Organizations I've worked with
Mixed Methods Research & Strategy
I help organizations understand the people they're trying to reach, and figure out what to do with that. Qualitative and mixed methods researcher available for full-time and contract engagements.
Organizations I've worked with
Selected Work
01
Fontanini Advisory Services
Qualitative research informing the structure and strategy for an AI literacy course designed to help organizations adopt AI with more intention and less anxiety. Surfaced the mental models, readiness signals, and stumbling blocks that shaped both curriculum design and participant experience.
02
AssuranceAmerica
In-depth research into how nonstandard insurance customers make coverage decisions, including the emotional logic, trust signals, and friction points that define the category for this audience.
03
Remitly
A sustained mixed methods engagement spanning product usability, global marketing strategy, and UX research with immigrant communities who send money across borders to support their families. The work required holding both the intimacy of individual financial decisions and the complexity of global product scale at the same time.
04
Illumina
Research with DNA lab scientists, cancer surgeons, and genomics decision-makers to translate deep technical expertise into strategic positioning and commercial intelligence. Also designed and deployed national surveys with the nurse practitioner association to understand willingness to recommend NIPT, followed by qualitative in-depth interviews to understand the clinical reasoning and hesitations behind the numbers.
05
Point Forward
Ethnographic, in-person contextual inquiry across automotive consumer behavior and Kaiser Permanente member experience, bringing qualitative depth to organizations trying to understand how people actually live with the products and systems they use.
06
The General Insurance
Research underpinning a major consumer insurance rebrand, from perception audits to positioning validation. Connected brand architecture decisions back to the people actually buying the product.
Building Research from Scratch
Doing the research is one thing. Building the conditions inside an organization so that research actually happens, gets used, and outlasts your tenure — that's a different skill set. I've done both.
Illumina
Partnered with product managers to conduct research alongside them, then trained them to do it themselves. Built capacity for both qualitative and quantitative methods inside teams that had little prior research infrastructure, so that insight-gathering became part of how they worked, not something they outsourced.
The General Insurance
Created a company-wide Research Champions group to build internal understanding of and enthusiasm for research practice. Connected the program directly to the brand refresh, so that employees across the organization understood the research behind the strategic decisions and could speak to it credibly.
Remitly
Trained product managers, business managers, product marketers, and UX designers on how to run their own research from scratch. Focused on 0-to-1 initiatives and intentional handoffs, so teams could launch new efforts without waiting on a dedicated research function to do it for them.
About
Savannah Young Research & Consulting LLC
Savannah, Georgia
I'm a principal researcher with 12 years of experience across consulting and in-house environments. My orientation is qualitative-first, which means I come at problems through the lens of human experience, then use quantitative data to validate, scale, or complicate what I'm hearing. Contextual inquiry is foundational to how I work: the whole person in their environment matters, and I design my research to reflect that.
I've worked across industries that don't have much in common except for the fact that they all involve people making decisions that are harder than they look: healthcare, fintech, insurance, automotive, genomics, and AI. In every context, my job is the same. Figure out what's actually going on, and help organizations do something useful with it.
I work independently under Savannah Young Research & Consulting LLC and am open to both full-time and contract engagements where the work is complex and the questions are worth asking.
Contact
I'm open to full-time and contract research engagements where the work is complex and the stakes are real. If that sounds like yours, please do reach out.
What I take on