Scaling democratized research: A live chat with Research Ops leaders from Elsevier & SmartBear

How do you open up research without losing control? These three ReOps pros figured it out.

At Gather & Growth 2025 in New York City, Research Ops leaders Lauren Galanter (Elsevier), Deeptha Subramanian (SmartBear), and Crystal Kubitsky (Rally) shared the systems, processes, and lessons they've learned from scaling democratized research safely. This is the honest conversation about what it takes to trust more people with more access.

Key takeaways:

How to build research access without sacrificing governance or quality
Training non-researchers to work within guardrails that actually protect participants
Lessons from building democratization programs at companies with very different needs
How to know when your democratization program is working — and when it isn't
And more!

A grounded, real-world look at democratization done right. Watch now!

How do you open up research without losing control? These three ReOps pros figured it out.

Key takeaways:

Speakers

Recent Events

Steve Portigal on what makes a research practice mature

Scott Garrison on AI's impact on the future of Research

Scaling democratized research: A live chat with Research Ops leaders from Elsevier & SmartBear

Roy Opata Olende on UXR's strategic home base — positioning for maximum impact

Pedro Vargas on making research count – metrics that matter

Ops at scale: Lessons from Google

Olga Ziegelman on Quiet Leadership and Growing Into UX Leadership

Nikki Anderson's expert tips on securing stakeholder buy-in for your UX Research

Nicolas Lee on early insights as a new ReOps leader

Myths & hot takes: AI in Research – Researchers from Clay, Thumbtack, & Webflow bust the biggest myths about AI

James Villacci on how to make research (and your research team) indispensable at your company

Lawton Pybus on how UXR teams hire today

Kate Towsey on Research That Scales

Kate Moran on training researchers & non-researchers alike

Judd Antin on future-proofing your research practice

Jared Forney on how governance fuels enablement, adoption, & impact

Janelle Ward on the unexpected challenges of solopreneurship

Janelle Estes on shaping the next generation of UX Researchers

Jake Burghardt on getting more value from research you’ve already done

Inside the ReOps Maturity Matrix

Building Research Ops from the Ground Up

How UserTesting built a scalable customer panel with Rally

How to build and launch a UXR chatbot with Maria from Checkr

Fatimah Richmond on building strategic support for research intelligence

Building Research Ops with Airbnb's OG Ops Team

Empowering product decisions safely: A live conversation with Research leaders from Ramp, Block, & Thumbtack

Christopher Nash on the do's and don'ts of democratization

Casey Gollan on building systems for scaling research and product impact

Carl Pearson on minimum viable rigor in research

Live NYC Panel: Building high-impact research practices with leaders from HelloFresh, Duolingo, & Webflow

Brad Orego on elevating the role of Research

Andy Warr on guaranteeing research impact

Amber Asaro on how to build a reliable research operation in the age of AI cheating

Prama Ayalasomayajula on how Research scales in growth teams

Megan Scheminske on the pros and cons of continuous discovery

Julian Della Mattia on how to build ReOps on any team

Ari Zelmanow on how researchers can lead in an era of AI & automation

Gong’s Akshay Verma on scaling a Research team of 1

Mithila Fox on building the Research function at Stack Overflow

Xplor's Lindsay Boylan on building a user-focused research practice

Kaela Tuttle-Royer on ReOps lessons from Dropbox, Spotify, and Airtable

11-25 AMA WBR: 10 Lessons No One Tells You UX Leadership with Olga Ziegelman

Join the future of Research Operations. Your peers are already here.