Shona Reed

Experience

As a leader, my guiding principal is service. Service to users, service to the research team I support, and service to the business through insights that drive measurable growth.

Organizations

Startups, Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, financial institutions, nonprofits, and cultural institutions

Education

Executive Education, LEAD Professional Certificate from Stanford University

Skills

Team Leadership, Mixed Methods Research, Product Strategy, AI-assisted workflows

EXPERIENCE

13yrs

Research and Design Director at UX is Ready

2013 - Present

A consultancy I co-founded at the intersection of customer insight and AI innovation. We partner with startups and scale-ups to achieve product market fit and sustained growth. Our AI-enhanced research process gives companies the customer insights they need at speed. Operating across English, Spanish and Italian-speaking markets.

7yrs

Senior Research Manager at Atlassian

2018 - 2025

I led global research teams across Atlassian's ecosystem, from flagship products like Confluence and Trello to Growth and Enterprise Platform transformation. We informed product strategy and business decisions in critical areas: cloud migration, enterprise readiness (trust, security, governance), enterprise customer definition, and knowledge management at scale.

2yrs

Senior User Experience Researcher at Autodesk

2016 - 2018

As an agile team member, I led mixed-method research for AutoCAD's first web-based platform, delivering key insights that drove product decisions and informed its integration into the AutoCAD product suite. I ran workshops with stakeholders to immerse them in the research findings, fostering team collaboration in visioning, problem-solving and idea generation.

1yr

Senior User Experience Researcher at UK Government

2015

As part of an agile team within the Ministry of Justice, I led end-to-end research for the Crown Court Defence Claims service, from initial concept through to live launch. This included ethnographic research conducted at legal offices and Crown Courts across the country, as well as defining performance metrics to support continuous service improvement.

5yrs

User Experience Lead at Snapfish

2008 - 2013

I led user experience for Snapfish's international e-commerce and photo tools platform, partnering with product, engineering, and design teams to establish research priorities and deliver insights at scale. Research findings informed redesigns of primary workflows, shaped new feature development, and defined an international expansion strategy that drove user adoption across key global markets.

1yr

User Experience Lead at Bank of America

2007 - 2008

User experience lead across several financial services initiatives, and partnered with market research to deliver three localized European websites. This work drew on the full UX process, spanning research, site architectures, process flows, wireframes, and template specifications.

✦ A detailed resume is available on request

SKILLS

Team Leadership
Team Management
Mixed Methods Research
Strategic Vision
AI-Assisted Workflows
Facilitation & Workshops
Experience Design Direction

EDUCATION

Executive Education, LEAD Professional Certificate

Stanford University

Master of Arts, Human-Computer Interaction

CADRE, San Jose State University

VOLUNTEERING

I believe in supporting the wider research community, serving as a long-standing board member at a local community college and regularly mentoring early-career researchers.

INTERESTS

Art lover. Live music devotee. Traveler. Aspiring fluent Spanish speaker. Creator. My art website, bigbananafeet.com is coming soon.

I develop high-performing research teams, design scaleable operations, and help organizations to make critical decisions with confidence.