Kayla Farrell

“I’ve been so lucky to work with Kayla in her capacities both as a highly skilled researcher and as a steady, purposeful people manager and mentor. In her years at Indeed, she (1) built an incredibly popular and valuable Rapid Research program that enabled folks with little research experience to learn the craft; enabled more senior researchers to focus on more strategic questions; and enabled the research practice at Indeed to scale; (2) managed a team of researchers who worked in a very ambiguous, non-product space and empowered them to grow their careers and competencies within this space; (3) co-led a formal mentorship program that paired researchers who could learn from each other; and (4) began investigating product spaces ripe for AI integration. Kayla’s methodical yet flexible approach to research and management make her an asset to any team and just a great person to work with and learn from.”

“It may sound like hyperbole, but it's not a stretch to say that Kayla is a stunningly good researcher, colleague, and leader of researchers. I have worked closely with Kayla during her entire time at Indeed, and have had the pleasure of being her direct manager during some of that time. Kayla was always the one on the team who was given the hard, ambiguous problems to solve. She has a knack for breaking things down, mapping out a solution, implementing a plan, and documenting everything to make it easy for everyone to understand. Kayla was instrumental in democratizing the practice of usability by training and providing templates and feedback sessions for UX designers who were interested in running their own qualitative research. She pivoted that program into creating a "rapid research" team: a squad of trained and motivated contract researchers that accelerated the overall time-to-feedback for our division. She then turned her attention to managing full time employees in several different teams, again with the attention to detail and knack for setting up practices and programs to make researchers' lives easier and more efficient. Finally, Kayla was the no-brainer choice for tackling Indeed's big bets in GenAI experiences. She not only had the ability to understand novel technology and the implication for the practice of UX research, but also she had no problem working in a high-visibility and important space for the company. I whole-heartedly endorse Kayla for a role at any company who values a seasoned and experienced researcher who can tackle any problem.”