Our Team

MAC SMITH

10+ years of Corporate Leadership Experience: Held senior management positions at technology incubators and large corporations. Responsible for development of organizations, success of incubated businesses, and driving strategic initiatives for the C-Level suite of Fortune’s top 10 companies.
Experience coaching executives: Successfully coached multiple executives from technology companies ranging from Series A-D startups. Clients have shown measurable results in leadership development and performance enhancement.
 Talk topics have included innovation, new business development, and organizational development.

KEITH STEURY 

Keith brings over 20 years of UX research experience within large tech companies as well as through his leadership at a UX consultancy. His extensive background blending of qualitative and quantitative research methods, as well as his experience influencing executive leadership make him a versatile and insightful researcher dedicated to enhancing user experiences. 
Keith’s passion in leveraging multiple sources to drive actionable customer insights began when he helped pioneer the discipline of video game UX research through his work on Halo: Combat Evolved.  This work highlighted the value of merging traditional usability with quantitative, attitudinal data to create products that were both usable and enjoyable.  Keith’s approach extended his impact on the experience of billions of customers through his work on Google Search as well as Amazon Prime Video.  
Keith has an MS in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Washington. He is the co-author of 11 papers across both academic and applied settings.

RYAN BOLES

Ryan Boles is a human factors & ergonomics practitioner by training, and he’s a seasoned mixed methods UX research leader by practice.  He has led research efforts for Fortune 500 titans like Google, start-ups like RosieApp (acquired by Instacart), government entities like NASA, athletic entities like Nike, and foreign entities like Deutsche Telekom.
Ryan has used UX research by itself to achieve organizational goals; he also has experience integrating UX research with market research and data science. He’s used research for traditional purposes like informing product design or product strategy. He’s also used it for less traditional purposes like informing telecom regulatory policy.
Across 15+ years, Ryan has gained experience across all phases of the product development process. At places like X (Google’s semi-secret product incubator) he focused on the explorative front-end. At places like Nike he focused on the evaluative back-end.
Additionally, he’s led research efforts for both near-term purposes (on mature products like Google’s search engine - the most visited website in the world) as well as more far-term purposes (on experimental products like Project Wing’s drone-based delivery service).
He completed graduate studies at Cornell University, where he focused on human factors, ergonomics, HCI and InfoSci. He completed undergraduate studies at Stanford University & Morehouse College, where he focused on psychology, product design, mechanical engineering, and mathematics.