Gregory Bender

About Gregory Bender

4.7M in pipeline growth. 500K+ hours saved. research participants scaled.Those aren’t aspirations, they\'re actual results from my design leadership that drives business transformation.I’m Gregory Bender — a UX research and design leader, expert individual contributor, and \"People Champion.\" I build design ecosystems that scale across products, platforms, and people. Most recently at IBM, I managed teams and led digital transformations spanning AI, service design, sales, customer relationship management, and global support systems.Here’s what that impact looked like:→ Led platform shifts impacting 280K users — with empathy at every step→ Quote creation: 50% faster→ Employee NPS: negative 48 → positive 21.1→ Created frameworks that aligned 7+ executives across 60+ projectsWhether I’m aligning seven business units or modernizing a 280K-user platform, I bring systems thinking, stakeholder clarity, and cross-functional execution to every initiative. I have won multiple “The Year’s Ten Best Web Support Sites”, grew a research community from hundreds to thousands, and developed culture-first teams that achieved zero attrition during the “great resignation”.I’m looking to bring this operational maturity, product instinct, and expert technical individual contribution to an organization that needs real results in UX research, strategy, design, and product/platform transformation.Let’s solve meaningful problems at scale.Core Skills: UX Strategy, Design Research, Human-Centered Design, Service Design, Usability Testing, Journey Mapping, Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Accessibility, Design Systems, Card Sorting, Competitive Analysis, Data Analysis and Statistics, Focus Groups, Heuristic Evaluation, Information Design, Journey Mapping, Personas, Prototyping, Requirements Gathering, Task Analysis, UI Design, WireframesLeadership & Strategic Alignment: Stakeholder Alignment, Cross-Functional Collaboration, Design Leadership, Executive Communication, Outcomes Focused Culture, Organizational Transformation, Scalable Research Programs, Mentorship & Coaching, Product Strategy, Business Impact Design, Global Asynchronous Team ManagementTools & Technologies: AI Solutions, Design Thinking, Agile and Scrum, Figma, Salesforce, Qualtrics, Medallia, Mural, Trello, Jira, Alchemer, Sketch, HTML/CSS, JavaScript, Visual Studio Code, PhotoshopRoles & Titles: UX Director, Head of UX Research, Staff UX Researcher, Senior Design Manager, Product Designer, Service Design Lead, Design Program Manager, UX Researcher, Enterprise UX Strategist

Experience

1. Senior Research and Design Manager, Individual Contributor, CIO Business Process Transformation

   IBM

   Dec 2023 — Present

Education

• Wichita State University

  Ph.D.

• Wichita State University

  B.A.

• Idaho State University

  M.S.