Vera Rhoads

Vera Rhoads brings strong expertise in cognitive behavioral research to enhance the user experience. She has been working on improving the usability and optimizing web solutions for large-scale Fortune 500 companies, international finance organizations and non-profits (Fannie Mae, AARP, IMF) for 20 years.

Her specialties include: User Research, full life cycle User Experience (UX), IBM Design Thinking, Customer Experience (CX), Content Strategy, Web Strategy and Operations, Social Media, Usability, Branding, Multi-lingual Globalization and Localization, Web Content Management and Search.

Vera is CUA and CXA certified, PMP, PMI-PBA, PMI-ACP, ITIL and SCRUM master certified and works on enhancing process methodologies into the web development lifecycle. She has won many significant design awards in her career, including Nielsen Norman Top 10 Intranets.

Vera also frequently presents at UX conferences and has been teaching UX at the University of Maryland, College Park Graduate School for 14 years. She teaches Users and User Context, UX Research Methods (User Journey Maps, Personas, Surveys, Card Sorting) and Advanced Usability.

Vera is a board member at Byte Back – a non-profit organization that improves economic opportunity for low-income residents by providing computer training.