Meena is a key Lecturer in the Bentley University Human Factors and Information Design (HFID) graduate program. Over her 20+year tenure, her capstone qualitative research course has guided now-leading practitioners to integrating meaningful and successful research practices. She openly shares her experience as a WOC as part of the curriculum, and focuses on structure and transparency inputs as part of successful qualitative research inclusion.
Meena is especially interest in diversifying the community of researchers. Being a lone POC and WOC for many years as a researcher, she mentors POC with a focus on African American and Indigenous youth to expose them to the career potential within user experience. Additionally, she believes that widening the voices that tell the story will bring more variety and interest to the products created for market.
Meena is co-founder of twig+fish research practice, a research and strategy practice based in Boston, MA, that espouses qualitative research practice, while maintaining a utopic work-life balance. Meena emphasizes the importance of the power and practice of qualitative research so it can be leveraged as a strategic tool. Her clients are numerous and worldwide and span a variety of verticals including financial, medical, robotics, education, product and consumables as well as services and space.
With 30+ years of experience, Meena has consulted to emphasize the strategic value and positioning of qualitative research in the design of product, space and service. Meena is fascinated by the complexity of human behavior, and applies a credible, structured and transparent approach to integrating human stories and anecdotes into mainstream processes. This ensures that research activities provide the best service to the organization, and that learning objectives are addressed to maximize potential.
She holds an M.S. in Information Resources Management from Syracuse University and a B.Com. in MIS from the University of Ottawa, Canada. Meena is always inspired in her work by her other passions, namely performing as a South-Indian Classical Violinist, pursuing culinary arts through a learn-to-cook
program, and learning about the varied career pursuits of her two children. She has conversational fluency in Tamil and has strong fluency in French and Hindi.