Rachel Goffin ’19 had a good excuse for not completing her problem set: she was working as a consultant for GoFundMe.
Goffin is a user experience researcher and the only Cornell member of the six-person founding team of Campus Insights, a tech consulting startup that Harvard Student Agencies recently acquired. The startup helps conduct user research and analysis for their clients’ apps and websites.
Goffin joined the team last November, and has since worked with clients including GoFundMe and Chegg.
“There was a crazy period where I had to do 16 interviews in one week for GoFundMe on top of my schoolwork; that’s the only time I’ve ever not gotten a problem set done,” Goffin said. “I would also be constantly on Skype calls. You get a lot of weird looks when you’re sitting on a Skype call in the middle of a library.”
She was inspired to go into UX research after attending a tech talk hosted by Google at Cornell.
“I realized that UX research was a perfect mix of my interests in psychology and technology since I’m an information science major,” Goffin said.
While she was looking for opportunities in the field, she got an email about Campus Insights from the Information Science Student Association listserv. As one of the founding members, Goffin had her “own role in defining the company.” She mainly worked with redefining content strategy and the user research process.
The acquisition marks an important step for Campus Insights, and Goffin will continue to help the startup with its transition in the near future.
“The acquisition is a really big deal for Campus Insights because it shows that this is something that is sustainable,” she said. “Now that it’s been acquired, I’m going to serve as more of an advisor, so whenever they need something, I’ll be able to help them with the project.”
As her role at Campus Insights shifts, Goffin is now working on user research with the Cornell Design and Tech Initiative, an engineering project team on campus. Additionally, she will be joining Hulu as a product management intern in the summer.
“The people who know me at Cornell know me more for what I post in the meme group,” Goffin told The Sun. “I think it’s kind of funny that I have all this other stuff going on and everyone is always like, ‘oh yeah, your memes!’”