Summary
W Williams is a Senior User Experience Researcher and data-driven social/emotional behavior specialist with a PhD in Psychology from Stanford and over a decade of research experience applied to product teams. He has translated academic rigor into impact at scale—shaping growth and recommendation strategies at Instagram by surfacing novel personalization signals and redesigning new-user flows, and currently leads UX research at Vanguard’s in-house creative agency. His work blends surveys, experiments, computational modeling, and biometrics to connect emotion, attention, and behavior, producing peer-reviewed publications, industry white papers, and funded programs. Colleagues know him for rapidly synthesizing large bodies of evidence (50+ studies) into actionable priorities and for training teams to adopt advanced modeling and measurement approaches. Based in Philadelphia, he brings a rare mix of academic depth and product-focused pragmatism, with a track record of turning theory into measurable product outcomes.
8 years of coding experience
10 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science - BS, PSYCHOLOGY, Bachelor of Science - BS, PSYCHOLOGY at University of Wisconsin-Madison
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, PSYCHOLOGY, Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, PSYCHOLOGY at Stanford University