I started my career as an attorney and worked as a public defender in Washington and Oregon for several years. After two big moves to two different states (California, then Colorado) and having a baby, I shifted gears and started working remotely on a small research team at SEIU 775 Benefits Group, which is a Seattle-based nonprofit devoted to improving the skills, health and stability of the caregiving workforce through innovation and high-quality benefits and programs. I started out as a project coordinator and over the last five years, our organization, the research department, and my role in it has expanded quite a bit.
Last year, we realized we decided to create a team devoted to research operations, so that our qualitative and quantitative research teams could focus less on the operational side of research and more on the design, implementation, and analysis. I became the Manager of Research Operations and have grown the team to three additional research ops specialists who support recruitment, logistics, operations, and process improvement so that we can produce more efficient and insightful research that help improve the lives of home care workers across Washington State. I have found that ResearchOps has actually been a natural extension of my prior legal career, as approaching problems like a puzzle to solve is the same method I used when dissecting cases and figuring out what strategies to employ as a public defender. That innate curiosity has served me well in ResearchOps.
