Frank Romagosa

PhD-trained anthropologist and Lead UX Researcher with 20+ years owning the full research lifecycle across a deliberately broad range of industries — financial services & fintech, enterprise technology & software, pharmaceutical & digital health/pharma tech, consumer health & wellbeing, and insurtech. Proven track record building research practices from the ground up, mentoring and scaling teams, and architecting persona, JTBD, and experience-strategy frameworks tailored to each client's specific challenge — a throughline running from early agency work with Citibank and Pfizer through Workday, Viteos, Gazprombank, and JPMorgan Chase. Skilled at applying AI-assisted tools throughout the research lifecycle and translating complex, often highly regulated, systems into experiences people can trust and use.

Independent Strategic Advisor & UX Research Consultant - Self-Employed - Remote / New Orleans, LA

(2023-01)

Lead independent research engagements across consumer health/wellbeing, enterprise operations, and behavioral health — owning study design, moderation, synthesis, and executive delivery as sole researcher on each engagement.

• Google/Fitbit (Consumer Health & Wellbeing, 2023): Directed behavioral research on mobile app engagement for a wearable health platform; applied segmentation to distinguish high-intent from passive users, shaping product prioritization.
• Aligned Modern Health (Health & Wellbeing, 2025): Led discovery research and co-creation workshops grounded in JTBD frameworks; synthesized findings into a decision-ready roadmap for clinical and product leadership.
• British Petroleum (Enterprise Technology, 2023): Conducted generative ethnographic research mapping complex legacy workflows across global operations; co-facilitated a 4-day cross-functional service design sprint.

Career Break / Dedicated Family Caregiving - Self-Employed - New Orleans, LA

(2024-01 - 2025-05)

Took a professional sabbatical to provide full-time, dedicated care for an elderly family member.

Senior Research Leader / Strategist - CloudSort Corporation - Remote

(2022-06 - 2022-09)

Built a UX research practice from scratch as the sole researcher for an enterprise logistics technology company — defining methodology templates, intake frameworks, evaluation standards, and a knowledge repository.

• Conducted usability and workflow research on enterprise logistics interfaces, translating frontline operator behavior directly into product requirements.

VP, Lead UX Researcher — Payments - JPMorgan Chase & Co. - New York, NY

(2021-05 - 2022-05)

Owned end-to-end strategic experience research for global institutional digital payment ecosystems (Financial Services), translating compliance and fraud-prevention mandates into human-centered frameworks adopted at the enterprise level.

• Built the service blueprint used as the single source of truth for global payment journeys, aligning Engineering, Data Science, and Business Leadership behind a $100M+ investment roadmap.
• Served as primary voice of the customer in executive and C-suite conversations; mentored junior researchers and defined team standards for research quality and impact measurement.

Senior UX Researcher — Digital Transformation - Wells Fargo - Remote

(2020-07 - 2021-04)

Directed mixed-methods research (Financial Services / Mortgage) — moderated IDIs, journey mapping, VoC analysis — to guide a legacy-to-cloud digital transformation of the enterprise mortgage business.

• Established scalable research processes, tools, and templates; built self-serve frameworks enabling design and product partners to run structured studies independently.

Senior Strategy & Insights Lead - HiRoad (BlueOwl / State Farm) - Remote

(2019-06 - 2020-06)

Planned and executed ethnographic fieldwork and behavioral segmentation (InsurTech) to understand consumer attitudes and friction points within a usage-based insurance platform.

• Partnered with Data Science to integrate telematics and behavioral economics into personalized audience profiling, directly informing mobile features that drove user retention.

Senior UX Researcher & Strategist - Workday - Pleasanton, CA

(2017-09 - 2019-01)

Led foundational mixed-methods research for domain-intensive enterprise financial and HR software (Enterprise Technology) serving power users across global markets.

• Architected a unified global persona system synthesizing quantitative survey data, behavioral metrics, and qualitative field insights; mentored junior researchers and set cross-team documentation standards.

Strategic Research & Insights Consultant - Freelance - Remote

(2014-04 - 2017-08)

• Otsuka / Abilify MyCite (Pharma & Digital Health): Managed sensitive mixed-methods user research for the world's first FDA-approved digital therapeutic, validating behavioral loop mechanics and shaping UI design for patients and clinical providers.
• GSK Avodart (Pharma, Canada): Executed foundational qualitative insights guiding patient communication strategy within strict medical compliance parameters.
• BCG Digital Ventures / Gazprombank (Financial Services): Co-led multi-market ethnography across consumer segments to model behavioral profiles and build new retail banking experience strategy frameworks.
• Viteos (Enterprise Technology): Designed a 4-persona system and research toolkit for enterprise accounting technology; contributed to a 15% increase in stakeholder commitment to product investment.

Senior UX Strategist - Intel Corporation - Santa Clara, CA

(2013-04 - 2014-03)

Directed US and EU research (Enterprise Technology) for privacy, security, and password-less authentication software using Qualtrics for large-scale usage data; developed global usage models bridging hardware engineering capabilities with real-world human security behaviors.

Senior Design Researcher - Doblin (Monitor Group) - Chicago, IL

(2001-01 - 2002-12)

Directed multi-market field studies for Citibank's ThankYou Rewards ecosystem (Financial Services) and Pfizer Consumer Health (Pharma), architecting early persona and user-type frameworks to model systemic consumer logic — money always has a social life, and this was the origin of a career committed to humanizing complex systems through rigorous research.

Senior Researcher / Experience Modeler - E-Lab / Sapient - Chicago, IL

(1999-01 - 2001-12)

Pioneered ethnographic research and experience frameworks for Intel's Connected Products Division and iOptions (Consumer Technology), grounding early-stage digital and consumer-facing product interventions; foundational formation in the Chicago human-centered design milieu.

PhD - Anthropology - University of Chicago

MA - Anthropology - University of Chicago

BA - Cultural Anthropology - Princeton University