Biographies
Biographies
Carole Bilson
President, Design Management Institute (DMI) & Co-founder of the UA Consortium
Carole Bilson is the President of Strategic Change & Innovation LLC. In this role, she and her partners help leaders and their teams achieve breakthrough results. They utilize organizational development and change methods as well as design thinking, innovation, and a user/customer focus to help teams deliver increased value.
Prior to this Carole was the Vice President of Global Design & Usability and Technology Support Operations, at Pitney Bowes. In this role she led 2 departments of designers, psychologists, software developers, and engineers, in the development of leading-edge products and solutions for commercialization of web, software and embedded systems. They embarked on several research initiatives, the most successful of which was a Universal Design/ Section 508 project, that helped the company win a $21 million government bid. Additionally she initiated many firsts at the company, such as: led the first cross-company User Experience Council and User Experience & Innovation Day to build awareness about the value of user/customer experience among employees and key stakeholders. These efforts resulted in a savings of $12 million to the company over 2 years. Her department received 12 international design awards, 49 patents, and several of the company’s highest leadership awards. For these and other change management efforts, Carole was appointed to the CEO Council, a team of executives who contributed to the development of the corporate strategy.
Prior to Pitney Bowes, Carole worked at the Eastman Kodak Company, as a Worldwide Product/ Marketing Manager, where she oversaw the development of the first Kodak PicturemakerTM Kiosk system. This product won numerous top national awards, including “Top Product of the Year” from Photo Trade News. It also delivered over $1 billion in revenue for Kodak. Other positions held at Kodak were: Program Manager for OEM cameras, Advanced Product Strategist, and Loaned Executive to the NSF/ NY Statewide Systemic Initiative, Sr. Industrial Designer.
Carole was appointed to the Design Management Institute’s Board of Directors in 2012. DMI advocates for and connects design management globally, in business, research and academia. She is the holder of 2 patents, and has received numerous leadership and civic awards. She is a sought-after presenter and keynote speaker at conferences worldwide including the Destination Design Management Conference, the International Conference of Usability Professionals Association, the Society of Women Engineers, and the Distinguished Visitor Speaker Series at the University of Michigan. She has also served as a Juror for the Business Week/IDSA IDEA Awards – the Top International Design Awards. She has been featured in PBS documentaries on Leadership, Industrial Design and Diversity.
Kathryn Rieger
Senior Director, Human Factors and User Research at Intuitive Surgical
Kathryn Rieger is Senior Director of Human Factors and User Research at Intuitive where she leads global usability strategy and operations. Her team works within the product development organization to help develop highly effective surgical robotic systems, instruments, accessories, services, and software that improve clinical outcomes for patients. She represents Intuitive on several standards committees and acts as a liaison to domestic and international regulatory agencies.
Kathryn has worked in product design and development for over twenty years spanning the medical, automotive, military, and consumer industries. She founded an independent consulting firm, Cognitive Design, and has held multiple leadership roles in user experience research, design, management, and strategy for large scale manufacturers, small dynamic startups, and consulting firms, including Johnson & Johnson, Tandem Diabetes Care, St. Jude Medical, Dynamic Research, and Arthur D. Little. She is also an Adjunct Professor at Drexel University, teaching Human Factors, Cognitive Engineering, and User-Centered Design.
Kathryn has a Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the University of Southern California, an MS in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University, and a BS in Human Factors Engineering from Tufts University.
Akilah Hugine-Elmore
UX Research Director
Christy Harper
Managing Partner, End to End User Research
Co-Manager, UX/HF Leaders Forum
Christy is the co-owner of the consulting group End to End User Research, which provides Human Factors research services, facility rentals and participant recruiting. Christy began her HF career at Compaq/HP where she moved from individual practitioner to Master Technologist and manager, leading a group of researchers in the product design group. Christy’s research has led to product innovations, and she has contributed to three patents. She received her M.A. in Psychology from the University of Houston-Clear Lake, where she served as Chairperson of the Advisory board for the Human Factors Psychology Program. In 2016, Christy was honored to be awarded UHCL Distinguished Alumni.
Professionally, Christy is an avid supporter of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, (HFES) where she serves(d) as Executive at Large, Local Chapter Committee Chairperson, Regional Meeting Co-Chair, UX Mini Organizer, HFES Women Chairperson and Meetings Committee Member. She is the recipient
Rocio Werner
VP / Manager of Research at US Bank
Rocio is the VP / Manager of Research for the Business Banking segment at U.S. Bank. The team she leads is responsible for the customer experience insights, driving strategic decisions on multimillion dollar investments in product and segment strategy, impacting implementations of products and services for businesses.
Prior to U.S. Bank, Rocio has over two decades engaging multidisciplinary teams, creating impact together through research. Rocio was previously a UX Generalist, researching and designing in agency, startup, small business, and finance environments. Her research career began as an ethnographer in academic and nonprofit sectors, studying work hazards of immigrant Latinx farmworkers and laborers. Her Human-Centered research career started in a neuroscience fish lab, realizing that she found people more interesting. With her M.S. in Public Health and an MBA, she merged the world of business with applied research.
Besides research, Rocio also enjoys skating, running, traveling, and a good cup of chai.
Charu Ahuja
Director of Consumer Experience and Usability Research at Consumer Reports
As Director of Consumer Experience and Usability Research at CR, Charu Ahuja leads a team of consumer experience researchers and human factors experts. She focuses on informing CRs product evaluations and ratings with research that investigates what consumers need and their usability challenges due to poorly designed interfaces and complex interactions.
Charu has worked as a usability researcher and user experience (UX) professional for more than 20 years. Prior to that, she worked as a web and multimedia developer in Singapore and Australia. She brings a wealth of experience across a wide array of industries ranging from higher education, financial, tech retail to philanthropic organizations.
Charu holds a Bachelors in Multimedia, Masters in Science in Information Architecture and Masters of Technology in Industrial Arts.
Laura Vennie
Director of Usability & Experience Design Team at Newell Brands
Laura Vennie is the Director of the Usability & Experience Design team for Newell Brands. Her team is responsible for providing Human Factors, Ergonomics, Interaction Design and Craftsmanship support across Newell Brands.
Laura has a rich background in Usability and User Experience Design working effectively across complex organizations and working closely with interdisciplinary teams in the areas of Marketing, Engineering and Industrial Design on a global basis. She has worked on both physical and virtual products in addition to in-store experiences to provide improved ergonomics, usability and overall user experience to consumers. Prior to Newell Brands, Laura’s work history includes working at Masco where she was the Director of Human Sciences and Whirlpool Corporation where she was Lead Usability Specialist for the Fabric Care business.
Laura has an undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences from Michigan Tech and a Master’s Degree in Multidisciplinary Engineering with a focus on Human Factors Engineering from Purdue University.
Adam Enfield
Director of User Experience at Cerence, Inc.
Adam Emfield is the director of user experience at Nuance Automotive. He leads the Design & Research, Innovation, and In-Vehicle Experience (DRIVE) Lab, and is responsible for user experience (UX) design, UX research, and usability for Nuance’s Automotive division. He manages a cross-functional team that develops new ideas for in-vehicle experiences, and validates existing concepts on topics that range from looking at the problems users encounter today to predicting what changes will be necessary for the vehicles of the future.
Before working at Nuance, he studied Human Factors at both George Mason University and the University of Central Florida, and previously studied psychology and computer science at Idaho State University.
Les Meyer
Sr, Director, Design Research & Strategy at Northwestern Mutual
Les Meyer has been in the user experience field for over 22 years, focusing primarily on building and maturing research capabilities in the insurance and financial services sector. He joined Northwestern Mutual in 2018 where he has provided leadership for several Design teams, and currently serves as Sr. Director of UX Research and Design Strategy. His teams are responsible for providing user insights to guide decision-making throughout the product development lifecycle, helping leaders imagine and visualize long term experience vision, and serving as a bridge between design vision and near-term executional opportunities.
Prior to joining Northwestern Mutual, Les spent 18 years at State Farm Insurance leading UX and other research functions. He holds a PhD in Human Factors Psychology from Texas Tech University and the Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter designation. He has published several scholarly articles in leading psychological journals and was awarded patents for his work in customer experience measurement.
Sang Mark Chung
Associate Director of IxD at BISSELL Homecare, Inc
Sang Mark Chung has collaborated with many cross-functional teams in both the industrial design and interaction design fields since 2001. He started off his career as an industrial designer at Creative Labs in Singapore, designing audio-centric consumer electronics such as portable MP3 players, hi-fi speakers, and webcams. Later he was given the opportunity to do Human Machine Interaction (HMI) at a design studio at Johnson Controls, helping to design cohesive and human-centered infotainment system solutions for automotive interiors. He worked with physical button interactions in conjunction with digital UI eco-systems. Sang Mark and his colleagues collaborated with both Ford and GM to launch the companies’ first modernized digital clusters and center-stack infotainment systems to the market. Since then his work has been focused on the overall interaction design practices including UX, UI, and Visual Design in transportation and consumer electronic fields.
He currently holds the position of Associate Director at BISSELL for interaction design (IxD) within the Consumer Design Department. His team regularly collaborates with cross-functional teams in order to define the overall UX and UI directions of air-care devices, connected app experiences, floor care devices, and robotics.
Sang Mark obtained an Industrial Design degree from OCAD University in Toronto, Canada and a Master’s Degree in Interaction Design from Umeå University, Umeå Institute of Design, in Sweden.
Angela Muriset
Director of Human Factors at AbbVie (North Chicago, IL
Angela is the Director of the Human Factors Center of Excellence, part of the Device & Combination Product Development organization at AbbVie. Her team is responsible for defining and executing human factors strategy across AbbVie’s entire portfolio, which includes combination products and devices in immunology, neuroscience, oncology, eyecare, and aesthetics areas. As a Center of Excellence, Angela’s team supports products within both R&D and Operations, at any point within the product lifecycle, and includes specialized practices of user research, to define user needs, and methods excellence, to answer user experience questions that are broader than usability.
Prior to joining AbbVie in 2022, Angela led the Evanston, IL office of Design Science Group, a consulting firm that specializes in optimizing the usability of medical products. Prior to Design Science, Angela worked for over a decade in medical device and combination product development at Baxter, Baxalta and Shire (now Takeda).
She holds a BS in Psychology and an MS in Human Factors from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Stan Caplan
President, Usability Associates, LLC; Co-founder and Manager, UA Consortium
Stan has an extensive background in various aspects of Human Factors Engineering. In addition to several years in workplace ergonomics, he spent over 20 years performing and directing product design activities for Eastman Kodak Company. That experience encompassed hardware and software usability design of consumer, commercial, and medical products and systems throughout the entire development process from concept ideation to product launch. Special multi-year assignments included Human Engineering Team Leader on the winning bid for developing the IRS Document Processing System and Human Factors Lead for creating innovative new products in support of Kodak’s System Concept Center. For many years, Stan headed the Human Factors Department in Kodak’s Design Resource Center. In that capacity he managed a group of 10 Human Factors specialists and coordinated their activities with the Industrial Design, Graphic Design, and Packaging Engineering Departments in the Center. He also took responsibility for administration of the Center’s research program for those four departments. Stan has four patents related to his Kodak work.
After leaving Kodak in 1998, Stan continued his passion for product design by forming Usability Associates, a consulting practice supporting Human Factors needs of medium and large size companies. Design projects have been varied and include user interface specification writing, heuristic evaluations, usability testing, unique user experience visualizations and usage surveys. Usability Associates has also performed non-design services for clients such as organizational benchmarking, recruiting Human Factors professionals, and recruiting external usability testing participants.
Stan is a Board-certified Human Factors Professional. He has authored numerous publications on applications of Human Factors in product design, focus group methodology, and organizational analysis and has conducted professional workshops in North America and Europe. Stan is a Fellow of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES), has been an officer of the local chapter, and is currently on the executive council of its Product Design Technical Group. He initiated that group’s annual User-Centered Product Design Award that has recognized products developed with exceptional application of user centered principles and methods. In addition, Stan is a past president of the Western New York Chapter of the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA). He has taught Human Factors at a local college and has worked with legal firms as an expert witness.
Stan holds a Bachelors and Masters degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Michigan. He has also done extensive PhD coursework in Experimental Psychology, Statistics, and Organization Theory at the University of California, Berkeley.
Scott Schoeling
Associate Director at Federal Reserve Supply
Scott Schoeling is a longtime leader in human‑centered design and technology experience strategy, with more than 20 years advancing UX, research, and customer experience practices across major financial and enterprise organizations. He currently leads the Federal Reserve System National IT – UX team, where he directs cross‑disciplinary work that strengthens digital workplace experiences and ensures solutions are informed by end-user needs. Scott also oversees the System’s Accessibility and Voice of the Customer efforts, championing inclusive, user‑driven approaches across large‑scale programs.
Throughout his career, Scott has built and led high‑performing teams, guided enterprise‑wide UX transformations, and shaped design and research capabilities at organizations including SunTrust (now Truist) and State Farm. His leadership is grounded in human factors, behavioral science, and a commitment to practical, collaborative problem‑solving that moves organizations toward more thoughtful, effective, and people‑centered outcomes.
Laura Guenther
Associate Director, User Research & Insights, Shure, Inc.