“Ask questions others don’t.”

Hey, I’m Adam Valerio!

I’ve been a PhD trained researcher for 15+ years (eg, Lead UX Researcher, Senior UX Researcher). I’ve worked in healthcare, FinTech, PropTech, CharityTech, and higher education.

My philosophy as a UX researcher is to help my product team land safely when we try daring things. I collect and analyze data to identify the drop zone, provide us with a parachute, and steer us safely to the ground.

Adam Skydiving
I’m obsessed with chess. Let’s play!

I’ve never been afraid to ask the tough questions and help the team be methodical and user-centered in our approach. I’ve learned through experience that critiques should always include alternative paths forward or a “How might we…?” to help us ideate together.

My Story

I didn’t always work in UX research. I was a healthcare researcher for 3.5 years before entering a PhD program to become a professor.

As a professor, I conducted complex academic research and taught 2,200 university students over the course of a decade. I even taught a course on UX research for startups. There are many things I suck at, but teaching wasn’t one of them. My courses always had massive waitlists because I ran highly interactive student-centered courses that I tailored to the needs of my students. How did I know what they needed? I asked them! It’s my teaching experience, more than anything else, that has made me great at facilitating cross-functional teams, mentoring, and evangelizing research insights.

My academic research was primarily in the intersection of Buddhism and the psychological sciences, especially mindfulness studies. I’m most proud of my pioneering work in the field of bibliometrics, where I introduced a new quantitative method to the field of mindfulness research by applying statistical analysis to large bibliographic datasets to test several assumptions made by my fellow mindfulness researchers. This made me a sought after expert and research reviewer for academic journals. Please get them to stop emailing me!

Oh, and I moved to Tokyo for a while! Living in Japan and conducting interviews and long-term ethnographic fieldwork with Japanese psychotherapists and neuroscientists was an amazing experience that challenged my assumptions about which aspects of humans and societies are universal versus cultural constructs. 日本語でもいい！

I decided to leave academia for a new adventure: Lead UX Researcher at a startup. In nearly 3 years, I drove 20+ major product improvements by building a UX research program from scratch. I conducted hands-on research, set the company’s UX research strategy, and trained and mentored 8 team members. I wouldn’t be the leader I am today without this amazing adventure.

From there, I became a Senior UX Researcher at a mid-stage PropTech startup, serving as UX Research Lead for our Financial Tools team. In this position, I employed a great many methodologies and ultimately transformed the approach of 15+ designers and product managers by running a highly impactful 6-month Voice of the Customer program. Everyone at this 180-employee company knew me, largely due to my influential monthly Voice of the Customer newsletters, which garnered significant engagement (800+ views, 100+ comments), including from the CEO, who was a regular reader and encouraged all employees to read my newsletters.

Now, I’m on the lookout for my next opportunity.

I’m interested in any role where I can support a great mission, be part of an awesome team, and solve difficult problems.

Let’s connect! Feel free to reach out anytime through LinkedIn!