Alumni
sydney
Before joining the research team at Facebook, I studied cognitive neuroscience and the different ways that people make decisions. I started my time in RAP on the Search team, and moved to the Protect and Care (PAC) team soon afterward. On PAC, I worked primarily on understanding harassment and building prevention tools, as well as supporting people going through other difficult experiences on Facebook.
Much of this work included analyzing characteristics and circumstances of harassment in different online spaces including Messenger, Facebook, and social virtual reality. Based on this research, we built and launched a major feature on Facebook and Messenger that gave people more support and agency over their lives online. After leaving PAC I joined the Events team, where I currently work on understanding and facilitating ways for people to connect and reminisce around offline experiences.
lauren
I graduated from the University of Michigan with a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA). I worked at YouTube for close to 4 years as a Strategist on a team called Audience Development helping creators grow their channels. After my time at YouTube, I landed a short term contract gig as a Research Assistant at Facebook on the Internet.org team before starting the Rotational Research Program.
During the Program, I spent time with the Media team, the News Feed team and the Protect and Care (PAC) team. Each experience not only helped me hone my research skills, but also helped me decipher what kind of research really made me tick so I could make a more informed decision about which team to join after the program ended. Now, I'm on the Search team focused exclusively on internationalization and growth.
demetric
Before joining Facebook, I was in the non-profit world working with marginalized youth. While in the Program, I worked with the Events team, the Location and Entities team, and the Ads team. On the Ads team, I explored the trust people have with Facebook as well as with advertisers on Facebook, focusing on what happens when trust is broken.
To help my team build empathy for advertisers in Asia, I led an international research trip to Thailand, Hong Kong, and China. Based on findings from that trip, my team designed and built new tools to help improve expectations and communication between businesses and people who use Facebook. After graduating from the program, I joined the News Feed research team where I now focus on helping people express themselves in their feed.
Jennifer
Prior to joining the Research Associate Program, I was a Product Specialist at Facebook for 2 years where I worked on synthesizing user feedback channels (like bug reports) for the Profile and Friending teams. During my time as a Product Specialist, I worked closely with UX Research, which informed my decision to apply to RAP. When I entered RAP, I started with the News Feed Ads team, focusing how consumers understand and interact with New Feed ad and story formats on Facebook.
During my time there, I held qualitative interviews and ran follow up surveys to gain a rich understanding of how people interact with different design elements on News Feed. My work caught the attention of other teams, and I was even invited to present my work to the broader News Feed team to inform their recent update of News Feed’s design. Since completing the program, I moved onto the Groups team, where I now focus on understanding the needs of Group Admins, the community leaders who organize and manage groups.
emily
Before Facebook I studied the psychological effects of income inequality. In my first rotation at Facebook I worked on the Interfaces team where I studied data sensitivity in emerging markets, and how to improve our design interface guidelines. From there I moved to the Local business org where I researched how small businesses use our lightweight ads interfaces to expand their reach.
I’ve supported many different products across the Pages team, including the Jobs product where I had the opportunity of working on a “zero to one” product by helping the team understand both who was using the product on both the hiring business and job seeker sides, and how we could better meet those needs. I enjoy the challenge of working as a researcher in a two-sided marketplace, and have recently had the privilege of supporting a fantastic group of designers to complete a two-week long design sprint that will shape much of our product thinking going forward. I am currently working on improving business Pages by advocating for changes based on consumers’ expectations and needs.