From studying how people learn to building products people stick with
I’ve always been fascinated by how people learn, what motivates them to keep going, and how repeated experiences eventually become second nature.
I started my career as a cognitive scientist studying how people acquire complex skills. I earned my Ph.D. in Linguistics and Cognitive Science at UC San Diego, followed by research positions at the University of Rochester and Northwestern University. My research focused on how people learn from experience: how we pick up patterns, build new knowledge, and get better at things with practice.
In 2015, I joined Duolingo as its first learning scientist. It gave me the opportunity to take questions I had been studying in the lab and explore them at a completely different scale. How do you translate what we know about human behavior into a product people actually want to use? How do you make something challenging feel fun? And how do you motivate millions of people to come back day after day and make progress toward a long-term goal?
Over time, my role expanded from research and learning design to shaping the broader product experience. Today, as VP of Learning Experience at Duolingo, I lead teams that combine behavioral science, research, product thinking, and deep subject-matter expertise to make Duolingo both effective and engaging. What interests me most is that intersection of human behavior and product design: understanding what people are trying to accomplish, what gets in their way, and what keeps them motivated; and turning those insights into experiences that feel simple, intuitive, and rewarding to use.
Academic Background Ph.D., Linguistics & Cognitive Science University of California, San Diego Postdoctoral Researcher, Brain & Cognitive Sciences University of Rochester Research Associate & Lecturer Northwestern University