With total of 13 years at Bryn Mawr, Amanda Rosenberg ’06 says she’s grateful for the classmates and teachers she grew up with at the school. After graduation, she received an A.B. in Urban Studies from Brown University and an M.B.A and dual Master’s in Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, where she focused on research and innovation. She received national design and innovation awards for her student work. Today, Rosenberg lives in San Francisco and is a Senior UX and Design Researcher at Fitbit. She is also an ordained minister, and was recently asked by classmate Nina Sheth ‘06, and her then fiancé to officiate their wedding.
I went to college unsure what I wanted to do,  and came out still uncertain and more curious. I was most interested in community development, and after college, I test drove different lives and learned what motivated me and what didn’t fit with me. First, I was a studio assistant in an urban design firm, next a consultant for a network of community health workers in rural East Africa, and then a consultant for a developer with land in Panama (and I actually lived in the rainforests of Panama for the better part of 3 months—oh, the stories!)
I still hadn’t found a fit, so I started talking to people who were ten plus years into their careers. Through informational interviews with whomever would talk with me, I realized that I wanted to dig in more on the ways that organizations can learn from people to inform what value they create. At first, I didn’t know what that meant, but I eventually learned it was about design research and strategy. I applied to graduate programs, was accepted, and was on my way to a new world. Since graduate school, I’ve been a Mayoral Tech Fellow in Chicago, a strategy and design consultant, and now I work at Fitbit.

Fitbit is at an interesting intersection of Internet of things, behavior change, and health. In my role, I work to answer both the ‘why’ and ‘how’ to make new offerings. It’s a young and quickly evolving field that draws from social sciences to inform product strategy and development. I work to advocate for what’s valuable, inclusive, enjoyable to use, and easy to understand. I answer questions that give us more confidence before we put something new out in the world and help to address why something may not be received the way we hoped for. I work on cross-disciplinary teams with product managers, designers, data scientists, project managers, and marketers to identify questions I can help answer by hearing from people outside our company’s walls.
Together we plan out the questions we have, who we want to learn from, and how we’re going to approach doing research. Then I’ll field the research and do the analysis to provide takeaways. Most typically, I’ll field research as surveys, in-home interviews, diary studies with users over time, looking at usage data, and interviews in our research lab to get feedback on prototypes we’re exploring. There are a lot of options for how to learn, so a fun part of my job is deciphering what method of research best fits the research objectives and constraints.
One example of some of my research is a project I did based on in-home interviews with people managing chronic conditions to understand their experience. They showed us what they had in their fridges, garages, medicine cabinets and how they use them, and their bright spots and challenges. This has informed how we bring together current Fitbit products and explore early detection (such as for Afib.) Another example is the sleep study, where we examined a way to quantify sleep quality. We started with an idea for an algorithm and are currently testing with 10,000 Fitbit users. From the research I’ve done, we’ve changed what data we will be showing to Fitbit users, layout and words used to explain complex concepts, in addition to making future plans to add some more engaging features.
 
Banner: Rosenberg and her mom in Half Moon Bay, CA
Second Image: Rosenberg at Graduation with Lorraine DeGraffenreidt '06
Third Image: Rosenberg and Field Hockey team celebrating winning the championship against Garrison Forest her senior year
Bottom: Rosenberg poses on Haloween at Bryn Mawr
I think Bryn Mawr gave me a running start to having a clear voice no matter the context
I feel fortunate to work with smart and driven people, which is my favorite part of the job. They push me to do better and inspire me. It’s imperative for me to communicate with co-workers across various functions. It takes different approaches to effectively communicate with people who fundamentally think differently than I do. I really thank Bryn Mawr for helping me develop communication skills and making me feel comfortable in my voice. It’ll always be a work-in-progress for me, but I think Bryn Mawr gave me a running start to having a clear voice no matter the context.
The phrase “considered and consequential life” always flutters in my mind when I’m thinking about making a change. These words have been my anchor when I question whether or not I want to take a job opportunity. This Mawrtian phrase has me run through questions of whether the mission of a company aligns with what I value and if it’s making impact that I would be proud of in years to come.
One of my favorite Bryn Mawr memories exemplifies how creative the teachers are. In French class in elementary school, we were learning travel vocabulary, so our teachers set up the room as if we were on a flight. We came with our homemade passports in French and went through the process of boarding, take-off, etc. When I’ve traveled to France in recent years, I’m delightfully surprised by my retention of the vocabulary. Today as a design researcher, I still remember and love the way my teachers engaged me, so I try to get outside of doing presentation decks and pay it forward with immersive, engaging research share outs!

At Bryn Mawr, I was often focused on memorizing the answer to questions that I anticipated on tests. This was ‘smart’ to me, but I wish I had been more concerned with posing effective questions. Answers come from the questions we ask, and I’ve learned the power of framing the investigation. For girls at BMS, I’d say know why a question is important before you care about the answer.

My other piece of advice to current students is to start getting to know the diversity in the Baltimore area that’s outside the school campus and your inherited social network. Do informational interviews with people who do interesting things and end each conversation with, “Is there anyone you think would be good for me to chat with?” You may be surprised where that leads you.
 
Located in Baltimore, Maryland, The Bryn Mawr School is a private all-girls pre-kindergarten, elementary, middle and high school with a coed preschool for ages 2 months through 5 years. Bryn Mawr provides students with exceptional educational opportunities on a beautiful 26-acre campus within the city limits. Inquisitive girls, excellent teaching, strong student-teacher relationships and a clear mission sustain our vibrant school community where girls always come first.