who had lost contact after graduation. Together we built a custom Research Ops system within their existing business platforms. The system streamlines recruiting, scheduling, and paying students into a more automated fashion, and allows BFF to spend their limited resources on building relationships and trust with students. Additional elements such as pre-written outreach language, timetables for outreach, and clear policies focused on supporting the students meant the system itself contributes to higher student engagement and satisfaction. By using this process, trust is built before sessions even start, leading to more open and insightful conversations when the sessions begin. Upon completion, the client had a self-sustaining system they could execute themselves, which they’ve continued to use with success and ease, even by non-researchers.

I supported the Moneystack team on a rapid 8-week cycle to reimagine and revamp their product vision ahead of pitching. I coached the team and Lise Sasaki on using research and lo-fi prototyping to better understand their users’ needs.The short timeline and exploratory nature led to an interesting challenge. I focused my efforts on conveying the most critical elements of design research and helping the team prioritize and make adjustments to the process based on their situation, as well as laying a strong foundation of the ethics involved in research with participants. Through everyone’s efforts, the process was a success and allowed the Moneystack team to move into their investment pitching round with confidence.

I joined the team at Edquity after helping to transfer and adapt the design work with the Hope Center to fit its new home. We saw an opportunity at Edquity to reimagine the typical approach to user research in a way that fit both the needs of the students we aimed to service and the company itself. Students who Edquity is designed for by definition have “life happen” in all its forms, meaning in order to reach them and include them in the design process, we had to build a sustainable research process that allowed for missed sessions and email and inherently built trust while still being able to gather insights quickly. I ultimately designed, built, and conducted research using a system designed for these needs. The resulting work meant I spoke to 2 to 3 students every week and built lasting relationships with those students. I revamped all research policies to accomodate missed sessions, childcare needs, time constraints, and ultimately allow the students we recognized as our core users to participate multiples times with lasting impact. I also experimented with alternative approaches like self-directed user tests, both of our products and others, and “take-home” assignments designed for specific students that allowed us to include students we’d never have been able to accommodate in the past. This system was set up prior to Covid and adjusted to meet the changing needs of the population after. The insights and collaborate work from these sessions has directly impacted Edquity’s success, contributing to the company’s distribution of over $50 million in emergency aid.

With the Hope Center, I created a system and strategy to automate emergency aid for college students. Across the country, the process for students to receive emergency aid is convoluted, slow, and involves answering uncomfortable questions. I worked with the Hope Center to conduct qualitative design research on their proposed application. Through those sessions and rapid prototyping, I rewrote the language in ways students could easily understand and accurately answer while creating the key elements for the Hope Center’s envisioned algorithm. Working with the team, we designed the algorithm to quickly and accurately assess who should be eligible for aid while reducing shame, increasing the amount of important context added, and substantially reducing the work for the student. Beyond research, my role helped this non-technical team build confidence in their vision. Ultimately we partnered with Edquity to bring the vision to life. Using this process, we were able to distribute over $500,000 to students in need within 2 months of launching. Students received aid within 48 hours after a 5 minute, judgment-free application process.

I worked with YearUp as a freelance facilitator and general design coach for many of their convenings over the course of a year and a half. One convening that stands out is when I designed and executed a 2-day workshop in Austin, TX, bringing together 5 key organizations in the emerging hybrid college space to find commonality and define a future together. It became clear on the first day of the gathering that the agenda we created, using many of the modalities I usually use like future visioning, how might we questions, and testing, wasn't allowing the participants the kind of collaboration and nuanced discussions they were hoping for, mostly due to the agenda being created only with one party. Recognizing this, we shifted the agenda together in real-time, allowing them to focus on defining their budding industry together and mapping out perceptions and misunderstandings their industry held. We then created guiding principles for their collective organizations, setting a foundation for their future partnership.In the years since many have told me that workshop was the defining place for their coming together as an industry rather than discreet organizations. The organizations in this group went on to found the Hybrid College Network and pull shared messaging and values from these discussions.

I joined the IDEO Design for Learning studio as a sub-contracter on a project for the Foundation for California Community Colleges to bring in extra support in higher education, equity-based design, and design research. I specifically facilitated major stakeholder meetings, helped plan and execute on research with the team, collaborated in synthesis and prototype creation, and impacted the final direction of the work.

Better Future Forward needed support in communicating their offering, Income-Shared Agreements (ISA), an alternative to student loans. Since this is a new field, we needed to find a concise, clear, and compelling way to describe ISAs to students, who were confused by the concept. To create a new communication plan, I interviewed students, who were excited to learn about alternatives to student loans, but didn't fully understand the ISA model. Through the process of interviews, prototypes, and iterating, I found eight key learnings (for example, Generation Z loves side by side comparisons!) and used those as the building block for a communication plan. As a result, Better Future Forward now has a clear, effective, and concise way to communicate with students, who better understand this innovative, and potentially game-changing, offering.Read the full case study at https://www.srzucker.com/isas

Washington D.C. Metro Area

I worked full-time for Tomorrow Partners, with freelancer Lisa Baird, on the Strategic Planning for the Common App.This included- Developing and implementing a research plan across multiple stakeholders including students, colleges access organizations, college administrators, and internal staff. - Discovering and communicating key insights in actionable ways- Co-facilitating multiple design workshops for both research and community engagement- Identifying key opportunity areas and developing innovative options within each

Washington, Dc

Cofounded the ECMC Innovation Lab and managed Design and Research day to day.- Design a mobile first solution to the skills gap in technical education- Redesign of CollegeAbacus, price transparency tool for college prices- Design of PellAbacus, price transparency shortcut for low income high school students, from inspiration to creation- Reimagining the Financial Aid process for Zenith schools (Full Human Centered Design process) - User testing and wireframes for online portal allowing borrowers to pay loans clearly and easilyECMC Innovation Lab is an incubator for products and initiatives at ECMC Group. Our work focuses on impacting how finance and higher ed intertwine. We're started with helping high school students make more informed decisions about the cost of college with College Abacus. Next we've focused on addressing the needs of hundreds of thousands of borrowers at risk or in default to gain clear, simple understanding of what is happening with their loans. ECMC's recent purchase of 56 career colleges across the country expands our opportunities for impact to 40,000 students eager to make a difference in their own life.

Greater New York City Area

Worked on Knewton's first direct to consumer product, focused primarily on tools for teachers to create effective, inspirational and consistent content for the system. - Introduced, facilitated and leveraged user testing- Built partnerships with teachers and organizations to leverage design input- Prototyped tools in axure

Greater New York City Area

Focus on the User Experience of the GameChanger product. Major work includes- Leading User Testing (in office, remote and on location) - Long Term Research and Product Recommendations- Day to Day Usability and Experience Design

New York City

Assist the Mother Design team in all design related tasks on both client and internal projects. Tasks include design research, publication layouts, photo retouching and studio assistance.Worked on clients including:- Wired- Google- Fred Perry- Microsoft- Burton

New York City, New York

- Design infographics, publications, and identity directional work along side in house design team. - Research and pitch conference opportunities for additional exposure and potential business development- Manage photo collections and assist in website upkeep.

Greater Pittsburgh Area

theFearbox project is a participative public art piece that allows research into the topic of every day fears, as well as offering a therapeutic experience for participants. It dives into understand our most basic human emotion, fear. Project Highlights- Funded by Carnegie Mellon's SURG Grants- Hosted by 6 locations in the Pittsburgh area- Over 500 responses- Presented at the International Conference on Arts and Humanities in 2012- Hosted for a month long interactive exhibit at the JCC in Pittsburgh- Presented at Carnegie Mellon's Meeting of the MindsProject included: Budgets, Fundraising, Pitching, Exhibit Design, Collateral Design, Statistical Analysis, Interdisciplinary Research

Greater Pittsburgh Area

Assisted professors and students with the Blackboard Course Management tool. This included boutique customer service skills of neutralizing frustrated individuals, quickly and accurately finding solutions to their IT problems, and strong communication skills to walk them through the solution via email or phone. Requests included troubleshooting solutions, management plans for courses and basic update needs.

Morocco

After learning about migration and transnational identity in Morocco in an academic setting, I spent a month in country traveling, researching and interviewing migrants of various backgrounds. Using photography and Adobe Photoshop, I then created digital narratives of each migrant. The visually stimulating works offer a glimpse into the individual lives and experiences of these migrants who are becoming more and more the norm in country, rather than simplifying them down to a statistic.

Worked on Landing Sites, Promotional Slides, Animations, Banners and Party Favors for various parties.

Graphic design work for the Pittsburgh based non-profit. Work ranged from project logos and proposal design to photography and editing.

Bachelor Of Humanities And The Arts, Communication Design And Linguistics, 3.75

Activities and Societies: Phi Beta Kappa, Carnegie Cares Volunteer OrganizationGraduated with University and College Honors from Carnegie.

Education record

Project Breaker is two week intensive created by Senior TED Fellow Juliette LaMontagne and Stanford's D-School. Focused on Human Centered.

Migration And Transnational Identity

A semester long immersive program in Morocco focused on how migration impacts every aspect of life in the country. Morocco is often.