I am a senior product strategy and user research leader with 20+ years of experience applying psychological science to how people think, feel, and behave — and to building products that genuinely serve human needs.

I help product and leadership teams turn user insight into confident strategy, and ideas into validated tests. I focus on mission-driven work and I’m happiest when I live at the intersection of people, data, and product.

  • Principal Consultant, Crisp Insights Inc. (2017 – present)

    • I advise startups and innovation teams on product strategy, user research, and opportunity discovery. Clients range from early-stage zero-to-one teams to unicorn startups — including Airbnb, Thumbtack, and Casper — as well as award-winning design agencies and mission-driven nonprofits.

    • Work typically spans product discovery and validation, user research strategy and execution, market and opportunity assessment, and fractional leadership for product and insights teams.

    • Industries include EdTech, HealthTech, InsurTech, and climate and education nonprofits.

  • Head of User Research & Product Strategist, Academia.edu (2018 – 2025)

    • Built and led the user research function from the ground up at one of the world's largest open science platforms, serving 300M+ users. Reported to the CPO and partnered with executives on product strategy, growth initiatives, and annual planning.

    • Raised organizational UX maturity and embedded assumption testing into product development.

    • Later expanded into the Product Manager role shipping new experiences for users, and eventually also into a Product Strategist roles, leading evaluation of new business opportunities, customer segments, and product directions through research and competitive analysis.

  • Research Director, See Change Institute (2016 – 2017)

    • As the Research Director, I sought to understand the human component of climate change and sustainability.  We worked with climate-focused organizations and public utilities on behavioral interventions for energy conservation. Led large qualitative and experimental studies on smart home technology, energy messaging, and commercial energy programs .

  • Co-founder & Chief Scientist, Character.io (2015 – 2016)

    • Built a scientifically valid, scalable talent assessment platform leveraging cutting-edge personality science and psychometrics — LinkedIn for soft skills.

    • Led product and business strategy, raised venture funding, designed prototypes, and built early client partnerships.

  • Creator, YourMorals.org

    • Co-created one of the first large-scale platforms for online psychology research, building a community of several million registered users. Data from the platform has been used in hundreds of academic papers that have been cited tens of thousands of times, and featured in Jonathan Haidt's NYT bestseller The Righteous Mind.

  • Client engagements for public good — Additional engagements that span climate change, politics, public media, and relationship tools. For example with Target Smart, a political data company, I worked on adding psychographic predictors to a model of voter opinion. With the Lear Center for Media Research I evaluated a media campaign for public education in low income areas. With Conscious Partnership, I created a tool to help couples improve their relationship and plan their future.

  • Sometimes I also write and give talks about psychological science for a general audience, or work with public- orgs like KPCC (SoCal’s public radio) and The Story of Stuff (a project for sustainable living).

Connect with me at sena.koleva@gmail.com or www.linkedin.com/in/senakoleva/